Organisations use Enterprise Service Busses (ESBs) to support enterprise application integration.... more Organisations use Enterprise Service Busses (ESBs) to support enterprise application integration. For a variety of reasons – mergers and acquisitions, geographically distributed enterprise units, distributed governance, scalability – enterprises sometimes need to acquire multiple, disparate ESBs and enable the applications that each one supports to interoperate. However, currently, no standard architecture exists for integrating multiple, disparate ESBs. To begin to address this problem, four candidate disparate ESB integration patterns – directly connected, web services, homogeneous messaging middleware, and message bridge – were identified from the enterprise application integration literature and tested for their effectiveness in integrating multiple, disparate ESBs. Each pattern was applied in two different scenarios: loan broker request, and inter-divisional messaging. In each scenario a number of enterprise applications were integrated using three disparate ESBs: Oracle Servic...
In this paper, the opening of a new phase in our project called True Stories is discussed. We are... more In this paper, the opening of a new phase in our project called True Stories is discussed. We are investigating the uses community groups might make of hypermedia technology in telling their own story. We describe where we have got to so far, and some of the theoretical background, and try to locate what we are doing in relation to the participatory design tradition. As we now move towards working with groups whose stories may be contested, contentious, or painful, we need some further development of our theoretical and methodological base. Using ideas and examples from several authors, we open up a discussion about how plurality, dissent and moral space can be preserved. Following Landow in observing that hypertext provides a natural medium for collage, we note that community stories have features which make collage an appropriate representational form for them. We finally suggest a model of dialogue derived from Freire as an appropriate practical vehicle for running projects attem...
In Software Engineering and Information Systems, increasing attention has been focused lately upo... more In Software Engineering and Information Systems, increasing attention has been focused lately upon modelling organizational processes -as a starting point for developing computer-based systems to support (or control) such processes. A number of process modelling methods are available, but it is not yet clear what the relative merits of these are, nor whether they might be more or less useful in particular contexts. We have applied two well-known process modelling techniques, Role Activity Diagramming and UML Activity Diagramming, to a particular process in our own organization, that of managing the registration of research students. We developed an RAD first and then translated it into a UML AD, to compare the two techniques and check the feasibility of such translation. We conclude that translation from RAD to UML AD is likely to be feasible in particular cases, but will rely on the ability of the translators to establish and maintain the equivalence between the two (i.e. the equiv...
Extracting business process models from stakeholders in large organizations is a very difficult, ... more Extracting business process models from stakeholders in large organizations is a very difficult, if not impossible, task. Many obstacles such as tacit knowledge, inaccurate descriptions of processes and miscommunication prevent process engineers from ascertaining what the business processes actually are. Data sources that represent the communications can be a good candidate for facilitating the identification of the business processes. The proposed approach in this research is to find business process related emails, identify email message threads, and finally, tag them using conversation for action theory. The outcome of this method will be process fragment enactment models that can help process engineers both to validate their findings about the business processes, and also to understand better the vague and unclear parts of the processes.
I begin with a summary of the theory of autopoiesis, which is a condensed version of an account i... more I begin with a summary of the theory of autopoiesis, which is a condensed version of an account in an earlier paper (Beeson, 2001). That paper also presents an earlier version of part of the argument in the current chapter.
Research in software process modelling has been flourishing in the last two decades. The emphasis... more Research in software process modelling has been flourishing in the last two decades. The emphasis of the traditional software process modelling approaches was mainly on process automation, process reuse and prediction of process completion. More recent approaches take into account of the business requirements and the influence on the software processes. Most of the existing work only focuses on the development of individual projects. In this paper, we look very briefly at the different developments in software process modelling. Problems associated with the current approaches are identified. Arguments for considering multiple software processes in the business context are presented.
This paper reports some research into the design and implementation processes associated with the... more This paper reports some research into the design and implementation processes associated with the introduction of the UK National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS) into the Avon and Somerset Constabulary. The complexity of the system specification and the organisational setting gave rise to a range of expectations of the system and conflicting agendas for its use. These issues are explored through a comprehensive discussion of the research process. The research process itself is identified as a vehicle for the exploration of participative techniques which can be used to ameliorate the dissonance which arises from these conflicting expectations. The capacity of researchers to facilitate what Elden and Levin (1991) call “cogenerative dialogue” is explored in the context of the case study. The paper sets out to demonstrate the complementarity of existing methods, tools and techniques, thereby promoting their synthesis. We argue that bridge building is more important in the information systems context than grand theorising. The local outcomes and national implications of the research to date are reported and discussed in the paper
Organisations use Enterprise Service Busses (ESBs) to support enterprise application integration.... more Organisations use Enterprise Service Busses (ESBs) to support enterprise application integration. For a variety of reasons – mergers and acquisitions, geographically distributed enterprise units, distributed governance, scalability – enterprises sometimes need to acquire multiple, disparate ESBs and enable the applications that each one supports to interoperate. However, currently, no standard architecture exists for integrating multiple, disparate ESBs. To begin to address this problem, four candidate disparate ESB integration patterns – directly connected, web services, homogeneous messaging middleware, and message bridge – were identified from the enterprise application integration literature and tested for their effectiveness in integrating multiple, disparate ESBs. Each pattern was applied in two different scenarios: loan broker request, and inter-divisional messaging. In each scenario a number of enterprise applications were integrated using three disparate ESBs: Oracle Servic...
