An experimental investigation into the process of knowledge-based systems development

This paper presents an experimental study into the processes that may contribute to building a better knowledge-based system. A model that defines quality to be composed of two related aspects, internal and external quality, is introduced. To test the model, 24 subjects developed a knowledge-based system for MBA course planning in an experimental setting over a 7 week period. Subjects were factored by development methodology (structured vs rapid prototyping), knowledge representation scheme used (rule-based vs hybrid) and programmer quality (naive vs experienced). The major finding is that an appropriate mix of development methodology, knowledge representation and personnel is necessary. No single development methodology or knowledge representation scheme is best, and a considerable number of interactions was observed in the experiment. Rapid prototyping combined with rule-based representation produced the best external quality in terms of functionality, but when combined with hybrid representation produced the worst. Similarly, rapid prototyping combined with hybrid representation produced the worst usability. Programmer quality had a positive effect on coding productivity, which in turn resulted in an increase in system usability. As with conventional software, increasing programmer quality can be very beneficial to both process and content. The study presented provides some evidence of the anomalies that are generated in the course of system development, and how they relate to internal quality. As might be expected, experienced programmers produced significantly fewer anomalies. A relationship was found between internal quality and usability, but not functionality.     

The development of a knowledge-based system for information systems project development consulting

The foundation for a successful software development project is a well-conceived project plan which establishes the overall framework for effective project management. Two major functions of planning an information systems development project are: 1) the selection of an appropriate development strategy; and 2) the assessment of risk associated with the development of the system. This paper describes the development of a knowledge-based expert system to assist in choosing the most appropriate development approach to use when planning an information systems development project and when assessing the risk associated with that project. The knowledge base consists of a set of rules addressing both tasks. Case examples of the use of the expert system are also given.     

A knowledge-based approach to manage information systems interoperability

Interoperability is a key property of enterprise applications, which is hard to achieve due to the large number of interoperating components and semantic heterogeneity. The inherent complexity of interoperability problems implies that there exists no silver bullet to solve them. Rather, the knowledge about how to solve wicked interoperability problems is hidden in the application cases that expose those problems. The paper addresses the question of how to organise and use method knowledge to resolve interoperability problems. We propose the structure of a knowledge-based system that can deliver situation-specific solutions, called method chunks. Situational Method Engineering promotes modularisation and formalisation of method knowledge in the form of reusable method chunks, which can be combined to compose a situation-specific method. The method chunks are stored in a method chunk repository. In order to cater for management and retrieval, we introduce an Interoperability Classification Framework, which is used to classify and tag method chunks and to assess the project situation in which they are to be used. The classification framework incorporates technical as well as business and organisational aspects of interoperability. This is an important feature as interoperability problems typically are multifaceted spanning multiple aspects. We have applied the approach to analyse an industry case from the insurance sector to identify and classify a set of method chunks.     

A review of information systems evaluation: content,context and process

Computer-based information systems are difficult to evaluate. The difficulties are both conceptual (what should be involved in evaluation) and operational (how to carry out evaluation). Information systems evaluation is generally taken to mean the identification and quantification of the costs and benefits of an IT investment. We maintain that this approach is too narrow, and hence problematic. A broader conceptualisation is set out, which entails management of the linkages between content, context and process: the ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ of evaluation. A categorisation of the IS evaluation literature according to its emphasis on content/context/process is used to argue that effective evaluation requires a thorough understanding of the interactions between these three elements. Implications for the practice of IS evaluation are drawn out.     

Towards knowledge-based systems in clinical practice: development of an integrated clinical information and knowledge management support system

Given that clinicians presented with identical clinical information will act in different ways, there is a need to introduce into routine clinical practice methods and tools to support the scientific homogeneity and accountability of healthcare decisions and actions. The benefits expected from such action include an overall reduction in cost, improved quality of care, patient and public opinion satisfaction. Computer-based medical data processing has yielded methods and tools for managing the task away from the hospital management level and closer to the desired disease and patient management level. To this end, advanced applications of information and disease process modelling technologies have already demonstrated an ability to significantly augment clinical decision making as a by-product. The wide-spread acceptance of evidence-based medicine as the basis of cost-conscious and concurrently quality-wise accountable clinical practice suffices as evidence supporting this claim. Electronic libraries are one-step towards an online status of this key health-care delivery quality control environment. Nonetheless, to date, the underlying information and knowledge management technologies have failed to be integrated into any form of pragmatic or marketable online and real-time clinical decision making tool. One of the main obstacles that needs to be overcome is the development of systems that treat both information and knowledge as clinical objects with same modelling requirements. This paper describes the development of such a system in the form of an intelligent clinical information management system: a system which at the most fundamental level of clinical decision support facilitates both the organised acquisition of clinical information and knowledge and provides a test-bed for the development and evaluation of knowledge-based decision support functions.     

