Towards Integration: Dispatches from the Front Line

On the front line.

14 The drylands are on the front line of climate change, and they include the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people. We are already seeing in them the harrowing effects of climate change on poverty, survival, health, hunger, human well-being — and on peace itself, because the heavily impacted drylands are among the most unstable parts of the world. The stretch from Senegal through to Afgha...

Towards Business Requirements Traceability to Drive COTS-Based System Implementation Success: Brief Dispatches from the Trenches

This paper proposes that requirements engineering for COTS-based business systems should be flexible to cater for changes in users’ requirements during the development process. It suggests exposing in real-time the traceability of development activity to user requirements as a key mechanism to facilitate communication between the systems development and user communities. The channels of communi...

Data Quality in Practice: Experience from the Front Line

Information, stored in databases, is a key competitive advantage of many companies. However, this importance does not imply that managers will view data as a strategic resource or that they have the experience to interpret business processes in terms of data management. One way to overcome this corporate inexperience is to establish a data quality system a controlled and robust process that exe...

Dispatches from abroad: laughter amid the land mines.

Innovation in Healthcare Award: change from the front line.

It is often said that frontline NHS staff know exactly how to improve care for their patients; they see the answer every day. The BMJ Innovation in Healthcare Award celebrates how that knowledge is shared with colleagues and acted on to deliver change. It takes commitment and collaboration to succeed but also courage to raise the possibility that things could be done differently. Improving gene...