Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is widely regarded by organizations worldwide as the business standard for the timely and secure exchange of electronic business transactions in an expanding global marketplace. While numerous research efforts have explored how the adoption, implementation, and integration of this technology can impact an organization's technical, organizational, and competitive environment -few studies have documented the process used by organizations to implement EDI

more »

... on sets with trading partners. This paper advances an innovative lifecycle used by a food manufacturing company to successfully design, implement, and test an EDI transaction set. This paper also describes how this transaction set development lifecycle (TDSL) can be integrated into an organization's standard systems development lifecycle (SDLC) to ensure the timely completion of IT projects. Finally, a discussion of the impact of the TDSL on the organization's business practices is presented.