Method Engeneering Technological Innovation - Essay Example

 Introduction It is now generally accepted, within the construction industry, that there is a relationship between a firm's efficiency or profitability and its ability to innovate. . Construction organisations need to determine their positions in terms of processes, services, products, technologies and markets. Since an organisation’s innovation strategies are constrained by their current position, and by specific opportunities open to them in the future based on their competencies, construction organisations will need to determine their technological trajectories or paths. This will involve due cognisance of strategic alternatives available, their attractiveness and opportunities and threats, which lie From an economic perspective there is a differentiation between product and process innovation. Product innovation is seen to focus on cost reduction by obtaining a greater volume of output for a given input. Process innovation, on the other hand, describes new knowledge, which allows the production of quality superior output from a given resource. There is also the issue of incremental and radical innovations. Similarly, from the perspective of the sources of organisational innovations, there are emergent, imposed and adapted/adopted innovations. Innovation also has a social and psychological dimension. There are also important issues to contend with such as: whether innovation is about the successful exploitation of an idea or the idea itself. innovations. The structural variables of centralisation, formalisation, complexity and stratification have been shown to have contrasting effects at the initiation and implementation stages of the innovation process (the so-called ‘innovation dilemma’). Low levels of centralisation and formalisation, and high level of complexity facilitate the initiation stage of the innovation process. The implementation stage is facilitated by high centralisation and formalisation and low complexity. The consensus view is that a high level of stratification inhibits innovation, because it leads to over preoccupation with status and insufficient freedom for creative thinking. It is therefore important to take a more multivariate approach to understanding organisational innovation. The integration of both the individual and organizational levels of analysis to achieve a synthesis between action and structure should be considered. Attempts to incorporate these diametrically opposed concepts have influenced developments in process theory. The process perspectives on innovation need to recognise the unpredictable and dynamic nature of innovation. It is therefore a complex process with cognitive, social and political dimensions that should be understood in particular organisational contexts. Literature Review Incremental versus “radical” method engineering Not all method development efforts are necessarily gradual or require small modifications to methods. In general, the literature on the development of business processes and on organizational learning distinguishes between radical and incremental approaches. For example, business process re-engineering (BPR, Hammer and Champy 1993) advocates a radical approach in terms of the rapidity and magnitude of a change, whereas total quality management (TQM, Flood 1993, Oakland 1993) relies on continuous small changes. Similarly, there is a wide-spread consensus on the distinction between incremental and radical models of learning (Miner and Mezias 1996). Generally speaking, the type of change required and the type of learning are related: carrying out a radical change necessitates that the organization is capable of radical learning (i.e. to implement and introduce a large change quickly). Conversely, continuous small changes to existing processes expect incremental learning. Both approaches can produce benefits for an organization, and both types have advantages and disadvantages. In this sense they provide alternative strategies depending on how often the change is made and how large the change is. These alternatives are also valid in method engineering. By “radical” method engineering we mean a priori method engineering approaches in which methods are constructed solely in the beginning of each ISD project. This type of change is also the one most studied in method engineering research . It can be considered radical because each ISD project and each ME case is handled separately. A method is expected to be introduced once and no reflective learning during the method use is incorporated into methods. As described above, incremental method engineering is based on smaller and more gradual changes. At the extreme end of the scale, method refinement can be continuous and concurrent with the change requests from the method use environment. As our motivation for the incremental approach showed, ISD environments exist where high levels of uncertainty and unavailability of method knowledge are typical and applicable for incremental principles. Areas of ISD where there are few methods available are, for example, the development of inter-organizational ISs (cf. Tolvanen and Lyytinen 1994), hypermedia systems (Isakowitz et al. 1995), and networked business processes. Second, the longer an ISD project takes the more an organization will garner experience and the more likely are method modifications. Moreover, longer projects are also often larger and technically more complex, necessitating approaches to combine methods. Similarly, in long-term ISD efforts the technologies used may change and these changes need to be considered. Successful method improvements are tied to an organization’s own experiences and to the level of maturity. Therefore, method engineering efforts relate to the maturity of ISD (Humprey 1988): organizations must have methods in use and an ISD process defined before any systematic experience gathering can be carried out. Also, method refinement efforts expect that methods are specified - otherwise their improvement is difficult (Jarke et al. 1994, Odell 1996). This means that an organization using incremental method engineering principles must be at least at the defined level according to the SEI maturity levels. In fact, the higher levels of maturity can be partly achieved by using incremental method engineering principles, in which methods are managed and optimized for the current situation. With respect to maturity, the organization’s current method situation reflects the mode of method engineering. Incremental method engineering is not necessarily an optimal strategy for initiating radical changes in ISD, e.g. adopting methods to be used for the first time, or moving from structured methods to object-oriented methods. Fourth, incremental method engineering principles are more applicable for organizations which can invest in method knowledge. Quite often this is possible only when the method knowledge can be focused on specific areas. These types of situations are typical in ISD organizations which focus on longitudinal projects and on developing a limited number or type of applications. In contrast, consulting houses which provide services to other organizations find their choice of methods largely determined by customers’ requirements. As a result, method requirements can change from one customer to another and accumulated knowledge can not be utilized as effectively. Hence, in these cases the method selection and use can usefully be radical. Finally and perhaps most importantly, one reason for following either of the