Thesis. 1977. M.S.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. VIDEOCASSETTE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH VISUAL COLLECTIONS. / M.S.

Thesis (MTech (Business Information Systems))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2018. / Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems integrate business processes (BPs) into one database, facilitate data sharing, and provide real time information to authorised users, leading to an increase in efficiency and effectiveness. However, the implementation of an ERP system is not always a success as some systems turn out to be misaligned with the organisation’s objectives. This misalignment can lead to inadequate controls within the system. ERP systems are designed to improve transactions within the BPs and provide a competitive advantage to organisations. However, this benefit can become a weakness if project implementation fails due to controls in the system not being aligned with the objectives. The aim of the study is to explore how audit functions can contribute to the implementation of ERP projects, and the objective is to propose a guideline that can improve the implementation processes of ERP projects. To address the aim and meet the objective of this study, two main questions are asked: 1) What are the factors to be considered when introducing audit functionality in the implementation of an ERP system? 2) How can audit functions assist organisations in ERP project implementation? A subjectivist philosophical stance is followed and the epistemology lies within the interpretivist paradigm. An inductive research approach is followed and a case study is used as research strategy to conduct the research. The unit of analysis is the Operation Finance and Information Technology departments within the selected organisation, while selected employees (14) within the organisation form the unit of observation. A non-random, purposively selected sampling technique was used. Data were collected by means of semi-structured questionnaires through interviews. Data were analysed by summarising, categorising, and applying thematic analysis. The data analysis shows that audit functions (Operation Finance department, internal and external auditors) bring objectivity and assurance to the project in terms of financial reports, checks and balances, processes, structure, and internal controls. Getting people to cooperate however is a challenge for audit functionalities, and internal and external auditors can be a challenge during project implementation because their practical skills and computer-based knowledge to deal with huge volumes of data is extremely limited. It is highly recommended that the guideline presented in this research is followed, that engagement of audit functions with business processes is introduced and adopted by other role players involved in the project implementation process, and that audit functions should not be seen as a ‘must have’ but rather as support to improve the process. Ethical requirements as requested by CPUT are fulfilled.

This dissertation is two essays in business decision-making. The first essay is motivated by recent field evidence suggesting significant reliance on conventional techniques (e.g. NPV and DCF) without assessment of the decision profile - its degree of uncertainty, ambiguity and knowledge distribution. However, without knowing the decision profile, the chosen decision might not be appropriate given the decision situation. Therefore, essay 1 develops a multi-faceted conceptualization of the decision profile and provides a prescriptive model for choosing appraisal methods based on this profile. Specifically, it prescribes the limited use of conventional methods to low ambiguity and uncertainty situations and using decision trees, real options, scenario planning and case-based methods as the level of uncertainty increases. In high ambiguity situations, however, the only viable approaches are case-based methods which do not have perfect information assumption that conventional alternative methods do. Case-based methods have been supported theoretically in case-based decisions and case-based reasoning literature but lags in its use in business decision-making. Possible reasons for this include a lack of concrete applications and developments of major concepts such as its case memory, similarity and prediction functions. Therefore, essay 2 proposes a model of case-based decisions called similarity-based forecasting (SBF) and applies it to a high uncertainty and ambiguity situation -- namely forecasting movie success. In doing so, it outlines operational definitions of the memory, similarity and prediction functions and, based on data from the entertainment industry, provides empirical support for the hypothesis that case-based methods can be more accurate than regression forecasting; both SBF and combined SBF-regression models were able to predict movie gross revenues with 40% and 50% greater accuracy than regression respectively. This essay concludes with a discussion of some possible directions for future research including applications using data from other domains and settings, testing the boundary conditions for which the SBF approach should be applied, experiments using SBF under uncertainty and complexity manipulations, and 'time stamped' comparisons with predictions made using information markets (e.g. Hollywood Stock Exchange).

