Systems Engineering for Business Process Change: New Directions

Systems Engineering for Business Process Change: New Directions is a collection of papers resulting from an EPSRC managed research programme set up to investigate the relationships between Legacy IT Systems and Business Processes. The papers contained in this volume report the results from the projects funded by the programme, which ran between 1997 and 2001. An earlier volume, published in 2000, reported interim results. Bringing together researchers from diverse backgrounds in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering and Business Schools, this book explores the problems experienced by IT-dependent businesses that have to implement changing business processes in the context of their investment in legacy systems. The book presents some of the solutions investigated through the collaborations set up within the research programme. Whether you are a researcher interested in the ideas that were generated by the research programme, or a user trying to understand the nature of the problems and their solutions, you cannot fail to be inspired by the writings contained in this volume. TOC:Asset Mapping - Developing Inter-enterprise Solutions from Legacy Components.- Reasoning about Systems and their Properties.- An Abstract Architecture for Dependable and Flexible Distributed Systems.- CONVERSE: A Family-oriented Software Development Process for Engine Controllers.- Application of an Agent Software Architecture for the SEBPC CARD Project.- Cheating Death (Better Software Evolution).- Initial Recommendations for Improving Maintenance Strategy.- Theory and Practice of Enhancing a Legacy Software System.- A Unified Mechanism for Information Systems Definition in Action.- Evaluating Information Technology: Lessons from Integrating Business Process Simulation with Computer Network Simulation.- Decision Technologies for New Bid Pricing Processes in Distribution Industries.- A Search Based Automated Test-Data Generation Framework for Safety-Critical Systems.- An Evolutionary Systems Model.- More Legacy-System Patterns.- The ERP Systems Development Approach to Achieving an Adaptive Enterprise: The Impact of Enterprise Process Modelling Tools.- Co-Evolution of Diverse Elements Interacting Within a Social Ecosystem.- Business and IT Perspectives on AMORE: a Methodology using Object-Orientation in Re-engineering Enterprises.- Co-ordination Adaptors: The Evolution of Component Based Distributed Systems.- Global Perspectives on Legacy Systems.- Remembrance of Designs Past: Legacy Data, Organisational Memory and Distributed Design.- Intelligent Software Support for Business Process Change.- Modelling Collaboration in Loosely Coupled Inter-organisational Relationships.- RICES: Reasoning about Information Consistency across Enterprise Solutions.