method engineering approaches comes from their projected costs and benefits: how to change the method without discarding expensive investments in technology and methods. With respect to the technology investments, metaCASE tools are seen as offering one solution (Seppänen et al. 1996), as they decrease the costs and resources needed to manage method knowledge, and also provide a platform for cost-effectively building new CASE tools for a changed method, or different versions of methods. Critical analysis Availability of method engineering criteria It is difficult, if not impossible, to identify beforehand all relevant criteria for method construction. For example, the method engineering criteria of van Slooten and Hodes (1996) - resistance of end-users, aspects of the system to be analyzed, and management commitment - can hardly be known completely beforehand. In fact, van Slooten and Hodes apply the contingency framework in an a posteriori manner to analyze whether the criteria proposed in their framework have affected past projects and thus could be relevant to method engineering. How they can be applied to construct methods is not discussed. In contrast to the current method engineering view, cases of local method development (Jaaksi 1997, Tollow 1996) show that the characteristics and problems to be solved with methods were not known beforehand because of uncertainty about the problems. As a result, we claim that the requirement for complete prior knowledge is both idealistic and unrealistic. Consequently, in situations of uncertainty and limited information, the incremental principles focus on improving method applicability through promoting small changes to methods while an organization obtains experiences and learns both about the method and about the IS domain. Although this option is partly dictated by practical needs, it also allows the creation of new knowledge based on experience, regarding both the method and the method engineering criteria. This is important, because current method engineering approaches rely on the existing body of information about both methods and method engineering criteria. Therefore, method engineering must be viewed as a learning process in which experience of successful (or unsuccessful) ISD efforts needs to be incorporated into future method engineering efforts: every use situation of methods should evaluate and analyze methods with a view to improving them. In fact, keeping the situational dependency of method use in mind, the most reliable information about method applicability can be obtained from an organization’s own experiences. This experience-based learning is generally an incremental process (Miner and Mezias 1996), and a main argument in favor of incremental method engineering Evolving information system development environment A method use environment is hardly stable because situations can change even during a short ISD effort. These changes also affect the applicability of methods, leaving two options for method engineers: either continue the use of the method in its current state, or modify it to support the new situation. The former option is chosen at the cost of applicability and the latter at the cost of making a new version of the method and transforming models which have already been made. This Changes in ISD situations are common, and can be seen also in the documented ME cases (e.g. Cronholm and Goldkuhl 1994, Nissen et al. 1996, Jaaksi 1997). These show that once methods have been adapted to tools, requirements for maintaining and modifying the methods for new situations appear immediately. In fact, some of the requirements occur already during tool adaptation, or after a pilot use. As a result of this evolution, methods must be refined continuously Application of concept In relation to availability, there are not many detailed metamodels available, nor readily applicable frameworks of method engineering criteria which are “filled” with known situational characteristics and related to metamodels. Most of the metamodels - which come with metaCASE tools, repositories, - focus on a limited number of methods and/or on only specific types of methods (e.g. object-oriented methods). Moreover, the metamodels described in books are not usually specified unambiguously and are at a relatively coarse granularity, at least when compared with the detailed metamodels required to model operational techniques. As a result, the pool of methods specified with metamodels for comparison and selection is small. The combination of metamodels and method engineering criteria into a larger baseline is difficult: different metamodeling languages focus on different types of method knowledge at different levels of detail and are not usually related to detailed method knowledge. Even assuming that a large body of metamodels and related method engineering criteria were available, the maintenance of this knowledge would be a huge or even unrealistic task. This fact also partly explains why contingency frameworks operate with method knowledge at a general level. Summary No principles or systematic guidelines for method engineering during and after method use have been proposed. To overcome this narrow view we analyzed the possibilities for iterations in the method engineering process. These possibilities were called method refinement scenarios. Based on this analysis we focused on specific scenarios which originate from method use experiences and lead to modifications in method knowledge or method-tool companionship. Hence, our interest is concerned with the deep structure of method knowledge: modifications of the conceptual structure, and its relation to notations.An incremental approach can be distinguished from other method engineering principles by identifying when and how method knowledge is constructed. In the radical mode, method engineering is viewed largely as an a priori method construction process, whereas in the incremental mode experiences of method use are collected and analyzed for the purpose of method refinements. Our focus is on this latter view. We claim that the applicability of the method can not be achieved based on a priori construction, but instead need to be investigated while using the method. This allows us to evaluate not only the applicability of a priori constructed methods, but also the relevance of the criteria that drive method construction. The method modifications can also occur while selecting or constructing the method, but we do not consider them because they are discussed in available method engineering approaches (cf. Punter and Lemmen 1996, van Slooten and Hodes 1996). REFERENECES 1.( Humprey 1988)incremental strategies and their impact: 1. (BPR, Hammer and Champy 1993) BUSINESS PROCESS RE-ENGINEERING AND STRETEGIES 2. (Miner and Mezias 1996). ROLE OF INCREMETAL MODELS 3. (cf. Tolvanen and Lyytinen 1994), INCREMENTAL PRINCIPLES 4. (Jarke et al. 1994, Odell 1996). INCREMENTAL STRATEGIES AND IMPROVEMENT IN THE ORGANIZATION 5. (Seppänen et al. 1996), TECHNOLOGY AND INCREMENTAL STRATEGIES 6. van Slooten and Hodes (1996) METHOD ENGINEERING 7. (Jaaksi 1997, Tollow 1996), LOCAL METHOD DEVELOPMENT AND METHOD ENGINEERING 8. (Miner and Mezias 1996), EVOLVING OF INCREMENTAL PROCESS 9. (e.g. Cronholm and Goldkuhl 1994, Nissen et al. 1996, Jaaksi 1997), Capitalising on Knowledge: From e-business to K-business. Oxford, Butterworth-Heinemann 10.( Humprey 1988)incremental strategies and their impact: 11 (cf. Punter and Lemmen 1996, van Slooten and Hodes 1996). METHODS OF INCREMENTAL STRATEGIES. Read More