Adopting Object-Oriented Development: One Company\u27s Experience

In 1997, AA Company, made their initial move to OO development. Hoping to achieve success in a client-server environment, AAC initiated a phased pilot project using Java as the language. To date, these projects could be considered failures. What happened? This paper chronicles the events of OO adoption by AAC and discusses some things, in retrospect, that should have been done differently

Determinants of Systems Development Methodology Use

Systems development methodologies are not widely used (less than 50% actually use a methodology to guide systems development). With the importance placed on information systems and the current problems in developing systems, why are methodologies not used? The objective of the study proposed herein is to develop a model to assist organizations in assessing the determinants of actual use of systems development methodologies. The authors are currently in the midst of a multi-phase research project designed to build and test the model

Understanding the Effects of a Paradigm Shift: The Case of Object-Oriented Technology

Object-oriented technology has been around for over thirty years and offers some significant improvements over structured techniques and procedural languages. It has seen very slow growth in business applications, but is expected to grow at such a rate as to nearly replace those systems now being used at some point in the near future. It represents a paradigm shift that is difficult to master for both novice and experienced IS personnel. Radical changes, such as OO, force changes in the thought and work processes of workers and generally wreaks havoc in the workplace. Using the organizational psychology theory of Person-Environment fit, this study proposes a model to explain the behavioral performance and the amount of stress felt by a person in their workplace when undergoing a paradigm shift. The shift to OO is used as the test case for the model

What Developers Believe About OOSD: An Empircal Study

Object technology (OT) is a relatively new branch of information technology (IT) that is based on the object paradigm. A major component of OT is object-oriented systems development (OOSD), a process that many believe to be far superior to conventional systems development (CSD) (Rumbaugh et al. 1991, Coad and Yourdon 1991, Booch 1994, Coleman et al. 1994, Jacobson et al. 1995). One concern with OOSD is the shortage of hard empirical evidence either for or against it. The purpose of this study is to explore the validity of many beliefs about OOSD using a large random sample of experienced systems developers. Additionally, beliefs held by developers who are experienced in OOSD are compared to those who are not. Through such a study, the most significant and substantial beliefs can be identified, and the effect of experience in OOSD on such beliefs can be determined

Trends in Information Systems Curricula: Object-Oriented Topics

Several significant events during the past few years in the field of object-oriented technology have reshaped the industry. Among these are the rapid increase in the use and interest of Java, and the adoption of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) by the Object Management Group (OMG) in November 1997. These, and other, events continue to change the pattern of OO use in industry and course offerings in academia. This study specifically looks at the changes in academia. As OO continues its growth in industry, institutions of higher education will be expected to prepare their students for the OO development environment. In an effort to evaluate academia’s ability to produce OO developers, information has been collected from higher education (IS departments) in 1992, 1996, and most recently, in 1998 regarding OO topic offerings. This paper reports the results of the most recent findings as compared to the 1992 and 1996 data. Specifically, changes in OO programming languages, OO methods, and OO tools are presented. The trends exhibited during this time frame should provide guidance for both academia and industry as to the commitment of IS degree programs in providing a significant share of the talent pool to support the shift to OO development

Using RFID to Improve Inventory Accuracy

Accurate inventory is a key to effective supply chain management and store execution, affecting forecasting, ordering, and replenishment. Prior empirical research, however, shows that retailer perpetual inventory (PI) is inherently inaccurate. Radio frequency identification (RFID)-technology enables visibility into the movement of inventories within the supply chain. This research investigates the effectiveness of this visibility in improving retail store inventory record accuracy. We perform daily physical counts of 337 stock keeping units in one category in 13 stores of a major global retailer over 23 weeks. Eight stores auto-adjusted PI based on RFID-enabled visibility; five stores were RFID-enabled but did not auto-adjust PI. The preliminary results of the study show that RFID-enabled visibility results in a significant decrease in PI inaccuracy. We conclude that this visibility can help retailers improve store execution, specifically by reducing surplus inventories and labor costs

Object-Oriented Trends:Information Systems Degree Programs

Object-oriented (OO) application development continues to steadily move into the mainstream of systems development. Many information technologists forecast OO development will become the dominant application development strategy within a few years. Currently, object-oriented development tools and methodologies seem to be maturing enough to support this forecast. Key to supporting this shift toward OO development are a sufficient number of OO-based information systems professionals. Industry ultimately must seek their OO talent pool from information systems (IS) and computer science (CS) degree programs. This study looks at the change, over a four-year period (1992-1996), of OO technologies taught in IS programs. Specifically, changes in demographics of IS programs teaching OO, extent of OO courses taught, OO programming languages,and OO methodologies are presente