Analyzing information systems development: A comparison and analysis of eight is development approaches (original) (raw)

A Framework for Understanding Information Systems Development

IGI Global eBooks, 2011

Chapter 6. A FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT Of course information systems development (ISD) is more than programming. But what is it? As Vignette 3 in the Preface shows it does involve the creativity and joy of programming, but it also involves a host of other things-knowledge elicitation, understanding what knowledge is, respect for others, resource planning, responsiveness to the changing desires of users, awareness of the role of the IS in everyday life, hard work, frustration, satisfaction, and much more. Others have found similarly over the past 50 years, though they might have described them in more conventional ways, such as user requirements analysis, design, implementation, validation, verification, documentation, maintenance, and so on. Information systems used by us need to be designed and developed. ISD is human activity. The main theme of most research in ISD is methodology to guide that activity. The central philosophical question addressed in this chapter is: what is the nature of ISD, including its norms? The central practical question is: what should guide ISD? These are the ways this chapter tries to formulate a framework for understanding ISD. This chapter explores how Dooyeweerd's philosophy might help us understand the challenges and issues in ISD. The information system that is developed includes both the technical artefact or system and the human context of its use, which is often organisational. The communities of practice and research in this area include those involved in programming, system design, systems analysis, organisational analysis, knowledge elicitation, modelling, and many more. First this chapter reviews the history of ISD and paradigms, and shows briefly why a new paradigmatic approach might be useful. Then it applies Dooyeweerd's notion of multi-aspectual functioning to understand what goes on in ISD, and derives a tentative framework for understanding it.

A comparison of five alternative approaches to information systems development

The field of information systems (IS) has grown dramatically over the past three decades. Recent trends have transformed the IS landscape. These trends include: the evolution of implementation technology from centralized mainframe environments towards distributed client-server architectures, embracing the internet and intranets; changes in user interface technology from character-based to graphical user interfaces, multimedia, and the World Wide Web; changes in applications from transaction processing systems towards systems supporting collaborative work; and the use of information technology as an enabler of business process reengineering and redesign. These technology changes coupled with changes in organizations and their operating environment, such as the growth of the network and virtual organization, internationalization and globalization of many organizations, intensified global competition, changes in values such as customer orientation (service quality) and Quality of Working Life, have imposed new demands on the development of information systems. These changes have led to an increasing discussion about information systems development (ISO), and in particular, the various methods, tools, methodologies, and approaches for ISD. We believe such discussion has opened the door for new, alternative IS development approaches and methodologies. Our paper takes up this theme by describing five alternative ISD approaches, namely the Interactionist approach, the Speech Act-based approach, Soft Systems Methodology, the Trade Unionist approach, and the Professional Work Practices approach. Despite the fact that most of these approaches have a history of over 15 years, their relevance to IS development is not well recognized in the mainstream of IS practice and research, nor is their institutional status comparable to traditional approaches such as structured analysis and design methods. Therefore we characterize the five approaches as 'alternative' in the sense of alternative to the orthodoxy. The selection of the five approaches is essentially based on the finding that research on ISD approaches and methodologies has been dominated by a single set of philosophical assumptions regarding the nature of the phenomena studied and what constitutes valid knowledge about those phenomena . The idea behind the selection of the five ISD approaches has been to include approaches which challenge the dominant assumptions. These alternative approaches typically build upon radically different conceptions of the goals, meaning, function and processes of ISD. Part of the rationale for our paper is to meet the need of a concise yet penetrating way of introducing alternative ways of system development to a wider audience. The way in which the approaches are introduced, highlights their underlying principles and features. This naturally leads to a critical examination of their strengths and weaknesses. From this angle the paper adds more detail to the earlier work on mapping the terrain of the complex literature on IS development (cf.

Against structured approaches: information requirements analysis as a socially mediated process

Proceedings of the Thirtieth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 1997

Information systems (IS) development approaches are considered with particular reference to information requirements analysis. The majority can be classified as adopting a unitary, objective perspective. This fails to fully recognise the interpretative, inter-subjective nature of information and the importance of informal as well as formal data processing systems. This paper aims to contribute to the discussion on tools and methods for systems development by providing a contrasting perspective on information requirements analysis as a process which is socially mediated. A framework is developed which places information requirements in the context strategic IS development. This features social communication networks centrally in this process and raises implications for practice in IS development.

Information systems development: methodologies, techniques and tools

2003

This paper first provides a historical perspective on approaches to developing infonnation systems and argues that there are major weaknesses associated with the conventional waterfall model and the methodologies which followed. The paper suggests that a contingency approach to information systems development has much to offer and looks at Multiview, which is described as an exploration in infom1ation systems development. Some strengths and weaknesses of this contingency approach an~ highlighted and a new version of Multi view offered. This description enahles a further discussion of infom1ation systems development and suggests that human and organisational aspect are at least as important as the technical ones which tend to he emphasised. Information systems development is seen as first a social process, though it will contain technical aspects. This social process is examined in more detail illustrating the arguments, for example, with different views of the systems analyst and the problem situation in this process. Such a broad approach also suggests that the area of which infom1ation systems development is a part, is multi-disciplinary where technology and computing are hy no means dominant.

