Convergent engineering: a case study

Abstract

In order to survive in an increasingly competitive business environment, it has become imperative that companies continuously reinvent themselves. This rapid change puts immense pressure on the supporting software systems, which are typically incapable of changing at the same pace. The research in the field of applying Object Orientation (OO) to businesses provides some approaches to tie the businesses and their supporting software systems to create more flexible and adaptive software systems. After surveying the literature on the topic of the application of OO to the business context, David Taylor s methodology called Convergent Engineering (CE) was chosen for an in depth study and its application to the business operations at Exeter India, where the author works. Convergent Engineering combines the business engineering and software engineering into a single unified discipline. It provides a framework and methodology for discovery and specification to come up with an organizational object model. The CE framework was applied to construct a high-level model of Exeter India s business.9 organizations, 46 processes and 170 high-level resource objects were identified as a result of this exercise. Building on this model the Organization Chart for Exeter India was successfully constructed. Later, the CE framework was applied to one of the business processes Allocations . A detailed object model was built and the capabilities of the business objects, as claimed by the CE framework, were validated.