Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Develop vision and strategies. The development of visions and strategies is a
design process where the views of several organizational stakeholders should be
taken into account. This ensures that the strategy is possible to implement and that
the different goals of the strategy do not contradict each other. One important aspect
of this is to make the arguments for the strategy clear to the stakeholders, which
in turn enhances acceptance. For this to be achieved a participatory approach is to
be preferred, since it enables the stakeholders to listen to arguments and to pro-
vide input based on their knowledge about the abilities and shortcomings of the
organization.
Design/re-design the business. Depending on the size of the project, this may
involve a few or many stakeholder groups. An important quality aspect of an EM
that depicts a new design is dependent upon whether or not the design makes sense
as a whole and hence is possible to implement [21] . This requires that the different
types of stakeholders are actively involved and are given the possibility to learn
about other parts of the organization. The individual stakeholder's understanding for
her/his role in relationship to the whole organization is essential for the stakeholder's
ability to effectively contribute to the overall design. To adopt an analyst driven
approach jeopardizes the overall design because it is too dependent on the analyst's
ability to understand all complex relationships in the organization.
Develop IS. In the transition between the organizational parts of an IS develop-
ment process and it's more technical parts it can be effective to adopt a participatory
approach. An example situation is when organizational goals are “translated” into
overall goals for an IS that needs the acceptance of the organization. When these
goals are then further developed into more and more detailed software requirements
a more analyst driven approach is appropriate, particularly since the more formal
models that are used here can be difficult for the organizational stakeholders to
comprehend and validate. Furthermore, an analyst driven approach may drive the
formulation of requirements for technology to more realistic ones.
Ensure acceptance for business decisions. To develop visions and strategies
and to design/re-design the business are examples of processes that in essence are
decision-making processes. In order to ensure the acceptance for business decisions
it is most favorable to adopt a participatory approach.
Maintain and share knowledge about the business. In many ways this is similar
to EM for designing or redesigning the business - different stakeholder types are
to be involved. The specifics of this case require the knowledge sharing purpose of
models should be taken in to account, i.e. both knowledge bearers and users should
be involved in the EM process. Ideally, representatives of both of these stakeholder
types should participate in the process of knowledge capture and packaging.
Use EM as a problem solving tool. Problem solving are in most cases a col-
laborative process which requires that the creative spirit of the stakeholders and
stakeholder groups is supported and that negotiation between stakeholder views
is also facilitated. We therefore argue that a participatory approach is superior to
achieve these goals. First of all it is more or less impossible to support a creative
process by the analyst interviewing a number of stakeholders. Secondly, negotiation
processes tend to be more difficult when arguments are relayed through the analyst
instead of stakeholders arguing and listening in an interactive setting.
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