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Using The Work System Method With Freshman Information System Students, Steven Alter
Using The Work System Method With Freshman Information System Students, Steven Alter
Business Analytics and Information Systems
To date, the use of the work system method in information systems curricula has demonstrated that postgraduate students can benefit from this approach when examining a business situation involving an information system. To contrast the experiences of post-graduate students with work experiences, in this paper we report on use of a simplified version of the Work System Method in a freshman Information Systems course and study how students without work or technical knowl-edge performed when analyzing IT-reliant work systems in business settings. We reflect on an introductory information systems course that included a work system analysis assignment, and we examine …
Pitfalls In Analyzing Systems In Organizations, Steven Alter
Pitfalls In Analyzing Systems In Organizations, Steven Alter
Business Analytics and Information Systems
Despite the availability of elaborate methods for defining data and business processes, huge amounts of time and effort are wasted on system projects that produce disappointing results. An important contributing factor is the difficulty business and IT professionals experience when they try to describe, evaluate, and/or analyze systems in organizations even at a cursory level. Between 1997 and 2003, the author's information system courses for evening MBAs and EMBAs required students to write two group papers that present a business-oriented analysis of a real world system in an organization and propose preliminary recommendations for improvements. If these working students are …
Which Life Cycle -- Work System, Information System, Or Software?, Steven Alter
Which Life Cycle -- Work System, Information System, Or Software?, Steven Alter
Business Analytics and Information Systems
This article presents the work system life cycle (WSLC) model, according to which a work system, an information system, or a software product passes through one or more iterations of four phases: initiation, development, implementation, and operation and maintenance. Although this descriptive model is both clear enough to understand readily and specific eno ugh to apply easily, it encompasses a variety of other models commonly used to describe information system life cycles, organizational change processes, projects, and the life cycles of software products. The explicit inclusion of both an operation and maintenance phase and iterations allows it to cover both …
Are The Fundamental Concepts Of Information Systems Mostly About Work Systems?, Steven Alter
Are The Fundamental Concepts Of Information Systems Mostly About Work Systems?, Steven Alter
Business Analytics and Information Systems
Audience comments about a debate at ICIS200 [Alter et al., 2001] related to ebusiness and the fundamental concepts of information systems noted that the debate was undercut by the lack of agreement about what are the fundamental concepts. As a follow-on to that debate, this article proposes a set of fundamental concepts for information systems. While there is no bullet-proof way to prove that a particular set of concepts captures what is truly fundamental within a diverse and rapidly evolving field, the attempt to identify these concepts challenges the reader to ask “If this isn’t the way to identify fundamental …