The new edition of From Inquiry to Academic Writing encompasses an even greater range of academic habits and skills, with new readings for both print and digital channels that showcase the very latest interdisciplinary and cultural conversations.
Author: A Practical Guide. From Inquiry to Academic Writing aids both students and teachers with a practical and now widely proven step-by-step approach that effectively demystifies cross-curricular thinking and writing. As an answer to these criticisms. The second is to improve the traditional waterfall model hy the inclusion of techniques and tools along with improved training so as to reduce the potcntial impact of thcse prohlems.
A third movement is the proposal of ncw methodology thcmcs and mcthodologies which are very different to the traditional waterfall model. We will look at each of these in turn. A chosen methodology may not have been appropriate for the organisation and there has been a backlash against formalised methodologies.
Their use has not always led to productivity gains. Methodologies have also been criticised for being over complex, for requiring significant people skills and expensive tools, and being inllexible and difficult to adopt. More fundamentally, it has frequently heen found that the existence of a methodology standard in an organisation leads to its unthinking implementation and to a focus on following its procedures to the exclusion of the real needs of the project heing developed.
In other words, the methodology ohscures the important issues. De Grace and Stahl have temled this 'goal displacement' and talk ahout the severe prohlem of 'slavish adherence to the methodology'. Wastell talks about the 'fetish of technique' which inhibits creative thinking. He takes this further and suggests that the application of a methodology in this way is the functioning of methodology 'as a highly sophisticated social device for containing the acute and potentially overwhelming pressures of systems development'.
He is suggesting that systems development is such a difficult and stressful process, that developers often take refuge in the intense application of the methOdology in all its detail as a way of dealing with these difficulties.
Developers can he seen to he working hard and diligently, hut this is in reality goal displacement activity hecause they are avoiding the real prohlems of effectively developing the required system. Users, analysLs and managers thus lind that the great hopes of some in the s that methodologies would solve most of the problems of information systems development have not come to pass and this has led some to reject methodologies completely and others to use them as a social defence only.
Techniques incorporated include entity-relationship modelling, normalisation, data now diagramming and entity life cycles. Tools include project management software, data dictionary software, drawing tools and computer- assisted software engineering CASE tools. The incorporation of these developments address some of the criticisms discussed in section 1. The data modelling techniques suggest that the waterfall models now are more halanced hetween process and data modelling rather than having a purely process modelling emphasis.
The documentation has improved, thanks to the use of drawing and CASE tools, and it is Illore likely to he kept up to date and he more understandable by non-coillputer people. Although these improvements have brought the hasic model up to date. All these approaches address some of the weaknesses of the traditional waterfall model and have been adopted by organisations. However, many users find some of them either unnecessarily complicated, expensive in skills required and tools used and difficult to adopt or.
Most methodologies are designed for situations which follow a stated or unstated 'ideal type'. The methodology provides a step-by-step prescription for addressing this ideal type. However, situations are all different and there is no such thing as an 'ideal type' in reality. Situations differ depending on, for example, their complexity and structuredness, type and rate of change in the organisation, the numbers of users affected, their skills, and those of the analysts.
Further, most methodology lIsers expect to follow a step-by-step, top-down approach to information systems development where they carry out a series of iterations through to project implementation. In reality. Similarly, particular techniques and tools may he used differently or not used at all in different circumstances.
A contingency approach is therefore suggested as a more realistic and useful methodology. It is a contingency framework in that it will he adapted according to the particular situation in the organisation.
The authors arc concerned to show that information systems development theories should be contingent rather than prescriptive, hecause the skills of different analysts and the situations in which they arc constrained to work always has to be taken into account in any project. Each application of Multi view forms a new and original methodology. There are potential problems of the contingent approach and in examining Multiview, these potential criticisms ought to he considered.
First, some of the henefits of standardisation might be lost. Second, there is a wide range of different skills that are required to handle many approaches.
