Interaction Dictionary

The focus in V1.Articulation is on system owner and system user objectives. For these stakeholders, is the system, or are the system changes worth building?

The answer to this question is influenced by three kinds of drivers for system development projects. These drivers matter both for enterprises and the information systems supporting their processes (definitions are from Whitten, Bentley & Dittman, 2004).

• Problem: an undesirable situation that prevents the organization from fully achieving its purpose, goals, and/or objectives. Usually, problems are manifest in production or logistic processes.
• Opportunity: a chance to improve the organization even in the absence of an identified problem. Often an opportunity comes from the availability of new technology.
• Directive: a new requirement that is imposed by management, government, or some external influence. A directive may also come from science, government, or other governance entities (the societal drivers).

The worksystem problem is expressed in reference to a decision frame. Indicator measurements fall short of reaching the objective stated for the enterprise of interest. In an analysis and design activity alternative designs are proposed and evaluated, and (in the decision analysis) one is selected for implementation, leading to an “evolutionary step” for the worksystem.

An opportunity might be the emergence of a new technology, such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), or mobile communications. The benefit part of a cost-benefit evaluation is performed with respect to the values and decision frame that matter for the operational theatre. What is the value impact of an implementation and does it lead to favourable pay-back period?

Even more interesting is the case where the value impact of a technology (e.g. an interoperability solution) is not restricted to the object system, but also depends upon adoptation of the technology by peers. Au and Kaufmann (2005) describe how potential adopters of technologies with network externalities base their adoptation decisions on expectations on adoption by other companies. They assert that the lack of sharing of expectations among actors in such situation slows down adoption. See Lee and Őzer (2005) for evaluating the value impacts of RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) (without attention for network externalities).

A possible directive is to increase enterprise outcomes by 20%, for instance on the basis of a benchmark with competing enterprises or other peers. Benchmarking is frequently used to obtain directives for the improvement of an existing system. See Plieninger et al. (2001) for one possible approach as well as a discussion on bottom-up (solving problems inside the system, e.g. excess inventory or bottlenecks) versus top-down (system target focussed) improvement approaches.

Cause-and-effect analysis – a technique in which problems are studied to determine their causes and effects. In practice, effects can be symptomatic of more deeply rooted or basic problems which, in turn, must be analyzed for causes and effects until such a time as the causes and effects do not yield symptoms of other problems.

Description