Perspective of:

Planner

Description:

The planner is concerned with a general description of the IS and the positioning the IS in the contexts of its internal and external environment. Planning not only identifies the major components of the IS but also addresses its financial viability (costs and benefits), constraints (often imposed internally by legacy systems and externally by the need to connect with other organizations), and scope (what will be part of the IS and what will not).

Perspective of:

Owner

Description:

In general, the owner is interested in the business deliverable, its functionalities, and how it will be used. Within the established plan, the owner usually imposes specific constraints and requirements on the system, such as organizational policies and practices, the need for flexible data retrieval, and required response times.

Perspective of:

Architect/Designer

Description:

The architect needs to understand the IS from both the business perspective and the technical perspective. The architect works with the IS specifications provided by the planner and the owner to produce a design that will both fulfill the owner's functional expectations and can be technically realized by the builder. Consequently the architect must not only be able to correctly interpret the owner's requirements and constraints but he or she must also be aware of technical possibilities and limitations of IS development platforms, the required interactions with existing systems, government regulations which affect implementation (such as data transmission), and so forth. Often this requires the architect to develop matching sets of functional representations and technical specifications.

Perspective of:

Builder

Description:

The builder manages the process of producing and assembling the components of the IS. This requires a thorough understanding of the architect's specifications for the system. In addition, the builder must know the materials to work with (databases, programming languages, operating systems, etc.) the tools to work with (CASE-tools, compilers, etc.) and the ways in which the development work can be organized to meet completion deadlines.

Perspective of:

Subcontractor

Description:

The subcontractor builds specific parts of a product. Often these parts are produced out-of-context (which in many cases ensures their reusability) based on very detailed component specifications provided by the builder. It is the builder's responsibility to provide the subcontractor with sufficiently detailed component specifications. It is the subcontractor's responsibility to produce the component exactly according to the provided specifications. By the way, a subcontractor may be external to the organization but does not have to be. Subcontractor views can also be useful for communicating product specifications in a large, highly specialized Information Systems division of an organization.

Perspective of:

User

Description:

The user's perspective is the interface and functionality of the final product. The user perspective, then, is the product of all planning, designing, and development activities that went before. When the information system has been completed, it can be compared against the original objectives and requirements of the planner and the owner. Changes from these objectives and requirements should be either justified or else may become problematic in the future.

Object of focus:

Data

Focus items:

Entities
Relations

Description:

This column describes the stuff that organizational information is made of: Data. However, data needs to be related to other data for it to make sense in context. (A lonely zip-code is rather useless, but as part of a customer's address it becomes valuable!) This column, then, also needs to describe the relationships that must be maintained among the data.

Object of focus:

Processes & Functions

Focus items:

Functions
Arguments / Inputs & Outputs

Description:

This column provides a functional description of the information system: How does the organization do its work? How are orders filled? How is inventory maintained? Or in the context of an is: How is the data used? This column often describes an input-process-output model.

Object of focus:

Network

Focus items:

Nodes
Links

Description:

This column shows where the work and information flows within the enterprise. This may be among desks in a single building or among offices distributed around the world. If all of an organization's locations are to be connected, the nature of these connections must be properly identified first.

Object of focus:

People

Focus items:

Agents
Work

Description:

This column deals with the allocation of work and the structure of authority and responsibility in the organization. It describes people (employees) within the enterprise and the work (or work products) they perform.

Object of focus:

Time

Focus items:

Time
Cycle

Description:

This column is used to design the event-to-event relationships that establish the performance criteria and quantitative levels for enterprise resources.

Object of focus:

Motivation

Focus items:

Ends
Means

Description:

This column describes the motivation of the enterprise where the ends are objectives or goals and the means are strategies or methods.