In recent years, IT systems have evolved significantly with regards to their level of complexity, resulting in a low level of customer and user satisfaction. The development of Generic IT systems, that solve complex problems with constantly changing business requirements, is yet to be achieved. Traditional software engineering methodologies, used to solve complex problems, do not seem to be useful in the development of Business Management systems. The result of this is the appearance of coupling systems, with lots of integration and adaptation issues, which do not provide users with a satisfactory solution to their problems.
Architectural models, which allow “loose coupling” between systems and business logic of an organization, are used to alleviate this problem. The fact that these boundaries are considered to be the main sources of requirements change has assisted in the appearance of EAI (Enterprise Application Integration) architectures, SOA architectures and the BPM (Business Process Management) method, all of which promise the development of reusable, scalable and easily adaptable IT systems; bringing us to the point where we are at today.
Although the steps (mentioned above) have taken us in the right direction, they have not yet provided the promised solution. It is true that current systems are less “coupled” than before, at least at a technological level. Business logic can now be changed, to a certain extent, with little impact on the system. In controlled environments, it is now possible to establish communications and reuse third party services and solutions. However, it is also true that business systems still do not provide the desired user functionality, possibly due to the fact that they had not initially been taken into consideration as an integral part of the solutions or architectures.
It is necessary to explore the solutions and alternatives that could be used in the development of IT systems adopting a user-centric approach. This is especially interesting if we extend the concept of the user to all those related to the system; those who develop, use, market and exploit the system.
This point of view discusses several important changes to the way we understand systems, for example, the suggestion of alternatives to “standard” (WSDL/SOAP) SOA implementation. The Web Service standard isn’t accessible to the end users or to developers of the services and solutions. The alternatives (REST, POX-RPC, etc.), that promote ease of implementation and use, and the interpretation of results, pave the way for a series of initiatives that allow SOA architectures to demonstrate their potential. SOA technology is now accessible to a vast amount of people who are using it in innovative, novel and unpredictable ways.
This mini revolution, incorporating the “user-centric” approach, has not only influenced SOA implementations, but also fields that were not providing expected results. For example, the Semantic Web has took off thanks to collaborative tagging, systems integration has taken a new dimension by incorporating users thanks to the user-mashup concept, and new web services, making use of concepts such as SaaS (Software as a Service), have finally emerged.
It is important to take into account that these technologies and solutions have been able to advance so significantly because of certain security and formal aspects, which should be resolved as and when necessary, - backward steps had to be taken in order to continue progressing. It is also important to mention that this type of approach should not necessarily be applied to every system; it is simply an approach to be considered.
This user-centric approach is generally referred to as the Web 2.0 movement. A system can, and should, be considered Web 2.0 if it allows the acquisition, exploitation, empowerment and sharing of knowledge to whoever uses it, regardless of the stage in the system lifecycle.
Evolving and incorporating such a concept, and its application, into business IT systems offers a new range of possibilities to improve the solutions we offer to our employees, partners and clients.
People are the most important part of the system.
People have the knowledge that the system must use.
