1 / 11

Evaluation of Systems Analysis Methodologies in a Workflow Context

This study evaluates various systems analysis methodologies such as SSADM, UML, and Soft Systems, focusing on hard and soft aspects in a workflow context. Approaches like OPM and WFMS are examined, highlighting strengths and weaknesses in addressing data structures, user involvement, and system acceptability.

ehutchins
Download Presentation

Evaluation of Systems Analysis Methodologies in a Workflow Context

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  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

More Related