Challenges for Model-Driven Development of Strategically Aligned Information Systems

Abstract

Model-Driven Development (MDD) has been proposed as an alternative to the traditional development of information systems, given its ability to integrate different stakeholders into the information system engineering process. Currently, longtime researched MDD methods and modern no-code and low-code platforms support the generation of the working code of the information system and services. However, in today’s continuously changing environment, organisations need to align the information systems and services with the business structure, strategy, and processes they support. This article shows the design challenges for integrating business strategy information into a model-driven development method. We applied a set of mechanism experiments on an MDD method composed of three modelling frameworks with demonstrated semantic consistency, that covers the organisational, business process, and information system levels to identify information loss and transformation coverage issues that prevent the generation of information systems and services that are strategically aligned. The challenges were discussed with experts, confirming the relevance of avoiding the overlapping between the strategic and business process concepts, providing organisational-level constructs to express strategic ends and means, and considering the organisational structure in the modular design of business process and information systems and services.