The Object Interest Group Information Site

The Object Interest Group (OIG) brought together a number of leading companies to assess the object approach and enabling technology, so that members could understand it, position it in their own IT strategy and say to suppliers and standards bodies what was needed for faster exploitation. The Group was run by Norman Plant and Trish Wooding.

This site provides an insight into a number of issues they looked at :

• An assessment of object orientation 1990-1991
  In May 1990 the Object Interest Group (OIG) was formed to understand and assess object orientation, to get hard evidence to support the assessment and to enable member companies to position the technology in their IT strategy.

• Starting with objects 1992-1993
  Members wanted to be better informed and have guidance on why and when to adopt objects, benefits and costs, barriers and impediments, substantiated by supplier and IT user experiences.

• Choosing a methodology 1992-1993
  The main part of our work was concerned with collecting together both members’ and external practitioners’ practical experiences of using the different methodologies. Guidelines for choosing a suitable methodology were based on comparison with conventional, scope, project management and CASE support issues.

• Managing reuse 1992-1993
  We wanted to determine how effective reuse could realistically be achieved. This work addressed the whole life cycle, corporate IT and project management issues, library management and co-existence with legacy system and was again substantiated by supplier and IT user experiences.

• The feasibility of common business objects (CBOs) 1992-1993
  We decided to look at CBOs as a means to assuring domain model quality and thereby reuse. We concentrated on domain definition and scope for common business objects, initial criteria for inclusion in the domain, how to start assessing the feasibility of such components and their benefits.

• Reusable components and business process re-engineering 1994-1995
  Increased interest in BPR brought the issue of reusable components more to the fore. In order that OIG members would be better equipped to make their own assessment we decided to look at the application of reusable object components to BPR.
  We became interested in frameworks as a result of some of the barriers that were being discussed about libraries of objects at the time. To extend our understanding, we looked at the development, potential benefits and costs of business frameworks.