In this paper, the opening of a new phase in our project called True Stories is discussed. We are... more In this paper, the opening of a new phase in our project called True Stories is discussed. We are investigating the uses community groups might make of hypermedia technology in telling their own story. We describe where we have got to so far, and some of the theoretical background, and try to locate what we are doing in relation to the participatory design tradition. As we now move towards working with groups whose stories may be contested, contentious, or painful, we need some further development of our theoretical and methodological base. Using ideas and examples from several authors, we open up a discussion about how plurality, dissent and moral space can be preserved. Following Landow in observing that hypertext provides a natural medium for collage, we note that community stories have features which make collage an appropriate representational form for them. We finally suggest a model of dialogue derived from Freire as an appropriate practical vehicle for running projects attem...
In Software Engineering and Information Systems, increasing attention has been focused lately upo... more In Software Engineering and Information Systems, increasing attention has been focused lately upon modelling organizational processes -as a starting point for developing computer-based systems to support (or control) such processes. A number of process modelling methods are available, but it is not yet clear what the relative merits of these are, nor whether they might be more or less useful in particular contexts. We have applied two well-known process modelling techniques, Role Activity Diagramming and UML Activity Diagramming, to a particular process in our own organization, that of managing the registration of research students. We developed an RAD first and then translated it into a UML AD, to compare the two techniques and check the feasibility of such translation. We conclude that translation from RAD to UML AD is likely to be feasible in particular cases, but will rely on the ability of the translators to establish and maintain the equivalence between the two (i.e. the equiv...
Extracting business process models from stakeholders in large organizations is a very difficult, ... more Extracting business process models from stakeholders in large organizations is a very difficult, if not impossible, task. Many obstacles such as tacit knowledge, inaccurate descriptions of processes and miscommunication prevent process engineers from ascertaining what the business processes actually are. Data sources that represent the communications can be a good candidate for facilitating the identification of the business processes. The proposed approach in this research is to find business process related emails, identify email message threads, and finally, tag them using conversation for action theory. The outcome of this method will be process fragment enactment models that can help process engineers both to validate their findings about the business processes, and also to understand better the vague and unclear parts of the processes.
I begin with a summary of the theory of autopoiesis, which is a condensed version of an account i... more I begin with a summary of the theory of autopoiesis, which is a condensed version of an account in an earlier paper (Beeson, 2001). That paper also presents an earlier version of part of the argument in the current chapter.
Research in software process modelling has been flourishing in the last two decades. The emphasis... more Research in software process modelling has been flourishing in the last two decades. The emphasis of the traditional software process modelling approaches was mainly on process automation, process reuse and prediction of process completion. More recent approaches take into account of the business requirements and the influence on the software processes. Most of the existing work only focuses on the development of individual projects. In this paper, we look very briefly at the different developments in software process modelling. Problems associated with the current approaches are identified. Arguments for considering multiple software processes in the business context are presented.
This paper reports some research into the design and implementation processes associated with the... more This paper reports some research into the design and implementation processes associated with the introduction of the UK National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS) into the Avon and Somerset Constabulary. The complexity of the system specification and the organisational setting gave rise to a range of expectations of the system and conflicting agendas for its use. These issues are explored through a comprehensive discussion of the research process. The research process itself is identified as a vehicle for the exploration of participative techniques which can be used to ameliorate the dissonance which arises from these conflicting expectations. The capacity of researchers to facilitate what Elden and Levin (1991) call “cogenerative dialogue” is explored in the context of the case study. The paper sets out to demonstrate the complementarity of existing methods, tools and techniques, thereby promoting their synthesis. We argue that bridge building is more important in the information systems context than grand theorising. The local outcomes and national implications of the research to date are reported and discussed in the paper
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Papers by Ian Beeson