designing for changing work and business practices

1
designing for changing work and business
practices

• Yvonne Dittrich, Olle Lindeberg
• Blekinge Institute of Technology
• Department for Software Engineering and Computer
  Science

2
Use Oriented Design and Development of Software

• existing since 1999
• Dr. Yvonne Dittrich, Jeanette Eriksson, Christina
  Hansson, Olle Lindeberg, Kari Rönkö
• we are today involved in the following projects
• Blekinge Engineering Software Qualities
• Use orientation in the development of mobile
  applications
• Flexibility and use orientation
• Design of IT in Use Supportive Technologies for
  Public Servicesprojectleader Dr. Sara Eriksén,
  IAM

3
Experiences with Tailorability

• own research
• Design in use of database applicationsDevelopment
  of a flexible back-office support system for
  telecommunication provider. Will be subject of
  the presentation.
• Design of IT in Use Supportive Technologies for
  Public ServicesNeed for ongoing Design in Use.
  Tailoring practices. Flexibilisation of
  development processe. (together with Sara
  Eriksén)
• Design of a flexible architecture for Action
  BlocksUsing XML to adjust behavior of
  ubiquetouos computing systems. Master Thesis in
  Co-operation with the Interactive Institute in
  Malmoe (Thomas Binder).
• and other research in the department
• The Billing Gateway using domain specific
  languages to tailor large telecommunication
  systems (Lars Lundberg, BIT)

4
the projectDesign in Use of Database
Applications

• participants a telecommunication provider, a
  small software developer and the university
• case a business application to administrate
  contracts and compute payments based on the
  contracts and triggered by certain events
• context rapidly changing business practices
  require a flexible adaptable system
• tools a flexible meta-modelling database system
  allowing to manipulate the data model during
  operation

5
flexibility light

• a good design changes are easily done
• some meta techniques
• sparsely populated database tables
• rule based combination and prioritisation between
  different payments triggered by the same event
• parts of the program controlled by meta tables
• feed back to be able to test the adaptation
• tailoring interface for the system administrator

6
Relation between context and techniques

• Easy to change but for whom? when? how?
• Adaptable for
• different workplaces
• different persons
• future change
• Our case study was about
• special purpose software for one workplace
• adaptable for future change.