Organisational scenarios and legacy systems

A legacy system is made up of technical components and social factors (such as software, people, skills, business processes) which no longer meet the needs of the business environment. The study of legacy systems has tended t o be biased towards a software engineering perspective and to concentrate o n technical properties. This paper suggests that the evaluation of potentia l change options for legacy systems can only be carried out as part of an h olistic organisational. analysis. That is, the evaluation of legacy systems must take place within a framework that combines business and technical co nsiderations. In particular, we believe that the business strategy must lea d this process. Accordingly, we have designed an interdisciplinary approach which brings together an organisational scenarios tool (based on concepts from the field of organisational. development) and a technical scenarios to ol (based on concepts from the field of software engineering). These tools are applied in an iterative way, so that technical options are tested out a gainst the business needs. It is, thus, a dynamic tool which seeks to mimic the nature of organisational change, as far as is practicable. The researc h project described here is entitled software as a business asset (SABA) an d was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPS RC) under the systems engineering for business process change (SEBPC) progr amme. This paper describes the research approach and its iterative stages, and illustrates its use within a large engineering firm (Engco). Its applic ation produced useful insights for the organisation, as well as pointers fo r further modification of our research approach. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.