Design and Use Patterns of Adaptability in Enterprise Systems

Adaptability is a visionary concept increasing the actability of business organisations lacking methodical support for analysis and assessment. This contribution is dedicated to provide a methodical support for adaptability analysis and assessment of information technology deployed in business organisations. Hereby the focus was narrowed to core applications such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. The general approach taken is based on systems theory; hence organisations and information systems respectively are seen as systems allowing input providing output to their direct environment. This contribution proposes a pattern-based judgement framework consisting of two dimensions in which the objective hierarchy is constructed, and appropriate pattern-based attributes are specified to provide a detailed guidance for the adaptability evaluation. The proposed methodology ensures that adaptability assessment can be aligned with the competitive strategies and goals of an Enterprise.