Constructing knowledge-based systems

Vital, a four-and-a-half-year ESPRIT II research and development project that involves nine organizations in five countries is discussed. It addresses the problems of effective process modeling for knowledge-based systems, providing guidelines on when to use various knowledge-engineering methods and techniques, and reducing the bottleneck in acquiring expert knowledge by providing both methodological and software support for developing large, industrial, knowledge-based system applications. The project goals, approach, and workbench are outlined, and a case study is described     

Design of knowledge-based systems with a knowledge-based assistant

The authors propose a model for an intelligent assistant to aid in building knowledge-based systems (KBSs) and discuss a preliminary implementation. The assistant participates in KBS construction, including acquisition of an initial model of a problem domain, acquisition of control and task-specific inference knowledge, testing and validation, and long-term maintenance of encoded knowledge. The authors present a hypothetical scenario in which the assistant and a KBS designer cooperate to create an initial domain model and then discuss five categories of knowledge the assistant requires to offer such help. They discuss two software technologies on which the assistant is based: an object-oriented programming language, and a user-interface framework     

A knowledge-based framework for extracting components in agile systems development

Considerable strides have been made in the use of components in software development. Many proprietary enterprise resource planning (ERP) software environments use modular components to develop and customize “best practices” to meet a specific organizational need. In agile application development, many developers and users are asked to design systems in a short period of time. These applications may use components that are embedded in software repositories. The challenge then is how to select the right software components (data and procedures) to meet an application requirement. Although experienced developers may select and customize components to meet the needs of an application, such expertise may not be available to other applications. This paper presents a knowledge-based framework to select and customize software components and demonstrates its value in deriving quality specifications, even when the developers are relatively inexperienced.     

An instrument for measuring the success of the requirements engineering process in information systems development

There exists a strong motivation for evaluating, understanding, and improving requirements engineering practices given that a successful requirements engineering process is necessary for a successful software system. Measuring requirements engineering success is central to evaluation, understanding, and improving these practices. In this paper, a research study whose objective was to develop an instrument to measure the success of the requirements engineering process is described. The domain of this study is developing customer-specific business information systems. The main result is a subjective instrument for measuring requirements engineering success. The instrument consists of 32 indicators that cover the two most important dimensions of requirements engineering success. These two dimensions were identified during the study to be: quality of requirements engineering products and quality of requirements engineering service. Evidence is presented demonstrating that the instrument has desirable psychometric properties, such as high reliability and good validity.This paper is a longer and more detailed version of the study reported in El Emam and Madhavji (1995).This work was supported in part by the IT Macroscope Project and NSERC Canada.     

Intelligent process monitoring by interfacing knowledge-based systems and multivariate statistical monitoring

An intelligent process monitoring and fault diagnosis environment has been developed by interfacing multivariate statistical process monitoring (MSPM) techniques and knowledge-based systems (KBS) for monitoring multivariable process operation. The real-time KBS developed in G2 is used with multivariate SPM methods based on canonical variate state space (CVSS) process models. Fault detection is based on T ² charts of state variables. Contribution plots in G2 are used for determining the process variables that have contributed to the out-of-control signal indicated by large T ² values, and G2 Diagnostic Assistant (GDA) is used to diagnose the source causes of abnormal process behavior. The MSPM modules developed in Matlab are linked with G2. This intelligent monitoring and diagnosis system can be used to monitor multivariable processes with autocorrelated, crosscorrelated, and collinear data. The structure of the integrated system is described and its performance is illustrated by simulation studies.     

A process model cognitive biasing effects in information systems development and usage

There are many opportunities for failure when designing information systems. Most of the IS research investigating this area has concentrated on problems related to organizational environment, informational characteristics, or physical software design. Little attention has been given to the subconscious cognitive biases which can impact the manner in which information systems are developed and utilized. While it is recognized that elimination of these biases is neither feasible nor altogether desirable, it is further acknowledged that ignoring them can lead to an exacerbation of their undesirable effects. This paper provides a general framework to identify where system designer and decision maker biases are likely to occur, and suggests some moderating measures which might be taken to alleviate some of the potentially harmful effects of these biases.     

