SAMPO: a speech-act based office modelling approach
Kalle Lyytinen, Erkki Lehitnen, Esa Auramäki · ACM SIGOIS Bulletin · 1987
1 .Introductio n Office information systems, or information systems development (ISD), i n general aims to achieve a positive change in the data processing tasks in a n organization .It is often supported by a methodology that more or les s rigorously prescribes the work .A methodology is a package of description methods, tools, roles, and tasks sequenced into phases which state how to accomplish a change .One critical phase in ISD is the specification of th e contents of the desired change : what the future office information syste m should accomplish .The SAMPO-approach is aimed to support this importan t task.Several ISD methodologies have evolved during the 70's and 80's .However , they support IS-work inadequately, sometimes even defectively .There are many problems that challenge the successful) development and use of offic e information systems : long development times and high costs of development , ambiguous goals and problems, inadequate or incorrect specifications , user-hostility and inadequate participation, unused IS's, misused IS's , confusing, distorting or incomprehensible output, increasing vulnerability o f organizations, alienation and so forth .Traditionally ISD-methodologies hav e been concerned with data processing .Issues and arguments have mainl y focused on technical aspects and cost-efficiency of IS-design .Thence , traditional ISD-methodologies narrow ISD to a delivery of a technologica l product that can bring about social effects .We believe that this view is to o narrow and falls short in solving the wide range of problems listed above .SAMPO is an acronym for Speech-Act based office Modelling aPprOach .Originally it was called Speech-Act based information analysis Methodolog y with comPuter aided tOols, but it has been extended to cover office work i n