Data warehousing (DW)/ Business intelligence (BI) is continually being implemented across many in... more Data warehousing (DW)/ Business intelligence (BI) is continually being implemented across many industries; however, universities in South Africa face a variety of challenges in training the next generation of DW/BI workers. The complexity of the situation arises from the different goals of the involved and affected stakeholders. The problem addressed by this study is the difficulty traditional universities experience to provide the DW/BI industry with graduates that are able to contribute to the organisation without substantial further training. A systems approach is recommended and applied to determine how, in this changing environment of DW/BI education practice and with different stakeholders’ perspectives, we can improve our understanding of it. Two systems methodologies are chosen as instruments to be used in the research problem. A research paradigm is chosen; the process of how to develop guidelines is also presented to bring clarity on what is a guideline is, and how it is u...
The soft systems methodology was developed by Peter Checkland over an extended period of time to ... more The soft systems methodology was developed by Peter Checkland over an extended period of time to assist organisational improvements. It provides tools to assist different stakeholders to articulate their perspectives on the best action to be taken in problem environments. It is grounded in the ideas of soft systems thinking, where systems are viewed as conceptual models to make sense of a messy real world environment. The original focus of soft systems methodology is organisational use rather than academic use. In this paper we demonstrate how the soft systems methodology can be used to guide and analyse interpretive interviews with participants in an academic research project in the context of interpretive research methodology. We reflect on the hermeneutic nature of interpretive qualitative data collection and analysis and then we show that an activity diagram as used in the soft systems methodology, is a valid data analysis technique in terms of the epistemological context of int...
Data warehousing (DW)/ Business intelligence (BI) is continually being implemented across many in... more Data warehousing (DW)/ Business intelligence (BI) is continually being implemented across many industries; however, universities in South Africa face a variety of challenges in training the next generation of DW/BI workers. The complexity of the situation arises from the different goals of the involved and affected stakeholders. The problem addressed by this study is the difficulty traditional universities experience to provide the DW/BI industry with graduates that are able to contribute to the organisation without substantial further training. A systems approach is recommended and applied to determine how, in this changing environment of DW/BI education practice and with different stakeholders’ perspectives, we can improve our understanding of it. Two systems methodologies are chosen as instruments to be used in the research problem. A research paradigm is chosen; the process of how to develop guidelines is also presented to bring clarity on what is a guideline is, and how it is u...
The soft systems methodology was developed by Peter Checkland over an extended period of time to ... more The soft systems methodology was developed by Peter Checkland over an extended period of time to assist organisational improvements. It provides tools to assist different stakeholders to articulate their perspectives on the best action to be taken in problem environments. It is grounded in the ideas of soft systems thinking, where systems are viewed as conceptual models to make sense of a messy real world environment. The original focus of soft systems methodology is organisational use rather than academic use. In this paper we demonstrate how the soft systems methodology can be used to guide and analyse interpretive interviews with participants in an academic research project in the context of interpretive research methodology. We reflect on the hermeneutic nature of interpretive qualitative data collection and analysis and then we show that an activity diagram as used in the soft systems methodology, is a valid data analysis technique in terms of the epistemological context of int...
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Papers by Theo Mahalepa