How to Use Information Technology Effectively to Achieve Business Objectives - Enterprise Information Systems Design, Implementation and Management: Organizational Applications - page 29

Figure 6. Strategy O-O-D-A cycle

• Business: Represents the organisation's
vision and point of view and allows to
identify and promote the use of the capaci-
ties the organisation has to answer to the
client stimulus;
• Logic: Represents the vision of the appli-
cation and its point of view and permits to
define the development strategy or config-
uration of specific software.

O-O-D-A (Figure 6). Boyd said that, in a competi-
tive environment, the entity capable of guiding the
decision process formed by the cycle “observe;
orient; decide and act” in a faster and efficient
manner shall perform his task more successfully
than his opponents.
Initially designed for military applications the
concepts developed from Boyd' ideas became
used in several other areas. As example of the use
of this methodology in project management field
can be found in (Rosa, Marcelo, 2005) and was
used as a source to choose this strategy. It was
necessary to frame the phases of the O-O-D-A
cycle (Figure 7) in the chosen method:

Each layer represents a vision of the problem
with a certain detail and a diverse refining de-
scribed under a form of behaviour, information and
functions. Each layer encapsulates the behaviour
and the information of the previous layer. Each
layer is described as following: 1. Observation includes acquisition and data

and information compiling: CRUD matrix,
Hoshin Kanri matrix, processes diagram,
entities related to the expected develop-
ment, new orders made by business and the
organisational frameworks, external data
on existing technology to support develop-
ment, background knowledge of solutions
to problems raised as well as the knowledge
of the organisation weakness and strengths;
2. Guidance consists on analysing scenarios
based upon observations, experience, or-
ganisational vision, organisational culture,

• Behaviour: Describes the activities, tasks
and events related to a service rendered;
• Information: Fragment of relevant data
for a certain behaviour. It may be informal
or conceptual or both;
• Function : Represents the responsibility it
has under the behaviour of an entity (per-
son or company department).

The strategy adopted was developed by John
Bloyd (Angerman, S., 2004), known by the cycle