Alignment of information systems (IS) with business activities has been an important problem for practitioners for many years even though there has been considerable research in the area. A criticism of some past research into IS/business alignment is that it has ignored organisational complexity and context. This is partly due to the dominant paradigm in use within IS research. One result of this paradigm is that there are numerous prescriptions provided in the literature for improving alignment but little in the way of theory development that explains the behaviour of practitioners when confronted with the task of attaining alignment. To address these criticisms a grounded theory approach was adopted using a coding family that encouraged the discovery of systems of interaction between variables rather than assuming linear causality. Data was collected via three unstructured focus groups that limited the effect of prior reading of the literature, an important consideration when conducting a grounded theory study. These were followed by semi-structured individual interviews. The instruments for the latter were developed after the focus group interviews were analysed, so reducing the impact of a prior reading. Analysis of the focus group interviews found that the major concern of practitioners was aligning IS strategies to either business strategies documented in business plans or the business strategies in use. This is a similar result to earlier alignment research. As a result of analysis of the focus group interviews the research question stabilised. This research investigated how factors within an organisational setting impact the ability of senior IT managers to identify, then act upon, the business strategies in use. It confirmed many of the enablers and inhibitors to alignment identified in earlier research. However, it also identified two variables that are rarely given prominence in the literature: the mental models held by managers; and the motivation and measurement schemes applied to managers. It is believed that both these variables have a significant impact on the alignment of IS and business strategies. The theory developed here demonstrates that a system of variables will tend to encourage IT managers to either collaborate with their business peers, or retreat from the business and concentrate on providing a low cost reliable technical IT solution. In the former situation alignment of IT managers’ actions to those of their business peers is encouraged. In the latter situation there will be little alignment between business and IS strategies nor between the actions of business and IT managers. A feedback loop of actions by actors within the system tends to reinforce the situation making a change in response extremely problematic. This, then, helps explain the intractable nature of alignment that has been observed for many years.

This thesis examines the university timetable generation problem. It begins with a discussion on the conflicting terminology used and differentiates between the terms scheduling and timetabling. This discussion integrates with an overview of the problem itself both from practical and academic perspectives. This is followed by a summary of the apparently effective timetable solution generation algorithms. The literature is then examined in detail from that perspective. This literature review is then summarised in a form to highlight the use of these different solution algorithms. A classification schema is developed and the summary of the literature presented within the framework of this schema. Trends in the research literature result from this presentation and an extrapolation to future research trends are suggested. An information system based upon the need to support timetable production and maintenance is presented. Given the very practical outcomes expected of timetable research, the information system was designed to enable the whole range of administrative functions performed by teachers to be either directly supported or readily modified to prove such support. The implementation of this particular system is given and resulting timetables are presented and discussed. The system generated manual and automated timetables and these were produced by trailing a number of objective functions. It was noted that the determination of the optimal objective function is dominated by specific individual institutional criteria. It is suggested that this would make a more than significant project for future information systems research. From the literature it is noted that the timetable generation problem, as reported time and time again in the literature, has been solved. Such claims lead to a benchmark which is proposed to enable an initial comparison of the effectiveness of proposed solutions by different researchers. The thesis then presents a summary of the work that was carried out and offers direction for future research. It is noted that despite the fifty years of research conducted into this area there exists a significant number of research avenues still to be pursued.

