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Fancied, conceived and shaped objects in Information Systems
Michel LEONARD, Professor, Université de Genève, Switzerland

Michel LEONARD has been Full Professor of the University of Geneva since 1977 in the Information System domain. He is the Head of the IS department of this University.
His main interest is the analysis of converging aspects between the conceptual models, the Information and Communication technology world and the activities world inside the IS field. With his research team he developed several DBMSs with advanced features such as dynamic specialization, hyperclasses, complete flexibility of the database schema. Presently he manages a research team to develop the Open Source M7 environment to support an evolutionary IS approach, management and implementation of Information System components, fragments of IS methods, knowledge management.
He is the author of the book "Database design theory" (MacMillan 1992).
He is member of the CAISE committee board, the IFIP TC8 Working Group and the ICEIS committee.
He was the general chairman of the last Object-Oriented Information System conference (Geneva, September 2003).
Michel.Leonard@cui.unige.ch

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to develop some fundamental aspects of Information Systems domain, which are generally hidden or misunderstood. Generally speaking an IS is generally considered only for its shaped objects : in the first hand, programs, methods, classes, systems, and in the second hand, interfaces, rules, processes, workflows… In fact, to produce so shaped objects, the IS development process needs to elaborate conceived objects. But the utility of these conceived objects are often limited in the private space of experts. Nevertheless this paper claims that their utility is much more important and their usability will become very crucial in the IS engineering. Furthermore and finally, the fancied objects are hidden in the most often cases : they appear only through objectives, that the IS should fulfil : so the IS development process would be only a problem solving process. However, many papers show that there is a deep gap between the management domain and the computer technical domain. Many of them try to build a bridge between these domains. This paper claims that the IS domain cannot be reduced to a simple bridge and the difficulties of the enterprises with their development with IS cannot be solved following this way. The only level where managers and computer specialists can cooperate with a minor risk of manipulation, appears to be the level of fancied objects. Then the overloaded complexity due to lazy positions in IS development disappears. The IS utility-usability becomes real stakes. Furthermore IS development process becomes a collective creative process, where IS becomes the means of expressing a collective sense to cope with complexity. Finally the paper illustrates this position through the example of the agile information systems (in particular with the M7 open source project).