Change Effects and Legacy Information Systems: a Framework to Aid Our Understanding

What does a business do when its computer systems grow old, making them hard to maintain and alter? Software engineering has provided some useful answers, but these are entirely focused on the technology, ignoring the organizational and human context. This paper describes the early results of a project to find wider solutions to the problems of legacy systems. It outlines a proposed method for such solutions, based on a dynamic interrelationship between organizational and technical change processes. We discuss tools for the codevelopment, by all stakeholders, of a number of scenarios for the future of the organization; and then of more detailed technical support for those possible futures. An example of the form of the technical change approach is given.