Investigating the epistemological stances implicit in ISAD approaches

Results of survey of use of SSADM in commercial and government sectors in United Kingdom

This paper advances the long term project of developing a situated information systems analysis and design methodology. Conventional approaches to information systems design are informed by the widely-held view that human purposeful action proceeds by deliberation on a mental model of the world of action. In contrast, situated information systems are informed by the view of situated action theory that routine action is largely non-deliberative and makes crucial use of structures in the action environment for attainment of goals. The expectation is that systems designed using this situated approach will be more effective in supporting routine activity than systems designed using the conventional approach. This paper reports on a case study conducted in the chemotherapy unit of a large hospital. The case study was conducted using the preexisting version of the situated systems methodology with the results of the case study informing further development of the methodology. The research provides further evidence of the ability of information systems informed by a situated model of action to effectively support complex but largely routine activity.

This chapter examines how a system developed using the Structured Systems Analysis and Design Methodology (SSADM) evolves to fit the UML and XML. As a vehicle, the chapter will consider the addition of a new user story to an existing SSADM system. SSADM developed in the early 1980’s. It is still popular. It is similar to other Structured Analysis and Design methods. Evolving SSADM to use the UML and XML is important. This chapter argues that XML is an opportunity, not a problem. It also shows that the earlier UMLs did not support SSADM but the new UML 2.0 does.

This research work focused on development of a model of web based virtual University Administration for Nigerian universities. This is necessary as there is still a noticeable administrative constraint in our Universities, the establishment of many University Web portals notwithstanding. More efforts are therefore needed to enhance or improve on the software that drives these portals to make them more efficient and render real time services. The model enables members of academic community to set up curriculum, register students and staff, enter exam scores, post news, view results, pay school fees, request for transcripts, obtain vital information from the university and update information on daily basis. The model has a watch-dog monitor called Web Patrol that monitors and keeps a log of the transactions by students and staff. The methodologies adopted for this work are top-down, prototyping and Structured Systems Analysis and Design Methodology (SSADM). This research work helps in bringing university administrative products and services to the door steps of people, thereby reducing administrative bottleneck witnessed in our universities today. It generates results and transcripts, thereby solving the current problems of delay in result and transcript processing and transfer in our universities.

The present internet version which was established and consolidated over internet protocol version 4 (IPV4) in 1981, and whose amount of public addresses available is insufficient to meet the demands explosion and current internet multimedia devices, services and application intensive environment has posed serious problems of incomplete web transactions. Stakeholders and communication industry in Nigeria are unwilling and feel reluctant to migrate to IPV6 because of inhibiting factors. This needs urgent redress to overcome the tractions that are responsible for apathy to migration from IPV4 to IPV6 launched in 1994 by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). If nothing is done, sometime, internet may run out of space, ARIN [1]. Users may suffer disillusionment and frustration. The objective of this study therefore is to design a model for predicting migration from IPV4 to IPV6 in Nigeria by 2027 based on growth trend developed from statistical indices. The essence is to explore and analyze the factors that can encourage migration to IPV6 in the next 10 years and use those factors to forecast growth, so that IPV6 will receive boost in terms of growth and patronage. The study also aims at designing a predictive model that simulates the behaviour of the restrictive policies on migration to 1PV6 so as to ascertain the current impact on non-motivation and unwillingness to migrate to IPV6 in Nigeria. The motivation behind this study is to identify the inhibiting factors responsible for lack of motivation to migrate from IPV4 to IPV6 in Nigeria. The methodologies that were deployed in packaging the model include the statistical methodology, Structured Systems Analysis and Design Methodology (SSADM) and prototyping. The result is indeed functional software, programmed through Visual Basic. Net. (VB.Net) that can be used to simulate the behavioural impact of any government policy formulation for Telecommunication industry and stakeholders.

A Combined Methodology for information systems analysis and design based on ISAC and NIAM

In this paper, we continue our long-term project of developing a situated information systems analysis and design methodology, and present it as a radical alternative to conventional information systems analysis and design. Taking a situated approach entails focusing on action and a situated analysis and design methodology aims to increase efficiency and effectiveness through supporting routine action. We suggest that, as well as improving effectiveness and temporal efficiency, applying the situated methodology will result in less wasted human effort expended in search of information. We discuss the implications of an action focus for our conception of what an information system should be, and illustrate the application of the methodology with examples from a case study.

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The study proposes a combination of the function points model for software estimation with the ADISSA methodology for systems analysis and design. This combined approach, which is supported by a software tool, enables one to estimate various software metrics, such as size, effort, and duration, in the early stages of systems development, by basing them on the products of a thorough system analysis and design process.

