The problem of the dynamic organization and the static system: principles and techniques for achieving flexibility

Because organizations change, knowledge of a system´s requirements, in the traditional sense, is necessarily imperfect since significant parts of such requirements in the future and are not available at the time the automated system is designed. The fact of imperfect knowledge of requirements alters the design objective from functional accuracy, which traditionally leads to inflexible systems, to adaptability to functional change. The flexible system is defined here as an automated system that can be resynchronized with changes in the real world system through user-based data value modifications, without information restructuring or program code modification. Design techniques, benefits and problems, and economic factors of flexible systems are discussed. An initial set of flexibility characteristics are proposed and implications are outlined for parametric systems, development methodology, the relational model, resource requirements, and the object-oriented approach