Infrastructural considerations for the deployment of tailorable information systems

Operating in a turbulent environment, the contemporary organization is realizing that its information systems are often a cause of disappointment due to their inability to respond to rapidly changing operational and strategic parameters. Arguing that the act of freezing the user requirements specification during the analysis phase is largely responsible, the raison d'etre of this paper is to stimulate thinking through the promotion of an alternative vision for the development of systems and the state-of-the-art to pursue. As such, it examines the concept of tailorability and states that ultimately any design decisions should be deferred to the user. A conceptual architecture model is offered for visualizing the deployment of tailorable information systems in an organization, a number of enabling technologies are presented and a scheme for controlling the tailoring process is introduced.