Panel : Deferred system's design : Developing context-aware information systems for dynamic environments

Diverse areas of business, healthcare, and government require IS that can respond to their environment. Conceptions of IS and development approaches have tended to remain sole preserve of professional developers. IS that can respond to their environment require conceptions and mechanisms that enable people in work to actively develop systems. This is the theme of deferred system’s design.

Internet, intranet, network and other technologies are being pushed to function at the client end, influenced by clients’ needs rather than being controlled by the network operators. The same is the case for IS applications in business, healthcare and government. The problem is even more pertinent in mobile ecommerce where the use of mobile devices are embedded in their physical environment, that is closely coupled to the physical location of the user. The problem we address concerns evolving and adapting IS, and its development approaches, including project management, to the context of IS use, where the evolution and adaptation is enacted by individuals, groups and organizations as a whole,
rather than pre-specified and hard-wired into systems.