System analysis and design is an engineering technique which is widely used in industrial projects to ensure a solution is reached which fulfills the requirements of the user. The same technique has been used in this research for the design and implementation of a cricket bowling system which has been designed with both existing technology and the requirements of players and coaches in mind. The structured analysis and design methodology has been teamed with an object oriented approach to provide a component based solution which includes a bowling machine able to recreate any common bowling delivery, a visualization to provide temporal and spatial information about the delivery and an independent user interface to ensure robustness. This papers looks in more detail at the design and analysis methodologies used to create this solution.

The Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method (SSADM) is the standard method for systems analysis and design in Government batch and transaction processing projects. In SSADM, analysis and design are clearly separated activities. Systems analysis is concerned with defining what has to be done, systems design with how it will be done.

This paper presents an expert system approach for design and analysis of substation grounding systems. The methodology is applicable to equally spaced as well as unequally spaced grounding grids. The knowledge required to perform the substation ground design has been acquired from IEEE Std 80-1886, IEEE Std 142-1991 and safety practices and then represented by using a production rules technique. A graphic user interface (GUI) is provided to familiarize the user with the proposed expert system. In this paper, general system structure as well as rules and data representations are discussed. An illustrative example is presented using a 132 kV transformer substation rehabilitation project of Misr Aluminum company. This expert system can assist grounding system engineers to obtain a safe grounding system which is one of most important design aspects of substations.

This paper focuses on a coding approach for effective analysis and design of secure watermark-based multimedia authentication systems. We provide a design framework for semi-fragile watermark-based authentication such that both objectives of robustness and fragility are effectively controlled and achieved. Robustness and fragility are characterized as two types of authentication errors. The authentication embedding and verification structures of the semi-fragile schemes are derived and implemented using lattice codes to minimize these errors. Based on the specific security requirements of authentication, cryptographic techniques are incorporated to design a secure authentication code structure. Using nested lattice codes, a new approach, called MSB-LSB decomposition, is proposed which we show to be more secure than previous methods. Tradeoffs between authentication distortion and implementation efficiency of the secure authentication code are also investigated. Simulations of semi-fragile authentication methods on real images demonstrate the effectiveness of the MSB-LSB approach in simultaneously achieving security, robustness, and fragility objectives.

The Data Time Flow Simulator (DTF) has been developed at the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology in the course of the EU ARTEMIS Project POLLUX which is related to the design of electronic control systems for the next generation of electric vehicles. In previous work, we have introduced a generic approach for performance analysis of vehicle electronic control systems using the DTF. The main issue of this paper is to demonstrate the practicability of this design methodology by means of a specific use case, namely the performance analysis of a vehicle control system for an electric city car, designed using inputs from different POLLUX project partners from the automotive industry.

The case study described in this chapter concerns the introduction of a new computer based integrated Clinical Information System (CIS) into a British National Health Services Trust-the Sunrise Trust. At the time of the study most of the system modules had been developed and were being tested largely for technical aspects. The system was being introduced during a period when the organization was experiencing significant changes. It was an environment where new structures were being created and the existing ones changed. Indeed, the case study was selected primarily because of these factors. The analysis of these structures, formal and informal, provides insight into the management of information systems. Various stakeholders in the Hospital Trust felt that a computer based information system would facilitate the change process. However the analysis and design of the system posed its own problems. The system turned out to be inflexible with respect to the core health care delivery process. It was also nonresponsive to the needs of the key stakeholders. Analysis of the case shows that clearly the formal methods adopted by the system analysts fell short of determining the rapid changes required for care. In particular this was an important issue, since the context of the British National Health Services posed pressures on individual trusts to be cost effective. This resulted in long term patients being moved out into the community. However, this richness in the context was overlooked by the analysts. They developed “logical” models of the system, which ended up in being “tidy pictures of reality” and were prescriptive and utterly inflexible. Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method (SSADM) was used as a modelling tool, which amplified the rational view of decision making and information technology (IT) applications (for more details on SSADM see Downs et al., 1988). The interpretations identified in the case show a clear mis-match between the formal models and perceptions of the system users who inevitably reflect a more informal and pragmatic approach to their own organizational realities. The analysis of the case poses a number of interesting issues. It questions the relationship between the complexity of the social relations and systems design. Furthermore it brings to the fore the paradoxical viewpoints of different stakeholders and the emergent concerns for a system analyst. The chapter also identifies the impact of an “overformalized” information system on the integrity of an organization. In doing so it evaluates the nature and significance of social power structures in systems analysis, design and implementation.