Abstract:
The evolution of technology has revolutionised human activity. This revolution has already occurred once within management systems, with fields such as business process reengineering being created to take old management systems and methodologies and reengineer them into the systems that we know today. However, technology has not stopped evolving and human activity has likewise not remained static. To cope with this, management systems are increasingly creating and using the ideas of "domains" and "domain specific knowledge" built onto old management paradigms. This has led to existing enterprise systems becoming overcomplicated and not supporting human activity effectively. This thesis attempts to address these issues through the research and application of design theory as well as the theoretical field of activity theory. These fields are analysed and then from the knowledge gained with respect to activity patterns and tool use, an integrated framework is derived. This framework provides a step by step process to approach an existing management system and reengineer its concepts and workflows such that the product becomes more general, efficient, and easy to use, particularly with respect to collaboration, tool assimilation and activity structuring. Once this framework is derived, it is then applied to an existing enterprise level software product as a case study, and the outcome is evaluated. Results from this thesis are promising - the case study system has been reengineered into the concept of four distinct, interwoven activities. Positive feedback has been gained as to the reengineered system from users, and a full implementation is underway. The most valuable outcome from this thesis is the framework itself. It is hoped that the further development and usage of this framework may usher in a new era of more functional, efficient, enterprise level tools.