Reflections on WISDM:Web IS Development methods

12.3 Web IS Development methods

The methods used in the development of the GDS are presented using the four quadrants of the methods matrix in figure 12.1.

12.3.1 Organizational analysis

SSM is particularly relevant in situations characterized by complexity and pluralism of stakeholder interests. The GDS project was perceived by the client organization to be simple/unitary. In organizational terms the project was perceived to be 'simple' – it was an e-commerce bolt-on to existing operations (i.e., another channel for marketing and sales). Stakeholder interests were unitary, i.e., there was agreement on both the ends – success would be measured chiefly by the ability to generate revenue – and the means. Given this reading of the situation, the explicit introduction of SSM would not have been perceived as meaningful in this context. However, some form of organizational analysis was needed. For an e-commerce project an external orientation is essential, since the aim is to sell products and services to customers. The organizational analysis consisted of building an e-commerce strategy for Zenith  and conducting a market survey. The e-commerce survey was concerned with aligning the development project with Zenith's wider business strategy in the context of industry forces. The market survey focused on customers and included a postal and telephone survey to determine attitudes to the Internet, e-commerce (particularly making online payments), and to find out their research information requirements. Organizational analysis and value creation were tackled through formulating an e-business strategy, as described in chapter 4.

12.3.2 Information analysis

UML (Unified Modeling Language) use cases were developed to describe the major functionality of the proposed system, including registration and purchase, research queries, and maintenance. Given that the Global Drinks Service is a data-intensive application that would be implemented around a relational database, it is not surprising that the heaviest use of UML was in the development of class diagrams. Limited use was made of OO principles, such as encapsulation and inheritance, because it was known that the implementation environment had no explicit support for OO mechanisms. Although the analysis was approached from a logical stance, i.e., independent of the implementation platform, the methods used were influenced by the choice of technical platform for implementation. Some use of UML sequence diagrams was made, but again, the target environment meant that these were perceived as having less value due to a knowledge that the implementation would take the form of web pages – an environment notoriously antithetical to OO (Connallen, 2000).

12.3.3 Work design

Sociotechnical design approaches, such as ETHICS, are concerned with achieving a suitable match between job satisfaction and the efficiency objectives of the organization. The GDS project was conceived as a standalone initiative that would target external customers and have minimal impact on working practices within the organization. In practice, this was not entirely the case. The initial load of the GDS data to the database was a typical development activity, i.e., data conversion. However, 9 months later (18 months into the project) it was necessary to load in the next year's data. This was a routine business process that did impact on the internal business processes of the research department, i.e., the GDS project had implications for work that had not been accounted for. If the annual updates had met with user resistance from the research staff who were not involved directly in the GDS then the project may have faltered. Although a full-blown ETHICS investigation into the internal workings of Zenith would have been inappropriate to the GDS project, the experience served as a reminder that even the most independent seeming of projects can have an impact on work practices.

The primary user of the GDS was the external customer. These customers use the GDS to support their own work practices, such as marketing and production planning, and to that extent ETHICS could be applied to understanding how the GDS might contribute to the quality of their work life. However, given the difficulties of gaining access to customers it is more appropriate to treat the customer's organization as a black box and to assess user satisfaction through an instrument such as WebQual, as described in chapter 7. As part of the TCS programme the Zenith main web site was redesigned and WebQual was used to assess the quality of the site before and after the redesign. A similar assessment will be conducted on the GDS web site. Where it is inappropriate or too expensive to do a detailed work-study, as may be the case with external customers, the WebQual questionnaire approach is a suitable instrument for the assessment of user satisfaction.

12.3.4 Technical design

The physical requirements of the implementation were clear: a database was needed together with some technology to link the database to the web. The project team selected Allaire's ColdFusion server together with Microsoft Access (later upgraded to MS SQL Server) database. Graphical presentation of database query results was achieved using Seagate's Crystal Reports and web site design was accomplished using Macromedia Dream Weaver with Fireworks and Flash for graphics and animation. The choice of platform was driven by a mixture of the technology available on a limited budget and the previous experience of the team members. The budget affected the hosting decision insofar as an ISP (Internet service provider) was needed since the option f Zenith hosting its own dedicated server, or even co-hosting with an ISP, were not viable options.

From a logical design perspective, the GDS started as a relatively straightforward application. The database did not have a lot of tables and the program logic was simple. As the project progressed and more functionality and tables were added the application gained in complexity. It became clear that some structure was needed to manage this complexity. The structure came in the form of a three-tier architecture that allowed database, business logic, and presentation layers to be separated out. By building the business logic in ColdFusion using components it is possible to achieve a pseudo-OO implementation. Unfortunately, the scripting approach to web development does not sit well with OO, which meant that the UML diagrams became less relevant as the design moved from the logical to the physical. However, use was made of UML-style interaction diagrams to model the interaction and flow of web pages.Possibly the greatest challenge was in the design of the web user interface. The University supervisor, a traditional system developer, had little aptitude for this area of development. Fortunately, the TCS Associate proved to have a flair for graphics and web aesthetics. If this had not been the case, the project would have had to be supplemented with the skills of a graphic designer. We also found that the best way to learn about web page design and web navigation and flow was to copy exemplars. For example, the Amazon.com registration and ordering flow proved an excellent template – the Amazon.com site is consistently rated highly for ease of use and many Internet users are familiar with its interface. Taking inspiration from exemplar sites might not be innovative, but it does provide a tried and tested route to follow, as long as proprietary methods, such as Amazon.com's 'one-click ordering' are not infringed.