Problem:
- One of our clients in the Healthcare space had a set of applications that tracked the status of various initiatives
- Each project, although rather simple, required the assembly of a team and a project structure
- There were clearly some commonalities between the projects, but traditional attempts on reuse (components, inheritance, etc) had not proved successful
Solution:
- We analyzed the problem and found that the applications could be defined using a declarative language (using primitives such as Project, Task, Goal, Outcome). This language was further based on an ontology language that we developed (a derivative of REA).
- We developed a generator that could generate the various applications based on the declarative language.
- We also developed a road map for how to extract data from the generated applications and produce a coherent view of all activities in the organization
Result:
- The approach allowed at least one order of magnitude better productivity when creating new initiatives
- The applications could all contribute to an enterprise view (a dashboard that in real time provided status of all the initiatives in the enterprise)