Organisations have processes to manage their business activities, often referred to as business processes. In today’s competitive global economy, automation of processes with appropriate technology is advantageous. However, the paradox of processes automation is the continuous evolution and change that occurs in business processes. As the business processes evolve and change, the underpinning automated systems need to reflect those changes. Even after a decade of research in the areas of business process automation (BPA) and business process evolution management (BPEM), organisations still find it challenging to manage evolution of automated processes. Therefore, this thesis finds answers to the question of “How can business process evolutions be accurately and effectively reflected in already implemented web-based workflow systems?” In order to provide a holistic solution to the above research question, this research introduces a framework named paradigm of process automation – PoPA framework and discusses its role in managing process evolution. This framework embodies a business process at four levels as pragmatic, semantic, syntactic, and implementation. Each of these levels deals with a distinctive representation of a business process. For example, the pragmatic level represents the contextual artefact elements such as Acts, policies, organisational structures, rules, and guidelines; that define a process, and the syntactic level denotes the models created for the purposes of automation. When a change takes place in any one of the levels of the PoPA framework, it creates a propagating impact on elements in the above-mentioned four levels. This propagation of impact takes place due to constraints, associations, dependencies (CAD) among elements within and across the levels (intra and inter-level CAD). When analysing intra and inter-level CAD most correlations are found to be hierarchical; therefore, a relational database structure is appropriate to capture these hierarchical associations. However, operational processes at the semantic level have complex associations, which are not hierarchical. Therefore, this research proposes to use Kleene Algebra with Test (KAT) for representing CAD at the semantic level. Propagating impact does not exclusively depend on inter and intra-level CAD, but is also closely associated with the nature of evolution. Depending on the nature of evolution, the propagating impact can be categorised as direct, indirect, secondary, and non-cautionary (DISN) impact. These DISN impacts suggest the severity of the propagating impact. The core contribution of this research is the Process Evolution and Change Impact Analysis (PECIA) Model, which enables the management of process evolution accurately and effectively in automated systems. In this research, a process automation project named Online Courses Approval System (OCAS) is used as an exploratory case study. The practical utility of the PECIA Model is validated using evolution scenarios of OCAS and epistemic utility is analysed based on a study of the literature. Amidst a plethora of literature on BPA and BPEM, this research is significant due to the following theoretical contributions that facilitate in managing automated processes in tandem with organisational process evolution: ���� PECIA Model holistically captures inter and intra-level CAD of process elements facilitating the propagating impact analysis within and across the four levels of the PoPA framework. • A novel use of KAT to capture CAD among process elements cohesively and completely into linear expressions, in order to analyse the impact propagation. • An algorithm that analyses KAT expressions of a process, to locate DISN impacts so that evolutions can be carried out accurately and effectively. The future works that arise from this work are manifold. These may include improving the use of the PECIA Model as a corporate process knowledge repository, and exploring possible other uses of the PECIA Model and KAT based process expressions. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The central concern of this study is to identify the role of power and politics in systems implementation. The current literature on systems implementation is typically divided into two areas, process modelling and factor based studies. Process modelling classifies the implementation into a linear process, whereas factor based studies have argued that in order to ‘successfully’ implement a system, particular critical factors are required. This literature misses the complexities involved in systems implementation through the human factors and political nature of systems implementation and is simplistic in its nature and essentially de-contextualises the implementation process. Literature has investigated some aspects of human factors in systems implementation. However, it is believed that these studies have taken a simplistic view of power and politics. It is argued in this thesis that human factors in systems implementation are constantly changing and essentially operating in a dynamic relationship affecting the implementation process. The concept of power relations, as proposed by Foucault (1976, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1982), have been utilised in order to identify the dynamic nature of power and politics. Foucault (1978) argued that power is a dynamic set of relationships constantly changing from one point in time to the next. It is this recognition that is lacking from information systems. Furthermore, these power relations are created through the use of discourse. Discourse represents meaning and social relationships, forming both subjectivity and power relations. Discourses are also the practices of talk, text and argument that continuously form that which actors speak. A post-structuralist view of power as both an obvious and hidden concept has provided the researcher a lens through which the selection and implementation of an enterprise-wide learning management system can be observed. The framework aimed to identify the obvious process of system selection implementation, and then deconstruct that process to expose the hegemonic nature of policy, the reproduction of organisational culture, the emancipation within discourse, and the nature of resistance and power relations. A critical case study of the selection and implementation of an enterprise-wide learning management system at the University of Australia was presented providing an in-depth investigation of the implementation of an enterprise-wide learning management system, spanning five years. This critical case study was analysed using social dramas to distinguish between the front stage issues of power and the hidden discourses underpinning the front stage dramas. The enterprise-wide learning management system implemented in the University of Australia in 2003 is a system which enables academic staff to manage learners, the students, by keeping track of their progress and performance across all types of training activities. Through telling the story of the selection and implementation of an enterprise-wide learning management system at the University of Australia discourses emerged. The key findings from this study have indicated that the system selection and implementation works at two levels. The low level is the selection and implementation process, which operates for the period of the project. The high level is the arena of power and politics, which runs simultaneously to the selection and implementation process. Challenges for power are acted out in the front stage, or public forums between various actors. The social dramas, as they have been described here, are superfluous to the discourse underpinning the front stage. It is the discourse that remains the same throughout the system selection and implementation process, but it is through various social dramas that reflect those discourses. Furthermore, the enactment of policy legitimises power and establishes the discourse, limiting resistance. Additionally, this research has identified the role of the ‘State’ and its influence at the organisational level, which had been previously suggested in education literature (Ball, 1990).

