An Interpretive Approach For Improving Is-Organization Fit: The Business State Model

Whereas the most vulnerable and error-prone part of the development cycle is the requirements elicitation and analysis stage, the methods offered in this area have been criticized for either being too soft for engineering an IS, or too hard, neglecting social, organizational, human and other non-technical aspects of the IS’s environment. A holistic approach is necessary to combine the advantages of both approaches. The paper’s proposal is to enrich and validate the IS requirements produced by any structured/’hard’ IS development methodology by means of examining the IS’s business context with a view to ensure the compliance of the IS characteristics with its business environment. To this end, the business state model is proposed, which is a collaborative work for constructing a common view both of the organization’s current state and the desired outcome after the IS introduction, by synthesizing the personal perceptions of all involved parties. The proposed model is not a method as such. It provides the rational and the philosophy for holistic requirements and, thus, can be used as a conceptual model for eliciting and analyzing IS requirements.