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Evaluation of Systems Analysis Methodologies in a Workflow Context

Evaluation of Systems Analysis Methodologies in a Workflow Context. Fahad Al-Humaidan , Computing Science, Newcastle University Nick Rossiter , Computing and Mathematics, Northumbria University, England nick.rossiter@unn.ac.uk. Methodologies. Many in systems analysis e.g.

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Evaluation of Systems Analysis Methodologies in a Workflow Context

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  1. Evaluation of Systems Analysis Methodologies in a Workflow Context Fahad Al-Humaidan, Computing Science, Newcastle University Nick Rossiter, Computing and Mathematics, Northumbria University, England nick.rossiter@unn.ac.uk

  2. Methodologies • Many in systems analysis e.g. • SSADM (transaction-oriented relational db) • UML (object-oriented environment) • Initial effort on tangible ‘hard’ aspects • Program code (functionality), data structures (storage and retrieval) • Omits resources (people, money and equipment) and other ‘soft’ issues

  3. Soft Systems • quality issues • identification of the problem • user involvement • organisational structure • goals and policies • employee job satisfaction • different points of view • employee’s values • system acceptability and usability.

  4. Approaches Evaluated • OPM: The Organisation Process Modelling method (Warboys, 1999) • SSADM: The Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method (SSADM, version 4, 1990 (Duncan, Rackley and Walker, 1995) • UML: The Unified Modelling Language (UML, version 1.3, 1998, Booch, 1999) • Unified Process: The Unified Process method of 1999 (Rational Software Corporation, 2000) • SSM: Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) (Checkland and Scholes, 1990) • Workflow (WFMS): The Workflow Management System (Jablonski and Bussler, 1996)

  5. Evaluation Taxonomy: Developed to cover both hard and soft aspects: • hard aspects • Data • Events • Processes • Interfaces • soft system aspects • resources • quality • business issues • problem identification • user involvement • organisational structure, goals and policies • employee job satisfaction • different views • employee values 14. system acceptability and usability

  6. Comparison of Methodologies: system elements 1-7

  7. Comparison of Methodologies: system elements 8-14

  8. Merits of Approaches 1 • OPM • Interactions between agents as they achieve their goals • Emphasis on agents in AI useful complementation • Deals with some hard and most of the soft • Soft coverage based on SSM to some extent • Lack of facilities for representing data structures • SSADM • Originally a hard system covering transactions in databases • Deals with all hard aspects • But only some of the soft aspects where uses some SSM features

  9. Merits of Approaches 2 • UML • Expressive object-oriented modelling language • Covers all hard aspects • Weak on soft aspects • UP • Object-oriented development method based on UML • Covers all hard aspects • Stronger on soft aspects than UML but still not comprehensive

  10. Merits of Approaches 3 • SSM • weak on hard issues such as data structures, events, interfaces • strong on soft issues covering them all using Rich Pictures in some cases • soft issues of increasing importance in areas such as e-learning • WFMS • meets every criteria (hard and soft) to high extent • very wide-ranging • taxonomy was derived from WFMS so some bias • UML better in information system abstractions

  11. Conclusions • Relatively strong on soft aspects: • OPM, SSM • Relatively strong on hard aspects: • UML, UP • Relatively comprehensive but lacking some soft features -- SSADM -- or hard features -- WFMS • Future work: look at combining UML/WFMS

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