Joan Antoni Pastor

Formalising ERP Selection Criteria

We present a proposal for selecting enterprise resource planning (ERP) products from a formal description of their relevant characteristics. The work is based on a previous and successfull collaboration with a midsize company in the field of software package selection. An ERP was selected following a systematic methodology called SHERPA. In past experience, SHERPA relied on natural language descriptions of the application domain, user needs and candidate ERP solutions. We show that a formal language may be used for modeling this application domain, translating user needs into requirements for the ERP products, and for reflecting how concrete ERP products adjust to them. Having selection criteria used during ERP acquisition formally modeled as well as user needs and ERP product descriptions, we expect to obtain more reliable and understandable results in this process.

Combined Selection of COTS Components

In this paper the problem of the combined selection of COTS components is analyzed in organizations of a specialized nature. This is currently a process of great interest: once many organizations have implemented recently ERP systems for supporting their central management areas, they need to select specialized components for other more particular business areas. We propose a model of combined selection of components based on the distinction of two levels. At the global level the combined selection process takes place, and it includes the initial planning, the enactment of the individual selection processes, the proposal of scenarios to evaluate and the final selection of COTS components. At the local level we locate all the individual selection processes of the different particular business areas, under the supervision of the process at the global level. The model presented here arises from the observation of an ongoing real case.

Towards a Quality Model for the Selection of ERP Systems

ERP systems are a category of COTS products that offers extensive support to the management of business processes in most kind of companies and organizations. Due to their increasing adoption and the risks coming from their incorrect selection, efforts towards effective and reliable selection methods should have a positive impact in the community. This chapter proposes the adoption of quality models as a means for structuring the description of the capabilities of such type of products. The ISO/IEC 9126-1 quality standard is chosen as a framework, and a methodology for tailoring it to this specific domain is followed. The chapter also shows the formalization of the quality model by using a formal language. Last, the use of the quality model for processing quality requirements is also addressed.

Organizational and Technological Critical Success Factors Behavior along the ERP Implementation Phases

This paper analyzes the evolution of organizational and technological critical success factors along the ERP implementation phases. The identification of factors leading to success or failure of ERP systems is an issue of increasing importance, since the number of organizations choosing the ERP path keeps growing. Our findings suggest that while both good organizational and technological perspectives are essential for a successful ERP implementation project, their importance shifts as the project moves through its lifecycle.

Supporting Transaction Design in Conceptual Modelling of Information Systems

A method and a tool for supporting transaction design in conceptual modelling of information systems is presented. The method derives automatically a transaction specification that integrates in a uniform manner the updating of base and derived information and the checking and maintenance of integrity within an information base conceptual schema. Transaction specifications thus obtained achieve their intended purpose and guarantee that information base consistency will be preserved. When there are several possible solutions, the method derives all of them. The designer may then intervene in various ways in order to select the most appropriate ones. From this choice on, the transaction processing system and the end-user can also play a role in the final application of the transaction specification, for this one can be directly executable. Using a declarative, logic-based approach, the method is general, and can be adapted easily to most conceptual modelling methodologies.

Implementing and improving the SEI Risk Management method in a university software project

Although risk management approaches appeared more than one decade ago, there is the evidence of low penetration rate of their techniques in current software projects. One of the most widely known methods is the SEI Software Continuous Risk Management (SEI-CRM) method. This paper addresses the usage of the SEI-CRM method in a big university software development project. Moreover, the study we carried out suggests that SEI-CRM is limited in terms of the organizational risk perspective. This research is expected to contribute with the knowledge on risk management for software development projects by for which we propose to extend the SEI-CRM method with some organizational risk factors that we have found relevant from our study.

Organizational and National Issues of an ERP Implementation in a Portuguese Company

This technical research report describes a case of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation in a Portuguese SME. We focused on the identification of organizational factors that affect the ERP implementation project. We also analyzed the ERP implementation project from a national cultural perspective using Geert Hofstedes dimensions. These dimensions were used to explain some of the attitudes and behaviours during the ERP implementation project. The findings suggest that some of the problems in ERP implementation projects are not of technological nature but may be attributed to organizational factors while some issues related to national culture.

An initial research agenda for SCM information systems

In recent years, Supply Chain Management (SCM) in general and SCM information systems in particular have raised growing interest among researchers from various knowledge areas, such as information systems, artificial intelligence, simulation, telecommunications, economics and business management, among others. Based upon a recent academic literature analysis that we have undertaken, and which updates a prior one, in this paper we provide a focused analysis of previous research in SCM systems, before providing an initial tentative list of potential research issues that we consider worth studying. To our knowledge, there is no published research agenda on SCM systems that contrasts with the mentioned research interest in the area and with the big amounts of projects and money that companies around the world are dedicating to SCM projects. For better understanding, we have classified the emerging research topics along the lines of a proposed life cycle framework.

FOLRE: A Deductive Database System for the Integrated Treatment of Updates

We present in this paper both a novel theoretically well-founded framework for integrating the treatment of advanced update and rule enforcement problems in deductive databases and the architecture of a new deductive database management system based upon such a framework. Our results extend the query-processing and basic updating functionalities provided by current deductive database systems with integrated view updating and materialization, integrity checking and maintenance, and condition monitoring; both for on-line updates and predefined transactions.

Former Students' Perception of Improvement Potential of Conceptual Modeling in Practice

Several authors have pointed out a significant gap between Conceptual Modeling CM theory and practice. It is then natural that we try to find answers to questions such as: What is the nature of the gap? Which is the magnitude of the gap? Why does the gap exist? and What could be done to narrow the gap? In this paper, we try to answer those questions from the point of view of the former students of a Requirements Engineering and Conceptual Modeling course that have been involved in professional projects. We have surveyed over 70 former students to know how they perceive the degree to which a set of four conceptual modeling artifacts are created in practice, and how they perceive the improvement potential of the creation of those artifacts in practice. For each artifact, we asked a question on the use of the artifact, and one on the recommendation of use of the artifact. We try to identify the reasons why the artifacts were not created, and what would be needed to convince stakeholders and developers to create the artifact, when it is recommended to do it.