A Dynamic Business Object Architecture for Bridging the Communication Gap between Business Management and IT Professionals

Abstract

Business organisations are constantly facing competition. There is agrowing awareness amongst many organisations that a strategic approachhas to be adopted to retain competitiveness. Nowadays, informationtechnology (IT) underpins the implementation of most businessstrategies. However, IT solutions frequently fair to deliver businessbenefits. One of the main causes of failure is the communication gapthat exists between the business management and IT professionals. Whilstthis program continues to be the subject of extensive inter-disciplinaryresearch, a reliable, generally applicable, low cost, low risk and anyeasy to implement solution, is yet to be found.This paper seeks to exploit the potential contribution how some new andemerging technologies may offer to bridging, or at least reducing, thisgap. A novel conceptual model, called Dynamic Business ObjectArchitecture (DBOA), has been developed starting from the well know andalready established concept of Strategic Management Planning(SMP). TheSMP implementation is based on the combination of Object-Orientation(OO), Business Objects (BOs), Business Object Architecture (BOA) andDynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM). The DBOB approach was thenevaluated through an extensive case study carried out in the creditinsurance sector.The principal findings of the case study clearly demonstrated thecapability of DBOA to reduce the communication gap significantly byensuring the IT professionals retain their business focus throughout thedevelopment lifecycle. In addition, the DBOA minimised the risk ofomitting any of the essential stages throughout the implementationprocess. Moreover, DBOA provided a review mechanism for `continuousimprovement' of business performance, thus further enhancing thereliability of this approach. The case study provided an earlyindication that DBOA may also be generally applicable as itsimplementation required only a few relatively minor sector specificmodifications. This particular finding supports the claim that DBOA canbe expected to provide a low cost and an easy to implement solution tothe communication gap problem.