Several methodologies provide us a way of modeling of a certain business process or a data model with some philosophy behind it. Yourdon, for example, is focusing on data processing and real-time systems [You98]. OMT aims to find an object-oriented method that covers all phases of a software development project [Dah97]. DEMO is focused more on transactions [Die96] and UML uses a component-based approach [All98].
We have used several methodologies, like above, for IS design. We saw that, each time, we were missing some information and we came into a never-ending spiral of activities. We were forced to make changes in our base-design and delayed our implementations constantly. Users were often unsure of their needs and the lack of common understanding between the stakeholders was also a drawback. The users, for example, were constantly changing and switching from their duties, and hence became unsure of their needs and the stakeholders gave also different meanings to the business process flows each time.
We also realized that human factors, the way of interaction and communication between the users, and the organization culture, were also one of the reasons why we were constantly missing information. A strict hierarchical organization structure caused, for example, missing communication links between the users and the stakeholders.
In order to be successful, we have decided to change our approach to other than well known, since we believe that success starts with understanding the organization and well defining the trouble area. We came to the conclusion that we had to learn ‘think’ like the users to ‘understand’ the current situation in order to well-define our IS boundaries in such environments. This gave us the ability to react on any changes within the organization rapidly without using time-consuming communication channels. We also saw that this approach was not only efficient but also sufficient to build a successful IS. In essence; our study is based on one hand, on ‘understanding’ the trouble area by means of ‘seeing’ the reality in the eyes of the users and stakeholders through participation to define the business processes. And on the other hand, designing the IS concurrently in such a way that the IS will be capable of implementing those business processes.
Our aim in this study is to define a new way of working for designing IS from the users and stakeholders understanding perspective. Our approach is based on experiences gained during the implementation of the Consumer Banking project at Finansbank (Holland) NV together with literature studies that supports our way of thinking.
How to Read?
We have divided this report into two main sections: The first section (till chapter six), consists of literature studies together with our experiences. This section provides us a baseline for implementing our new framework. In the first chapters, basic definitions are given that support our view on trouble elimination within an organization. Then, our approach for finding and eliminating the trouble area is defined. In chapter four, frameworks are stated together with their purposes. Finally, in chapter five, our approach is ‘frameworked’ and defined.
The second section (staring from chapter six), consists of applying the previous findings together with our new defined framework to our case study, which is defined in chapter six. Then, several mappings are made to several domains to understand the trouble area and to re-define the working-processes in such a way that the troubles can be eliminated and optimized. Finally, in chapter seven, the conclusions are stated.