This study examines the broad problem of the role of information in decisionmaking by tertiary education administrators. The purpose of the study is to investigate the information required by administrators for decisionmaking, to discover patterns of use, the sources most commonly used, and the effect of environment and context on the type and source of information. The method chosen to exemplify the research problem, a case study of one particular tertiary institution, allows for examination, in depth, of the flow of information and of information seeking behaviour in one unique organisation. It also affords the opportunity to apply the findings directly to the object of the study. At the time, the institution was experiencing a period of uncertainty and change which culminated in its becoming part of a new networked or federated university. Three groups of models from the literature guide the study. These relate typologies of information to decisionmaking; transpose information for decisionmaking into the higher education context; and relate behavioural and environmental factors to information. The basis of this case study is a series of semistructured interviews following an agenda based on the models chosen. Data was analysed by patternmatching and explanation-building. Two significant contextual factors are apparent: the first, the high degree of perceptible uncertainty in the institution's environment; and the second, the idiosyncrasies of the individual administrator. The case study approach was found to be appropriate for the unusual organisational circumstances existing at the time. Strategies for improvement in the effectiveness of information seeking for decisionmaking include recommendations for the institution and for its library. Suggestions for further research are also made.

Software specification by scenarios has grown with the popularity of object-oriented software engineering. Scenarios such as use cases provide a bridge from the informal descriptions gathered from user interviews toward the more formal software model. Yet, practitioners still request more explicit methodological guidance and more adequate tool support for authoring quality scenarios. Researchers have been seeking a means to overcome the limitations of use cases such as partialness and incompleteness. One of such research streams is an extension of scenarios with more formal representation schemes. This approach may reduce incompleteness of scenarios; however, applicability of the approach to practice remains open to discussion, considering that the current usage of formal scenario representations is very low. This research takes software reuse approach to assist scenario-building process. In the proposed approach, a software analyst defines an initial description of a scenario. An automated tool support then presents a set of similar use cases retrieved from a database of use cases. The analyst adapts a retrieved use case to the current purpose. This dissertation research is expected to have unique contributions to research and practice. The proposed automated scenario reuse provides a viable solution to guide scenario-authoring process without imposing an additional burden of adding formal annotations to system specifications on system analysts. By adopting a machinelearning algorithm based on relational structure matching, the scenario reuse places more focus on UML semantics, relational information among UML elements rather than syntactic attributes of scenarios or natural language descriptions. In addition, the proposed scenario reuse can be augmented with other approaches and design artifacts, depending on customized needs in a given context of problem domains. In terms of research methodology, this dissertation research takes four steps. First, I develop prototype software for the automated tool support. It can be incorporated into a CASE tool as an add-in program. Second, preliminary case studies are taken to evaluate the feasibility of the proposed approach. Third, expert opinions are collected regarding the effectiveness and efficiency of the tool support. Finally, a lab experiment and a free simulation experiment are conducted for more rigorous empirical validation.

Agile software development challenges the traditional way of software development and project management. In rapidly changing environments, changing requirements and tight schedule constraints require software developers to take a different approach toward the process of software development. However, beyond a few case studies, surveys and studies focused on specific practices such as pair programming, the effectiveness and applicability of agile methods have not been established adequately. The objective of my research is to improve the understanding of and gain insights into these issues. For this purpose, I develop a system dynamic simulation model that considers the complex interdependencies among the variety of practices used in agile development. The model is developed on the basis of an extensive review of the literature as well as quantitative and qualitative data collected from real projects in seven organizations. The development of the model was guided by dynamic hypotheses on customer involvement, refactoring and quality of design. The model was refined and validated using data from independent projects. The model helps in answering important questions on the impact of customer behavior, cost of making changes and economics of pair programming. Experimentation with the model suggests that the cost of change is not constant; instead, its value changes cyclically and increases towards the later phase of development. Also, the results of simulation show that with no pair programming, fewer tasks are delivered and it costs more to deliver a task when compared to development with pair programming. Further, customer behavior has a major impact on project performance. The quality of customer feedback is found to be very critical to the successful of an agile software development project. The primary contribution of this research is the simulation model of agile software development that can be used a tool to examine the impact of agile practices and management policies on critical project variables including project scope, schedule, and cost. This research provides a mechanism to study agile development as a dynamic system of practices rather than using a static view and in isolation. The results from this study are expected to be of significant interest to practitioners of agile methods by providing them a simulation environment to examine the impact of their practices, procedures and management policies.