Information systems development: Reflections on a discipline

Accounting, Management and Information Technologies, 1996

Any research discipline must reflect on its practices and results. A critical process of self reflection is needed to understand the history, to appreciate similarities and differences between key contributions, and to identify important trends and opportunities for improvement. Research activities oriented towards the discipline itself constitutes an important driving force in improving results and moving the discipline forward. The paper by Hirschheim, Klein, and Lyytinen (henceforth HKL) is therefore welcomed as an important contribution to understanding and improving information systems development (ISD) as our field of interest.

The discipline of information systems: Issues and challenges

This paper explores challenges of the evolution of the concept of Information Systems (IS) and its implications on IS as a discipline. The concept of IS has come a long way since the first 'computer applications' that automated routine, repetitive tasks, up until today's organisation-wide IS, groupware systems and Internetbased IS that mediate communications. Gradually, IS have penetrated into all organisational processes and all aspects of organisational social life and inter-organisational relationships. As a result IS are coming to be considered as social systems, a component of the much wider domain of human language and social interaction. By addressing this dramatic shift from the first idea of the IS as a 'technical system' to the idea of the IS as a 'social system, technologically realised, the paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the emergence of the IS discipline.

Editorial, new trends in information systems development

Information Systems Journal, 2013

Information systems development (ISD), at the core of the information systems discipline, is an evolving field, faced with persistent challenges due to rapidly changing social and business environments as well as emerging technologies and technical infrastructures. Many of these issues have been discussed in the Information Systems Journal (see, for example, Kautz et al., 2007). Developments such as the Web 2.0 based on interactivity and graphical multimedia features, mobile application development for handheld devices, business applications based on standardised software architectures and software-as-services offered as part of a cloud pose new challenges to the development of IS products. Global and distributed organisations, agile software development and the reversal of outsourced and offshored development (insourcing) impact how information systems (IS) are designed, developed and delivered. These trends lead to new or adapted IS products, which have to be developed under new conditions, and these changes add complexity to an already complex problem space wherein, despite 50 years of ISD experience, the perception of the so-called 'software crisis' still persists. Unfinished and runaway projects, information systems poorly aligned with businesses and user requirements, and the resources required to develop ISD are still major concerns. Research in the field is largely fragmented, and practice often seems to be ahead of research. Conversely, where research is indeed ahead, industrial uptake of academic research results is often limited. As a consequence, there is an urgent need for an extant and integrative theory based on extensive, empirical field research. The aim of this special issue is to publish new research, which investigates the new trends in ISD from both a product and a process perspective and which goes beyond surface-level considerations. There is a general paucity of theory-building in ISD research; theory and studies of longitudinal processes of organisation, specialisation and institutionalisation in ISD are needed. Little ISD research goes beyond ISD methods; there is a need for theory and studies about social behaviour and processes of communication, negotiation, and learning and the relation to the broader historical, political and social context of ISD. Finally, there is a paucity of ISD research that relates individual knowledge, learning and sense-making to the broader context; this kind of theory and related studies are also needed. We have therefore called for research addressing questions such as: What are the different types of ISD relating to social, commercial, organisational and technological contexts? How is this diversity dealt

A pragmatic approach to IS development and socio-technical evaluation

2009

This paper provides an action research account of why and how UML use cases and socio-technical analysis were combined and used to support the development of an information system, using Multiview/WISDM as the framework of ideas. Significant learning points from, and the motivation for, the research is that a focus on task satisfaction and socio-technical evaluation, rather than on the broader concept of job satisfaction and a full, traditional socio-technical analysis, was more acceptable in practice as it related more clearly to the IS domain. The paper presents a socio-technical evaluation (STE) process, reflects on its application to a particular web-based project, and makes recommendations for its use in future ISD projects. The STE process consists of a task satisfaction survey (TSS), which draws on use cases as a template for investigating users' perceptions of task efficiency, effectiveness, and enjoyment, supported by qualitative interviews in order to systematically identify, verify, and discuss the users' problems and improvement proposals before and after IT implementation. The use cases constitute the context-specific, development-oriented link between the work system, systems development, and the STE process, which in turn helps ensure that the main goal of supporting and improving the work system through continuous development and deployment of an IT system is kept in mind.

Exploring the intellectual structures of information systems development: A short critique

Accounting, Management and Information Technologies, 1996

In this paper we explore the intellectual structures upon which the field of information systems development (ISD) is cultivated. The conceptual base of our work comes from the social action theories of Habermas and Etzioni. We propose a framework which reconceptualizes the field in terms of domains, orientations, object systems, and development strategies. Our analysis not only justifies the reflection of the field as a so-called "fragmented adhocracy", but also shows why this is so: because IS researchers' mind sets fundamentally differ in terms of how problems are formulated and consequently solved. The intellectual structures of our framework suggest nine conceptual frames which mold these mind sets. Each frame acts as a lens and embraces a different development strategy which distinguishes itself in its dominant orientation of control, sense-making and argumentation, respectively. The framework organizes the field into interrelated sets of intellectual communities, and in so doing, acts as a vehicle for conceptualizing core research issues and identifying future research directions. The paper suggests an intellectual base for penetrating the ambiguities which envelope underresearched islands of ISD.