System analysis and design books have a shortcoming. They focus on analysis of the old system and documenting and implementing the new, but they give little attention to conceptual design. It is at that time that the practitioner exercises his experience and imagination to come up with a new system concept. Years ago De Marco noted "e;I won´t tell you how to do it -- no tool that I could think of would aid the innovation process"e;. And today design is still treated as largely a matterof having a group of intelligent, creative people together and then the magic is supposed to happen. This magic remains unexplained and largely unexplored and, to a large extend, ignored.
Conventionally understood forms of reasoning apply logically to evaluative and analytical types of activity in design (inductive and deductive reasoning) and appeal to the engineer. But the type of activity that is most particularly associated with design is synthesis, for which there is no commonly-acknowledged form of reasoning. Creative techniques can enhance information systems. Divergence activitiescan be useful in each phase of the development process to enable the development team (for some stages together with users) to consider a wider range of alternatives before going on to the next phase. But techniques are different for each stage of the life-cycle. Some of them are abused (brainstorm) or used at the wrong moment.
This tutorial provides the developer with a toolkit of analytic, synthetic and creative tools and methods useful in the different phases of the development life-cycle:
The tutorial will introduce these techniques during short presentations. After each set of techniques participants will discuss applicability of each set in Object-Oriented-development practice (using evaluation techniques and what was learned). The techniques are applied in exercises and a running case study. '