Creating Agile Business Systems with Reusable Knowledge

Citation

Howard, W.R. (2008), "Creating Agile Business Systems with Reusable Knowledge", Kybernetes, Vol. 37 No. 3/4, pp. 565-565. https://doi.org/10.1108/03684920810863589

One of the perennial problems of producing business systems is that they never seem to meet the prime needs of the management and the customer who is on the receiving end of the developed system. One would imagine that the developers of such systems would not only liase with the immediate users and the purchasers but would also test the customer environment. No one doubts the increased efficiency of the innovative processes that have been incorporated into the IT products finally marketed today.

Mitra and Gupta, the authors of this text, examine these systems from the viewpoint of their response to changing business patterns and the current dynamic environments. It would seem to be a question of dealing with the information patterns in a sensible and organised way. Can these patterns reordered in such a way that they account for change? Can this be done automatically? In such dynamic processes the approach taken is crucial. These authors offer an insight into the design and development of such systems. A modular approach is taken and the resulting strategy uses methods developed for existing projects that have proven themselves in other applications.

If nothing else is achieved in this volume the authors can be commended for making the case for the production of IT systems that are indeed responsive to ever‐changing business environments. This is a lengthy text for this field but it has much to offer and may well encourage new ideas and the resulting methodologies which will produce the “agile business systems with re‐usable knowledge” that we all aspire to use ourselves and will enable us to improve our customer interfaces.