Business Commons^™

Facets Of Work: Enriching The Description, Analysis, Design, And Evaluation Of Systems In Organizations, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

This conceptual contribution introduces the idea of “facets of work” and explains how it can be applied to challenges in today’s IS discipline. The notion of facets of work emerged from earlier attempts to bring more knowledge and richer, more evocative ideas to SA&D. Focusing on facets of work during initial discussions of requirements could provide guidance without jumping prematurely to details, precision, and formal notation needed for producing testable software. The introduction explains the paper’s goal and organization. The next section defines facet of work, identifies underlying assumptions and criteria, and explains how 18 facets of work were identified. …

Ten Lightweight Sa&D Tools Based On Work System Theory And Its Extensions, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

This paper illustrates ten lightweight SA&D tools that could support initial deliberations about system requirements and subsequent sanity checking for high-level designs and for proposed functions and features. The tools are as relevant to agile development as to other approaches related to work systems in organizations. A brief introduction to the work system perspective leads to a section that illustrates ten SA&D tools based directly on work system theory or its extensions. The tools are applied to the same situation, a hiring system at a technical firm. These tools are not part of established SA&D pedagogy or practice. This paper’s …

Applying Facets Of Work As A Source Of Knowledge And Insight For Requirements Determination, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

This conceptual contribution explains how the idea of “facets of work” can bring more knowledge and richer, more evocative ideas to the development of system requirements in organizational settings. Focusing on facets of work potentially provides useful guidance without requiring unnecessary details, precision, and notation. A background section summarizes how the current research emerged from partial overlaps between separate research efforts. Table 1 identifies 18 facets of work. Five other tables look at a subset of the facets to illustrate concepts associated with specific facets, common success factors and tradeoffs, sub-facets and other topics. Use of the same subset of …

Overcoming Silo Thinking In The Is Discipline By Thinking Differently About Is And It, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

This essay challenges fundamental, silo-oriented assumptions about the IS discipline. It shows how work system theory and its extensions form a potential basis for overcoming that silo-orientation and finding and exploiting areas of overlap with other disciplines. Within the IS discipline, this paper shows how WST and extensions provide a basis for thinking differently about fundamental topics including the following: IS as a system-related discipline, system usage, sociotechnical systems, planned and emergent change in systems, system development and systems analysis and design, user participation and IS/IT projects, attaining value from IS and IT, IS success, business/IT alignment, and IS theories …

A Workaround Design System For Anticipating, Designing, And/Or Preventing Workarounds, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

Idealized system design produces requirements reflecting management intentions and “best practices.” This paper proposes a workaround design system (WDS) for anticipating, designing, and/or preventing workarounds that bypass systems as designed. A WDS includes a process and an interactive “workaround design tool” (WDT) for identifying and evaluating foreseeable workarounds based on work system theory and a theory of workarounds. This paper summarizes the conceptual background and explains the form, use, and implications of the proposed WDS and WDT.

The idea of WDS addresses significant gaps in practice and research. Designers should have methods for identifying likely obstacles and anticipating and evaluating …

Incorporating More System-Related Knowledge Into Systems Analysis And Design, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

This paper introduces a new, intuitively straightforward approach for thinking about important aspects of systems that are being analyzed, designed, and constructed. Building on past research highlighting metaphors related to organizations, IS, and projects, it shows how considering common, broadly applicable types of subsystems (not standard IS categories such as MIS and DSS) might provide direction, insight, and useful methods for analysis and design practitioners and researchers. A conceptual model identifies eight types of subsystems that are relevant to most systems in organizations. For each subsystem type, this paper identifies relevant metaphors, concepts, theories, methodologies, success criteria, design tradeoffs, and …

A Broad View Of Systems Analysis And Design, Steven Alter, Glenn J. Browne

Business Analytics and Information Systems

This article presents a broad view of systems analysis and design (SA&D) research. Although SA&D is a critical area of research in the information systems field, relatively little such research has been published in leading IS journals. To point toward increased research opportunities for SA&D work, this article presents a framework that illustrates the broad range of activities within the SA&D area. This framework contrasts with narrower views that consider SA&D to be concerned primarily with software development. The framework positions SA&D activities in a two-dimensional space. We identify theoretical and practical research issues that apply across the full range …