A Work System Front End for Object-Oriented Analysis and Design

This paper proposes that basic ideas from the work system theory (WST) and the work system method (WSM) might serve as a front end to object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD), thereby providing a path from business-oriented descriptions to formal, technical specifications. After describing the background motivation and summarizing work system concepts, the paper uses a hiring system example to show how two tools from WSM can be used as a front end for OOAD, in effect, a step before creating use case diagrams and other types of Unified Modeling Language (UML) artifacts. Potential benefits of this approach stem from a business-oriented question, “how can we improve this work system's performance,” rather than an IT-oriented question, “how can we create a technical artifact that will be used?”