Bill Davey

Requirements Elicitation - What's Missing?

In this paper we show that interviews between IT co nsultants and clients are considered best practice in terms of methods for eliciting IS requireme nts as part of IS development projects. The process of conducting successful conversations with clients as part of requirements elicitation interviews is not well understood. The paper report s a literature survey which established current understanding. To date this understanding has been achieved through research which: considered conversations as black boxes; proposed and implemented treatments to be applied by consultants; and then measured the quality and quantity of the r equirements elicited. The treatments have not been successful as poor requirements elicitation co ntinues to be a major problem in IS development. Our analysis of current understanding indicat ed that consultants’ experiences of the nature of conversations with clients and approach to condu cting conversations have not been studied. It would seem imperative to look inside the black box of consultants’ experiences of conducting conversations with clients if improvements to the o utcomes of requirements elicitation are to be made. A study is proposed which aims to examine variation in how consultants experience requirements elicitation conversations. Through analy zing the variation in the light of current best practice it is aimed to identify the critical aspec ts of successfully conceived and conducted conversations. These critical aspects can then be used in IS education and practitioner training programs.

Improving the Chances of Getting your IT Curriculum Innovation Successfully Adopted by the Application of an Ecological Approach to Innovation

University curricula in Information Technology (IT) necessarily require frequent change, updating and even complete revision due to advances in technologies, new methodologies, and changes in how people and organisations make use of computers. We argue that curriculum change, which is a complex process that involves many actors, should be seen through the lens of innovation theory and studied as an innovation. To understand curriculum innovation it is useful to examine how interactions between both human and non-human entities contribute to the final curriculum product, and this paper discusses theories of innovation and proposes an ecological approach to the building and re-building of university curriculum in IT. Ecology is concerned with interrelationships: between different living things, and between living things and their environment. Building on our previous work in this area, in the paper we explain the ecological approach by its application to several specific case studies in IT curriculum innovation. We use this ecological approach in an attempt at explaining why some elements of IT curriculum innovation are adopted successfully whilst others are not. Interesting as this might be from a theoretical academic perspective however, an explanatory theory is much more relevant if it can also be used practically. While we make no claim to being able to predict the success or failure of an IT curriculum innovation, we do suggest that this approach can be used to improve its chances of success. We argue that by making use of an ecological approach it is possible to improve the chances that a particular curriculum innovation will be adopted and used successfully.

An actor network approach to informing clients through portals

Portals are often seen as an appropriate method of informing clients. A problem of all web based solutions to informing clients is that the web is passive: clients must come to the web site. Approaches to research into use of portals are usually socio-technical, with common use of statistical techniques applied to survey results. Here we argue, informed by two detailed cases, that an actor network theory approach yields better results, more efficiently, when the case involves a number of small businesses being the clients. Alternative theories such as diffusion theories, based on the work of Rodgers and others, are more applicable when large, statistical effects are being anticipated.

Open ITEM Systems are Good ITEM Systems

Many educational authorities and third-party developers have, in the past, built ITEM (Information Technology and Educational Management) systems mainly for the benefit of central education authorities rather than schools. In some cases these systems have been designed without thorough consultation with schools. The result has been that many schools have not been able to get as much out of them as might otherwise have been possible.

Requirements Elicitation Problems: A Literature Analysis

Requirements elicitation is the process through which analysts determine the software requirements of stakeholders. Requirements elicitation is seldom well done, and an inaccurate or incomplete understanding of user requirements has led to the downfall of many software projects. This paper proposes a classification of problem types that occur in requirements elicitation. The classification has been derived from a literature analysis. Papers reporting on techniques for improving requirements elicitation practice were examined for the problem the technique was designed to address. In each classification the most recent or prominent techniques for ameliorating the problems are presented. The classification allows the requirements engineer to be sensitive to problems as they arise and the educator to structure delivery of requirements elicitation training.

Technology in Education: An Agile Systems Approach

Innovative use of technology in education often comes about through a champion exploring possibilities. Because this approach is often informal, the need to assess the effectiveness of the technology is often overlooked. An agile systems approach to the introduction of new technology in education can provide effective ways of measuring outcomes. The agile approach also allows us to build on the experience gained from using technology in other areas. Evidence from two case studies is used to demonstrate the value that can be gained from taking an agile systems approach.

Where Will Professional Software Engineering Education Go Next

In 1998 Lethbridge surveyed software engineering professionals and found that there were aspects of their degree that they saw as being useless to their jobs. This study was repeated in 2005 with very similar results despite a significant tightening of the research method. Inspired by this input to the curriculum development process we studied 20 years of curriculum at a University chosen for its very close ties to industry. The study showed that there has been a continual and growing move towards integrating specific technical issues into organisational context. The indication is that curriculum valued by industry will involve students being immersed in business problems rather than learning technical skills and then finding a place to apply them.

Modelling the Adoption of Web-Based Mobile Learning – An Innovation Translation Approach

The potential of mobile computing applications in learning is clear, but to have any of this potential realised is problematic. Before a new educational technology can be used it must be adopted. Conventional approaches to innovation suggest that adoption decisions are related mostly to the characteristics of the technology, but we think the process is much more complex than this and find these approaches too simplistic. In this paper we apply the principles of innovation translation theory to the process of adoption of mobile computing in web-based education.

Executive Information Systems in school management: a research perspective

Research by the authors has shown that information systems are used in a variety of sophisticated management applications by central and regional educational authorities, but that these systems are used for little more than transaction processing and management reporting at the local school level. The use of Information Technology in Educational Management (ITEM) is becoming increasingly important, particularly with moves towards devolution of school management to the local level. We suggest that the time is right for schools to make more use of IT for decision support at the local level, and advocate the development of school based Executive Information Systems (EIS).

Web 2.0 panacea or placebo for superior healthcare delivery

Tim Berners-Lee once said that ‘Web 2.0’ was ‘what the Web was supposed to be all along’ (Berners-Lee 1989, 2006). In 2008, Eseynbach and colleagues coined the term ‘Medicine 2.0’ to describe the broad adoption of Web 2.0 technologies into the healthcare context as well as the emergence of personal healthcare application platforms and personally controlled health record platforms (Eseynbach 2008). Should we then extrapolate and infer then, that this is what e-health should have been all along or will this latest development be another headache for healthcare systems globally, which are already haemorrhaging money with no sign of any solution to effect sustainable value-driven healthcare solutions. The following examines the possibilities for Web 2.0 to enable superior healthcare delivery in an attempt to shed some light on this question.