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Problem frames approach to strategic requirements for web services

Web Services can be seen from two views ? one that it is a purely technological advance and the other that it is a capability that an organisation can deploy to meet a business objective. Much has been said about the first view but not much has been said about the second view. The underlying premise of this research is that in the context of an ever-increasing competitive environment, an organisation needs to take into account these important aspects: What is the business strategy of the organisation, which adopts Web Services? Does the IT align with the business strategy of the organisation? The aim of this research is to capture and describe business-IT problems in the context of strategic requirements and Web Services. As a means to align a Web Services initiative with business strategy, we propose a Requirements Engineering framework to capture the business objectives of an organisation from strategy to implementation. The methodology that we propose provides a roadmap from business strategy, to the strategic objectives to implementation in four dimensions: innovation, customer relationship management, infrastructure management and financials. The proposed framework extends the e-Business Modelling Ontology (eBMO) of Pigneur and Osterwalder by applying Bleistein et al?s Progression of Problems to understand the strategic objectives and the business context. We have presented 2 examples as proof of concept. We have experimented with our methodology on Amazon.com and Dell.com ?cases developed from the literature? as these organisations are aggressively pursuing Web Services as a part of their IT and business strategy. We use the Problem Frames approach to capture the business objectives and the problem context of an organisation deploying Web Services and to create a strategic alignment between the business strategy and the information technology. The approach presented in this thesis is used to understand Amazon and Dell?s strategy and strategic objectives. It was possible to capture strategic objectives and the strategic context through combination of the eBMO and Progression of Problems. It was also possible to trace this to Web Services requirement description through application of Problem Frames. The framework combines with Bleistein et al?s Progression of Problems at the strategic level and applies Problem Frames at the operational level. It takes the problem-oriented view of the whole process, but does not apply Problem Frames throughout, at least not in their original formulation by Jackson.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/257261
Date January 2006
CreatorsJha, Anju, Computer Science & Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, UNSW
Source SetsAustraliasian Digital Theses Program
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Rightshttp://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright, http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright

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