Cooperative information systems consist of existing legacy systems integrated in terms of a generic architecture which supports data integration and coordination among the integrated components. This paper presents a proposal for a generic integration architecture named CoopWARE. The architecture is presented in terms of the mechanisms it provides for data integration, and coordination. Data integration is supported by an information repository with an extensible schema, while coordination is facilitated by a rule set and an eventdriven rule execution mechanism. In addition, the paper describes implementation and application experiences for the architecture in the context of a 3-year software engineering project. keywords: cooperative information systems 1 Introduction Traditionally, information systems have been defined as software systems consisting of databases, application programs and user interfaces. However, current trends in business organizations point to a paradigm shift in...

this article we seek to provide substantive answers to these questions based on empirical evidence collected from more than 100 BPR project participants. This is accomplished by examining the relationships between characteristics of the reengineering project (referred to as "project profile") and implementation success. Specifically, two aspects of the project profile will be examined: radicalness of the project and the strength of effort spent on the various stages of the project (referred to as "stage-efforts"). As shown in Figure 1, the proposed research model relates the two independent variables regarding project profile to reengineering implementation success in order to answer these important questions: . Are reengineering projects aimed at more radical change resulting in higher implementation success? . If limited attention and resources must be allocated among the different stages of a reengineering project, which stage (or stages) should receive more emphasis in order to achieve higher implementation success? Profiling Successful Reengineering Projects The most successful reengineering projects direct attention to social design and process transformation rather than analyzing existing procedures. James T.C. Teng, Seung Ryul Jeong, and Varun Grover COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM June 1998/Vol. 41, No. 6 97 Measurement of Research Variables To measure the degree of radicalness of a reengineering project, we adopt the multidimensional view commonly ascribed to by BPR practitioners and researchers. Hammer and Champy [7], for instance, presented this idea in the form of a "reengineering wheel" that includes changes in jobs, structures, management and measurement systems, and values and beliefs. The set of field case studies reported by Hall, Rosenthal, and Wad...

Process modeling becomes more and more an important task not only for the purpose of software engineering, but also for many other purposes besides the development of software. Therefore it is necessary to evaluate the quality of process models from different viewpoints. This is even more important as the increasing number of different end users, different purposes and the availability of different modeling techniques and modeling tools leads to a higher complexity of information models. In this paper the Guidelines of Modeling (GoM), a framework to structure factors for the evaluation of process models, is presented. Exemplary, Guidelines of Modeling for workflow management and simulation are presented. Moreover, six general techniques for adjusting models to the perspectives of different types of user and purposes will be explained.

Information systems technology, computer-supported cooperative work practice, and organizational modeling and planning theories have evolved with only accidental contact to each other. Cooperative information systems is a relatively young research area which tries to systematically investigate the synergies between these research fields, driven by the observation that change management is the central issue facing all three areas today and that all three fields have indeed developed rather similar strategies to cope with change. In this paper, we therefore propose a framework which views cooperative information systems as composed from three interrelated facets, viz. the system facet, the group collaboration facet, and the organizational facet. We present an overview of these facets, emphasizing strategies they have developed over the past few years to accommodate change. We also discuss the propagation of change across the facets, and sketch a basic software architecture intended to support the rapid construction and evolution of cooperative information systems on top of existing organizational and technical legacy. 1.

Many types of models have been proposed for supporting organizational work. In this paper, we consider models that are used for supporting the redesign of organizational work. These models are used to help discover opportunities for improvements in organizations, introducing information technologies where appropriate. To support the redesign of organizational work, models are needed for describing work configurations, and for identifying issues, exploring alternatives, and evaluating them. Several approaches are presented and compared. The i* framework -- consisting of the Strategic Dependency and Strategic Rationale models -- is discussed in some detail, as it is expressly designed for modelling and redesigning organizational work. We argue that models which view organizational participants as intentional actors with motivations and intents, and abilities and commitments, are needed to provide richer representations of organizational work to support its effective redesign. The redes...

Systems development methodologies have evolved from technical approaches through to a people/organisational focus and more recently an increased emphasis on Business Process Reengineering (BPR) has been witnessed. This evolution reflects both the increasing maturity of information technology and also the business outlook of firms seeking to use IT for competitive advantage. In this paper we argue that system development is now entering a new phase of maturity with the advent of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software packages. ERP systems are integrated, enterprise wide systems which automate core corporate activities such as manufacturing, human resource, finance and supply chain management. From case study research, it is shown that ERP implementations have different types of problems compared with traditional software development methods. These centre on the alignment of business processes with the standard software package and the project management of the implementation process. It is argued that ERP is a departure from traditional approaches to system development. It therefore requires a different approach that places less emphasis on the technical aspects of software development and instead seeks to balance the business process design, software configuration and project management aspects of IT implementation with the overall strategy and structure of the firm. Future research opportunities are outlined. 1.

Agile manufacturing, fast-response micromarketing, and the rise of the virtual organization have led managers to focus on cross-functional business processes that link various divisions and organizations. These processes may be realized as one or more workflows, each of which is an instantiation of a process under certain conditions. Because an ability to adapt processes to workflow conditions is essential for organizational responsiveness, identifying and analyzing significant workflows is an important activity for managers, organization designers, and information systems specialists. A variety of software systems have been developed to aid in the structuring and implementation of workflow systems, but they are mostly visualization tools with few analytical capabilities. For example, they do not allow their users to easily determine which information elements are needed to compute other information elements, whether certain tasks depend on other tasks, and how resource availability affects information and tasks. Analyses of this type can be performed by inspection, but this gives rise to the possibility of error, especially in large systems. In this paper, we show how a mathematical construct called a metagraph can be used to represent workflows, so that such questions can be addressed through formal operations, leading to more effective design of organizational processes.

We present a formal framework for enterprise and business process modeling. The concepts of our framework (objectives and goals, roles and actors, actions and processes, responsibilities and constraints) allow business analysts to capture enterprise knowledge in a way that is both intuitive and mathematically formal. We also outline the basic steps of a methodology that allows business analysts to produce detailed, formal specifications of business processes from high-level enterprise objectives. The use of a formal language permits us to verify that the specifications possess certain correctness properties, namely that the responsibilities assigned to roles are fulfilled, and that constraints are maintained as a result of process execution.

Research at the University of Texas at Austin for financial support. Prabhudev Konana

Workflow management systems have attracted a great deal of attention due to their ability to integrate heterogeneous, distributed applications into coherent business processing environments. In spite of their limitations, existing products are enjoying considerable success since they are the first practical implementation of functionality and concepts studied for many years. The goals may have changed from office automation and computer supported cooperative work to business processes and re-engineering, but the basic ideas and concepts have remained the same. It would be a mistake, however, not to try to see beyond current systems and applications. In today's computer environments, the trend towards using many small computers instead of a few big ones has revived the old dream of distributed computing. But there is a significant lack of tools for implementing, operating and maintaining such systems. Most existing solutions still belong to the mainframe world and are only slowly making...