Work-oriented development of knowledge-based systems: a case for multiple perspectives

System development is strongly influenced by the perspectives used by system developers. Current development methods for knowledge-based systems are based on an information processing perspectives of experts and users which has been criticized by a number of researchers. The paper argues that work-oriented development of knowledge-based systems requires the parallel use of multiple perspectives (including the information processing perspective), and that the use of any single perspective is potentially dangerous. As an example of the importance of using multiple perspectives, thepaper presents the situated action perspective, and shows how it complements the information processing perspective.     

A common criteria based security requirements engineering process for the development of secure information systems

In order to develop security critical Information Systems, specifying security quality requirements is vitally important, although it is a very difficult task. Fortunately, there are several security standards, like the Common Criteria (ISO/IEC 15408), which help us handle security requirements. This article will present a Common Criteria centred and reuse-based process that deals with security requirements at the early stages of software development in a systematic and intuitive way, by providing a security resources repository as well as integrating the Common Criteria into the software lifecycle, so that it unifies the concepts of requirements engineering and security engineering.     

Communicating the knowledge in knowledge-based systems

As the role of knowledge-based systems grows in the marketplace, the necessity of clearly communicating their knowledge to people increases. However, well-represented internally, a system's knowledge cannot be used to train, advise, or assist an individual unless it can be discussed naturally. Recent efforts to standardize knowledge coding and expert system user interfaces fall short in defining a real ability to communicate knowledge. Most systems are unable to explain their knowledge, inferences, or applicability to anyone but a well-trained, domain-knowledgeable user. In this paper, we examine the features needed to enable intelligent expression of knowledge, and survey previous work in this area. We also describe an intelligent text generator (ITG) designed as an adjunct to an object-oriented expert system. We present a structure within which a rule-based system for a given domain can be expanded to communicate its knowledge intelligibly, in any of several natural languages.     

Real-time batch process supervision by integrated knowledge-based systems and multivariate statistical methods

Real-time supervision of batch operations during the progress of a batch run offers many advantages over end-of-batch quality control. Process monitoring, quality estimation, and fault diagnosis activities are automated and supervised by embedding them into a real-time knowledge-based system (RTKBS). Interpretation of multivariate charts is also automated through a generic rule-base for efficient alarm handling and fault diagnosis. Multivariate statistical techniques such as multiway partial least squares (MPLS) provide a powerful modeling, monitoring, and supervision framework. Online process monitoring techniques are developed and extended to include predictions of end-of-batch quality measurements during the progress of a batch run. The integrated RTKBS and the implementation of MPLS-based process monitoring and quality control are illustrated using a fed-batch penicillin production benchmark process simulator.     

Information independent evaluation of information systems

Information systems are characterized and their desirable features are identified. Information independence is proposed as a major architectural characteristic underlying many desirable features. Two types of information independence are identified and an approach to quantifying the degree of independence is introduced. Information independence is suggested as a useful and quantifiable measure of the value of an information system.     

Recent development of knowledge-based systems,methods and tools for One-of-a-Kind Production

In recent years, product knowledge has played increasingly significant roles in new product development process especially in the development of One-of-a-Kind products. Although knowledge-based systems (KBSs) have been proposed to support product development activities and new knowledge modelling methodologies have been developed, they are still far from complete. This area has become attractive to many researchers and as a result, many new knowledge-based systems, methods and tools have been developed. However, to the best of our knowledge, knowledge-based systems for product development have not been systematically reviewed, compared and summarized. This paper provides a comprehensive review on the recent development of KBS, methods and tools in supporting rapid product development. In the paper, the relevant technologies for modelling, managing and representing knowledge are investigated and reviewed systematically for better understanding their characteristics. The focus is placed on knowledge-based systems that support product development, and how product knowledge is identified, captured, represented and reused during the processes of One-of-a-Kind product development. The limitations and the future trend of KBS are presented in terms of how they can help One-of-a-Kind Production (OKP) companies.     

An analysis on the macroscopic growth process and stage of information systems development in Chinese enterprises

After thirty plus years of reform and opening up its markets to the global economy, China has sustained a rapid economic growth for many years, which provides an opportunity for the development of various industrial and social dimensions. In this process, the growth of information systems development in Chinese enterprises seems showing special characteristics which are different from the classical model proposed by Nolan. This paper discusses the macroscopic growth process of information systems development in Chinese enterprises. Based on the classical study by Nolan, the historical data for information systems development in 294 Chinese enterprises was collected for the period of 1982 through 2009. Using the annual expenditures on information systems as an index, the analysis shows that the information systems growth process in Chinese enterprises can be represented by five stages. A detailed discussion of the characteristics of each stage is provided in this paper which illustrates a macroscopic growth process of information systems development in Chinese enterprises.