Experience in teaching a software reengineering course

Software engineering curricula emphasize developing new software systems. Little attention is given to how to change and modernize existing systems, i.e., the theory and practice of software maintenance and reengineering. This paper presents the author’s experience in teaching software reengineering in a masters-level course at University of Leicester, UK. It presents the course objectives, outline and the lessons learned. The main lessons are: first, there is a big shortage of educational materials for teaching software reengineering. Second, selecting the suitable materials (that balance theory and practice) and the right tool(s) for the level of students and depth of coverage required is a difficult task. Third, teaching reengineering using toy exercises and assignments does not convey the practical aspects of the subject. While, teaching with real, even small size, exercises and assignments, is almost infeasible. Getting the balance right requires careful consideration and experimentation. Finally, students understand and appreciate this topic much more if they have previous industrial experience and when they are presented with real industrial case studies

Business Process Management Education in Academia: Status, challenges, and Recommendations

In response to the growing proliferation of Business Process Management (BPM) in industry and the demand this creates for BPM expertise, universities across the globe are at various stages of incorporating knowledge and skills in their teaching offerings. However, there are still only a handful of institutions that offer specialized education in BPM in a systematic and in-depth manner. This article is based on a global educators’ panel discussion held at the 2009 European Conference on Information Systems in Verona, Italy. The article presents the BPM programs of five universities from Australia, Europe, Africa, and North America, describing the BPM content covered, program and course structures, and challenges and lessons learned. The article also provides a comparative content analysis of BPM education programs illustrating a heterogeneous view of BPM. The examples presented demonstrate how different courses and programs can be developed to meet the educational goals of a university department, program, or school. This article contributes insights on how best to continuously sustain and reshape BPM education to ensure it remains dynamic, responsive, and sustainable in light of the evolving and ever-changing marketplace demands for BPM expertise

The propagation of technology management taxonomies for evaluating investments in information systems

To provide managers with a critical insight into the management of new technology, this paper uses a case study research strategy to examine the technology management experiences of a leading UK manufacturing organization during its adoption of a vendor-supplied Manufacturing Resource Planning information system.<br /

Principles in Patterns (PiP) : Project Evaluation Synthesis

Evaluation activity found the technology-supported approach to curriculum design and approval developed by PiP to demonstrate high levels of user acceptance, promote improvements to the quality of curriculum designs, render more transparent and efficient aspects of the curriculum approval and quality monitoring process, demonstrate process efficacy and resolve a number of chronic information management difficulties which pervaded the previous state. The creation of a central repository of curriculum designs as the basis for their management as "knowledge assets", thus facilitating re-use and sharing of designs and exposure of tacit curriculum design practice, was also found to be highly advantageous. However, further process improvements remain possible and evidence of system resistance was found in some stakeholder groups. Recommendations arising from the findings and conclusions include the need to improve data collection surrounding the curriculum approval process so that the process and human impact of C-CAP can be monitored and observed. Strategies for improving C-CAP acceptance among the "late majority", the need for C-CAP best practice guidance, and suggested protocols on the knowledge management of curriculum designs are proposed. Opportunities for further process improvements in institutional curriculum approval, including a re-engineering of post-faculty approval processes, are also recommended

Empirical investigation on satisfaction and service quality level of radical process change implementation

The paper reviews the literature related to the implementation of radical process changes in higher education (HE) environment. Several issues and implementation results related to radical process change in HEIs, particularly business process reengineering (BPR), are being investigated. Furthermore, as the implementation of process change would have an impact in HEIs,specifically on service quality and customer satisfaction, this paper discusses both concepts. A survey has been developed to assess the students’ satisfaction of the radical process change implemented in one of the HEIs, namely HEI-A which was selected as a case study. The results indicate some significant differences among groups for both satisfaction and service quality measured.The paper provides a framework for future research to develop a metric for measuring satisfaction and service quality level in HEIs. This research contributes to studies of BPR in HE context, by focusing on the key processes performance

Using Reengineering Techniques for Distance Study Course Improvement

The paper analyses the reengineering concept as it comes from software engineering and management fields. We combine two viewpoints and apply them to solve a problem of reengineering of a distance study system, in general, and the unit of learning, in particular. We propose a framework for reengineering of unit of learning, based on general model of software reengineering, and present a case study, in which we describe, how one topic of distance study course was reengineered, considering triple consistency principle and requirements for computer science. The proposed framework contributes to increasing quality, effectiveness and systematization of delivering distance studies

Implementing an Enterprise Information System to Reengineer and Streamline Administrative Processes in a Distance Learning Unit

During the past three years, we have developed and implemented an enterprise information system (EIS) to reengineer and facilitate the administrative process for preparing and teaching distance learning courses in a midsized-to-large university (with 23,000 students). The outcome of the implementation has been a streamlined and efficient process which has delivered higher faculty satisfaction at a substantial cost reduction. In this paper, we propose a new conceptual and operational framework for process reengineering (PR) in higher education institutions. We also share our practical experience gained while designing, developing, and integrating three subsystems into an EIS. We hope that our experience, delineated in this paper, will help other universities’ distance learning efforts and will encourage them to implement enterprise information systems to effectively manage their administrative processes

Information Outlook, September 2002

Volume 6, Issue 9https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_io_2002/1008/thumbnail.jp