Third, the selection of approach requires experience and skills to make the hest judgements. Fourth, they implicitly or explicitly follow a waterfall model and therefore they suffer the same criticisms of that approach. Finally, authors have suggcstCtj that any com hi nation of approachcs is untenahle hccause each has different philosophics and thercforc cannot hc hlended.
Information systems dcvelopmcnt is pcrceivcd as a hyhlid process involving computer specialists, who will build the system, and users, for whom the system is being built, with the hclp of a mcthodology. The methodology looks at hoth the human and technical aspects of information systems development. It is a contingency approach in that it will be adaptcd according to the particular situation in the organisation. The authors are concerned to show that information systems development theories should he contingent rather than prescriptive, hecause tile skills or dirrcrcnt analysts and the situations in which they are constrained to work always has to he taken into account in any project.
Avison and Wood-Harper 19X descrihe Muitiview as an exploration in information systems development. It thcrefore scts out to he t1exihlc: a particular technique or aspect of the methodology will work in certain situations but is not advised for others.
The authors of Multiview claim, however, that it is not simply a hotchpotch of available techniques and tools, but an approach which has been tested and works in practice. It is also 'multi-view' in the sense that it takes account of the fact that as an information systems project develops, it takes on different perspectives or views: organisational, technical, human-orientated, social, economic and so on. They incorporate five different views which are appropriate to the progressive development of an analysis ami design project, covering all aspects required to answer the vital questions of users.
These five views are necessary to form a system which is complete in both technical and human telms. The five stages move from the general to the specific, from the conceptual to hard fact and from issue to task. Outputs of each stage either become inputs to following stages or are major outputs of the methodology.
The authors argue that to be complete in human as well as in technical terms, the methodology must provide help in answering the following questions: 1. How is the computer system supposed to further the aims of the organisation installing it? How can it be titted into the working lives of the people in the organisation that are going to use it? How can the individuals concerned best relate to the machine in tenns of operating it and using the output from it?
What information system processing function is the system to perform? What is the technical specitication of a system that will come close enough to doing the things that have been written down in the answers to the other four questions'?
Multiview attempts to address all these questions and to involve all the role players or stakeholders in answering these questions. The distinction between issue and task is important because it is too easy to concentrate on tasks when computerising, and to overlook important issues which need to be resolved.
Too often, issues are ignored in the nrsh to 'computerise'. Issue-related aspects, in particular those OCCUlTing at stage 1 of Multiview, are concerned with debate on the definition of system requirements in the broadest sense, that is 'what real world problems is the system to solve?
The system, once created, is not just a computer system, it is also composed of people performing jobs. Q1- How is the information System supposed to further the aims of the organisation using it? Q2 - How can it be fitted into the working lives of the people in the org:lnisation using it? Q3 - How can the individuals concerned best relate to the computer in terms of operating it anci. Q4 - What information processing function is the system to perform?
Figure 1 The Multiview framework version I One representation of the methodology is shown in figure 1. Working from the outside in, we see an increasing concentration or focus, an increase in structure and the progressive development of an information system. This diagram also shows how the five questions outlined above have been incorporated into the five stages of Mulliview.
The first stage looks at the organisation - its main purpose, prohlem themes, and the creation of a statement ahout what the information system will be and what it will do. Possible changes are debated and agendas drawn up for change. The second stage is to analyse the entities and functions of the problem situation described in stage one.
This is carried out independently of how the system will he developed. The functional modelling and entity-relationship modelling round in most methodologies arc suggested as modelling techniques. The philosophy behind the third stage is that people have a hasic right to control their own destinies and that if they arc allowed to participate in the analysis and design of the systems that they will be using, then implementation, acceptance and operation of the system will be enhanced.
Thanks a lot Author. Well structured textbook on organisation design. It porvides the guidepath for analysing the current OrgDesign characteristics of business units, indentification the misfits discrepancies of the current OrgDesighn status, which can cause the perforamnce decline, and recommendation on how to deal with such misfits.
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