Institute Name: University of Jyväskylä, Department of Computer Science and Information Systems
Description: The Department of Computer Science and Information Systems is widely recognized as one of the leading departments in training and research information systems and requirements engineering in Nordic Countries. It has currently about 15 permanent academic staff, c.a. 20 research associates and over 30 doctoral students. It offers a MSc degree in Information Systems and Software Engineering and PhD degree in Computing Studies. It has close links with local and Finnish industries.
The department's research is organized in a number of areas. Those which will participate in this network will be the systems development methods and tools and object oriented programming areas. The former area has 4 members of academic staff, 10 research associates and 15 PhD students. The main focus of this area has been on developing configurable and extensible tool environments for systems design and implementation as well as developing approaches for method engineering. It also conducts empirical field studies about the success of various tools and notations. The particular interest in requirements engineering has been requirements capture for design environments themselves and the functionality of requirements engineering environments under various contingencies.
The latter area has currently 2 members of academic staff, 2 research associates and 3 PhD students. The focus in this area has been to develop better notations for object-oriented design and requirements capture. The particular interest in requirements engineering has been the role of re-use and different object-oriented approaches for requirements engineering.
Both areas have conducted research in requirements engineering over a considerable time period and have participated in several national and international research projects, funded by the Academy of Finland, the Finnish Technological Development Centre (FINSOFT research program), and Finnish companies including Tietotehdas, Nokia and VTKK.
Researchers associated with the project:
Prof. Kalle Lyytinen Prof. Juhani Iivari Associate Prof. Vesa Savolainen Act. Associate Professor Markku Sakkinen
Brief CVs of Key Researchers:
Name: K. Lyytinen
Nationality: Finnish
Academic Qualifications & Experience: Kalle Lyytinen has acted as a full Professor of Computer Science (specialising in information systems) since 1987 at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Hong Kong University of of Science and Technology. He holds a BA, MSc, and PhD from University of Jyvaskyla, Finland. His earlier positions include visiting scholar positions at the University of Stockholm, Sweden, and the London School of Economics, UK. He was a visiting professor in the Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, 1989-90. He participated actively in the establishment of the Information Technology Research Institute at the University of Jyvaskyla and was its first leader. He is currently the leader of the research project MetaPHOR, funded by the Finnish Academy, that develops and studies methodology engineering principles and environments.
Professor Lyytinen participates the editorial boards of the following journals: Accounting, Management and Information Technology, European Journal of Information Systems, The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Journal of Information Systems, MIS Quarterly and Information Systems Research. He is currently the chairman of IFIP 8.2. working group "Information Systems and Organizations".
He has edited three books and published over 60 articles. His new book (co-authored with Rudi Hirschheim and Heinz Klein) on conceptual and Philosophical Foundations of Information Systems Development and Data Modeling has been published by the Cambridge University Press. His publications have appeared among others in MIS Quarterly, ACM Computing Surveys, ACM Transactions on Information Systems, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Information & Management, Journal of Information Systems, European Journal of Information Systems, Accounting, Management and Information Technologies, Database, British Computer Journal and Scandinavian Journal of Management Studies.
His research interests cover a broad range of issues including systems design methods, design methodologies and method engineering, philosophical foundations of IS, social action and linguistic theories underlying systems design approaches, computer supported co-operative work, IS research strategies and their selection, management, planning and implementation of information systems as a strategic issue. He has consulted extensively the Finnish industry and governement.
Selected publications:
Jarke, M., Pohl, K., Weidenhaupt, K., Lyytinen, K., Marttiin, P., Tolvanen,
J.-P., Papazoglou, M. 1997. Meta modeling: A formal basis for interoperability
and adaptability. Information Systems Interoperability (eds. B. Krämer,
M. Papazoglou), John Wiley Research Science Press.
Name: Prof. Juhani Iivari
Nationality: Finnish
Academic Qualifications & Experience: Juhani Iivari has been a professor in information systems (speciality design, implementation and use of information systems) since 1992 at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland. He received his MSc.and PhD. degrees from the University of Oulu, Finland. Before foining the University of Jyvaskyla, Dr. Iivari served as an associate professor in Information Processing Science at the University of Oulu. During the academic year 1988-1989 he visited the State University of New York, Binghamton and the University of Houston. Juhani Iivari has been a member of IFIP WG8.2 since 1986. He is also a member of the ACM and TIMS/ORSA (INFORMS). He was the national coordinator of the Finnish doctoral programme in information systems in 1993-1994. He serves the editor board of the Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems.
Iivari's research interest has been in information systems development, methods and approaches, most recently object-oriented analysis and design, adoption of information information technology, and IS quality, especially user information satisfaction. He has written about 60 papers on these topics, about a half of which has been published in international journals such as Data Base, European Journal of Information Systems, Information & Management, Information & Software Technology, Information Systems and MIS Quartely and in proceedings of the leading scientific conferences in the field.
Name: Dr. Vesa Savolainen
Nationality: Finnish
Academic Qualifications & Experience: Dr. Vesa Savolainen is currently Associate Professor in computer science (since 1980) in the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems at the University of Jyvaskyla. He has also been an acting full Professor at the University of Jyv skyl for 10 years during 1980-94. He has worked as the Head and Vice Director of the Department for several years (latest period being 1993-94). He is Senior Member of IEEE and Member of ACM and IFIP TC8 (Information Systems): WG 8.3 (Decision Support Systems) and WG 8.4 (Office Systems, a founding member) and a friend-type member of IFIP WG 8.2 (Interaction of Information Systems and the Organization). He has published over 70 refereed scientific, international articles, two books (on information resource management and graph theory) and over 30 scientific, national and university level research reports. He has participated in 85 international scientific conferences and working group meetings. In 1986-89 he participated in an ESPRIT Project OSSAD (Office Support Systems Analysis and Design) and in 1989-90 ESPRIT Project HECTOR (Harmonized European Concepts and Tools for Organizational Information Systems). Now he leads projects IESS (Intelligent Executive Support Systems), EXCEPT (Exceptions in Information Systems), and PEIS (Performance Evaluation of Information Systems). He is Founder and Chairman of Cooperative Advisory and Control Group of Multimedia Laboratory at the University of Jyvaskyla.
Selected Publications:
Iivari, J.(1991): Object-oriented design of information systems: The design process, in Van Assche, F., Moulin, B. and Rolland, C. (eds.): Object Oriented Approach in Information Systems, Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. (North-Holland), Amsterdam
Marttiin P., Rossi M., Tahvanainen V-P., and Lyytinen K.(1993): "A Comparative Review of CASE shells- a framework and research outcomes", Information & Management, vol 25, No 3, pp. 11-31
Hirschheim R., Klein H., Lyytinen K.(1994): Information Systems Development and Data Modeling: Conceptual and Philosophical Foundations, Cambridge University Press
Iivari, J.(1994): Object-oriented information systems analysis: A comparison of six object-oriented analysis methods, Verrijn-Stuart, A.A. and Olle, T.W. (eds.), Methods and Associated Tools for the Information Systems Life Cycle, North-Holland
Kari Partanen and Vesa Savolainen.(1995): Perspectives on Executive Information Systems. To appear in Systems Practice, Vol. 8, No. 3.
Contact Details:
Principal Investigator: Dr. Kalle Lyytinen
Address:Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, University of Jyvaskyla, 15 Seminaarinkatu Str. , PO Box 35, Jyvaskyla, SF-40 351, FINLAND
Telephone number: +358 41 603 025
Telefax number: +358 41 603 011
EMail: kalle@cs.jyu.fi
List of Members