Exploring the Relationships Between Knowledge Management and Information Systems: No Decomissioning

In recent years the discipline of Knowledge Management (KM) has emerged as a supposedly useful approach to leveraging organisational assets in order to obtain a variety of business benefits. However, this is easier said than done. For KM to be effective organisations must reflect on three key issues - infrastructure, culture and technology. While some may chose to emphasise the socio-cultural issues over the technology issues, more recent research (Gallagher & Hazlett, 2000) has pursued a path of normalization in relation to these three key aspects. Regardless of where KM has originated from it is clear that Information Systems (IS) and associated Information Technology (IT) can and will play an important role, if only as an enabler. This paper concentrates on the difficulties associated with implementing and evaluating KM in practice. It explicitly advocates the use of IS/IT and associated models as a response to the problems faced. The results of an exploratory interview study indicate that (a) many firms are relying heavily on IS/IT to support their KM strategies and (b) IS techniques offer a useful response to some of the problems encountered

Factors that affect the use and acceptance of systems development methodologies by system developers

In this study fourteen factors affecting the use and acceptance of systems development methodologies by individual systems developers were investigated. The results show that relative advantage, compatibility and trialability of a systems development methodology, an individual’s experience in systems development and his/her experience in systems development methodologies, management support and peer developer support, and uncertainty about the continued existence of the IS department significantly influence the deployment of systems development methodologies

From specification through refinement to implementation : a comparative study

This dissertation investigates the role of specification, refinement and implementation in the software development cycle. Both the structured and object-oriented paradigms are looked at. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of the refinement process. The requirements for the product (system) are determined, the specifications are drawn up, the product is designed, specified, implemented and tested. The stage between the (formal) specification of the system and the implementation of the system is the refinement stage. The refinement process consists out of data refinement, operation refinement, and operation decomposition. In this dissertation, Z, Object-Z and UML (Unified Modelling Language) are used as specification languages and C, C++, Cobol and Object-Oriented Cobol are used as implementation languages. As an illustration a small system, The ITEM System, is specified in Z and UML and implemented in Object-Oriented Cobol.ComputingM. Sc. (Information Systems

Action in context - context in action: towards a grounded theory of software design

This thesis develops a model and a theory of software design. Thirty-two transcripts of interviews with software designers were analysed using the Grounded Theory method. The first set of sixteen interviews drawn from the field of Digital Interactive Multimedia (Data-set A) was used to develop the model and theory, the second set of sixteen interviews drawn from one source of technical literature (Data-set B) was used to test and enhance the initial outcomes. Final outcomes are then grounded in the general literature on problem solving and design. The model is concerned to capture a rich, holistic picture of software design. It is descriptive rather than prescriptive, concerned to capture how software design is done rather than advocate how it ought to be done. The theory is a development of the model and is presented initially as a theoretical framework and then as a series of propositions. The theoretical framework is a function of the juxtaposition of specific properties or attributes of the "core category", which uniquely explains the phenomenon. Its outcome is four design scenarios. Each scenario is of interest as an explanation of software design practice but two scenarios wherein such practice does not "fit" the design context are of most interest. It is argued that these scenarios can be used to identify and explain design breakdowns. Finally, the thesis purports to explicate the "Meta-process" - the process through which the inductive model and theory was developed. This is an unusual objective for a piece of IS research but valid nonetheless and significant, given the complexity of the research method used and the dearth of good process accounts in the IS literature and elsewhere