A model for the migration to object-oriented software development with special emphasis on improvement of acceptance

Abstract

Object oriented technology has been established as an important new paradigm in software development. Thus, many organizations involved in any kind of software production plan to migrate to object oriented technology or have already started this process. Besides several successful migrations, many failures occur. In order to reduce the risk of failure during the migration process, we developed a migration model based on an empirical study. The application of this model leads to a better understanding of the migration process and supports its planning, designing and implementation, putting special emphasis on improvement of acceptance. The theoretical foundations of our migration model come from technology management, organizational research (i.e. change management, and organizational roles), as well as existing approaches and models for this kind of migration. Our migration model consists of three main parts: the migration process model, the definition of organizational roles, and the use of acceptance strategies such as information and communication, participation, and further education. The main results concerning the rise of acceptance strategies, based on the results of the empirical study, are presented.