Semiotic Methods for Enterprise Design and IT Applications

Investment in information technology (or IT) does not necessarily bring improvement in business performance. One important cause of this is the divorce between the design of the IT systems and business organisations. An approach of organisational semiotics, based on the understanding of organisations as systems of social norms emphasises the central role of the people, their responsibility and the organisation in the analysis and design of IT applications. Business organisations are analysed as systems of meanings, intentional communication and interpretation that create knowledge, which sooner or later leads to action. Effective methods for organisational analysis and systems design (MEASUR) have been developed on the basis of this theory. However, to make these methods ready for practical, industrial use, they need further work, especially the creation of supporting aids and tools. The recently established research project, SEDITA, addresses these issues and invites collaboration both within business and research institutions. Keyword: Organisation, semiotics, information systems, requirements engineering, systems analysis and design, MEASUR, methodology, semantics, ontology, pragmatics, knowledge. “The method of science is the method of bold conjectures and ingenious and severe attempts to refute them” Sir Karl Popper, Objective Knowledge, p.81