Web IS Development Methodology (WISDM):WISDM in context: the Multiview approach to IS development

Introduction

Many of the approaches to web development have focused on the user interface and in particular the look and feel of a web site, but have failed to address the wider aspects of web-based information systems. At the same time, traditional information system development methodologies – from the waterfall life-cycle to rapid application development (RAD) – have struggled to accommodate web-specific aspects into their methods and work practices. Although web sites are characterized historically as graphically intense hypermedia systems, they have now evolved from cyber-brochures into database-driven information systems that must integrate with existing systems, such as back office applications. web-based information systems (IS) therefore require a mix of web site development techniques together with traditional IS development competencies in database and program design. In this chapter we introduce the Multiview framework for information system development and illustrate how it can be used as a basis for a web IS development methodology (WISDM).

WISDM in context: the Multiview approach to IS development

Multiview originated as a response to approaches to IS development that had strong roots in engineering discipline and technical rationality. The extension of 1970s structured programming into 1980s structured analysis and design  was, perhaps, a logical progression that resulted in IS development methods such as the UK's Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method (SSADM), James Martin's Information Engineering, and Ed Yourdon's Systems Modeling. The process of taking successful programming strategies and broadening them out into design and analysis methods continued unabated with the object-oriented (OO) paradigm, where OO programming was extended into 1990s OO analysis (by many of the same people who had earlier promoted structured methods) culminating in the Unified Modeling Language (UML). Although there are certainly differences between the structured and OO paradigms, the philosophical foundations are shared: a functionalist paradigm of objectivism and social order.

However, engineering-based approaches to IS development can lead to an over-emphasis on the design and construction of computer-based artefacts with insufficient attention given to the social and contextual aspects of IS development. Hirschheim et al. (1996) take the view that the changes associated with system development are emergent, historically contingent, socially situated and politically loaded. As a consequence of this position they argue that sophisticated social theories are needed to understand and make sense of IS development activity.

The fundamental assumption of Multiview (Avison & Wood-Harper, 1990; Avison, et al., 1998) is that an IS methodology that relies overmuch on an engineering approach and technical rationality is, by itself, an insufficient foundation for IS development. This is not to say that there is no place for technical rationality in IS development, but the search for an over-arching prescriptive methodology that claims to address and dissolve all the 'problems' inherent in IS development remains as elusive as the Philosopher's Stone. What then might be the role of methodology in IS development? In our view, IS methodologies are useful epistemological frameworks that can be drawn on during the process of information system definition and development.

The foundations of Multiview as an enquiring framework for IS development rest on a recognition that the needs of computer artefacts, organizations, and individuals must be considered jointly. An IS development exercise should generate robust technical artefacts that support purposeful organizational activity as well as taking into account the needs and freedom of the individual. Multiview is therefore a framework for making the tensions in IS development explicit, to avoid clear-cut distinctions between technical expediency and social justice. This concern with negotiating between the technological, organizational, and human aspects of IS development has constituted a central theme in the Multiview framework and differentiates it from other IS development approaches.

3.2.1 Using the Multiview framework to guide methodology generation

Multiview offers a systematic guide to any IS intervention, together with a reflexive learning process, which brings together the analyst, the situation and the methodology. Multiview is structured in three tiers:

• General framework

• Local, emergent methodology

• Methods/techniques.

Multiview is a framework that provides a basis for constructing a situation-specific methodology (figure 3.1). This contingent methodology is, at its best, the result of a genuine engagement of the IS developers (and other change agents) with the problem situation. This engagement, which is historically contingent and locally situated, informs the choice of methods and techniques, such as soft systems modeling and object-oriented design, that will be used to get things done and to improve the problem situation. The methods used also affect how the situation is perceived and the form of the intervention. Multiview is, therefore, more usefully seen as a metaphor that is interpreted and developed in a particular situation, rather than as a prescriptive description of some real-world activity.

Within the framework are methods that the developer (change agent) can draw on to make sense of and interact with the problem situation. The IS development methods are shown in the matrix. The matrix is deliberately presented as methods and techniques; they are general tools that can be drawn upon in a specific situation by particular people to create a local methodology(WISDM) in practice.