Abstract
This paper presents a methodology for designing and deploying electronic enterprises–a step beyond intuitive or rule-based approaches. As a starting point, the paper presents a cyclical-model consisting of three e-business development phases: conceptualization, simulation, and implementation. Since an e-business “idea” rarely springs forth complete and ready to go, realizing the idea–that is, turning it into a commercial product, system, process, or profitable enterprise–requires business development. Business development requires analysis of the potential organizational structures, IT architectures, HR policies and procedures, strategies, market niche, partnership agreements, and so on, until a satisfactory enterprise design is found. Such consideration and experimentation can be done mentally (intuitively), or by drawing on a napkin (informally), or more logically using strategic and marketing analysis, revenue/cost/asset/operational business models, computer simulations, and other quantitative and qualitative management practices and techniques. In any case, only rarely is the result of the first development effort completely satisfactory, perhaps the business system or process will be too difficult to develop, too complex, or too costly to implement, maintain, or sell. So, once again the business idea goes into the cycle of developing, testing, redeveloping, implementing, and re-testing. Succinctly, the methodology advocated in this paper provides a framework for guiding the e-business development process.