Revision

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IMS3230 - Information Systems Development
Practices

• Revision
• Semester 2, 2005

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Revision

• what is systems development?
• the activities of systems development
• ISDMs as a structure for development
• the role of the system developer
• the organisational context

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Revision

• implicit and explicit assumptions about
• - the nature of human organisations
• - the nature of the systems development
  process
• - the role of the systems developer
• as embodied in specific SDMs
• frameworks for comparison of SDMs
• paradigms for understanding SDMs

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Revision
the role of the system developer

• the technical expert?
• the facilitator?
• the management change agent?
• the collaborative agent?

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What is a system development methodology?

• A collection of procedures, techniques, tools
  and documentation aids which will help the
  systems developers in their efforts to implement
  a new information system. A methodology will
  consist of phases, themselves consisting of
  sub-phases, which will guide the systems
  developers in their choice of the techniques that
  might be appropriate at each stage of the project
  and also help them plan, manage, control and
  evaluate information systems projects
• Avison and Fitzgerald (2003) p 20
• a methodical approach to information systems
  development used by one or more persons to
  produce a specification or design product by
  performing a design process
• Olle et al (1991) pp 1-2

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Revision

• a methodology must have an underlying philosophy,
  otherwise it is just a method
• - a method
• a prescribed set of tasks
• - a technique
• a way of doing a particular activity in the
  systems development process
• - a tool
• usually automated tools to help systems
  development
• Avison and
  Fitzgerald (2003)

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Evolution of information systems development
methodologies
the traditional systems development approach
(SDLC) structured approaches of the
1970s data-oriented methodologies of the
1980s strategic planning approaches (mid 1970s
and 1980s) soft approaches (SSM, ETHICS) the
1980s information systems development prototypi
ng, CASE tools, database systems,
decentralisation, user participation, end user
computing the 1990s information systems
development object-oriented approaches, reuse,
outsourcing, enterprise planning systems (ERP),
BPR, data warehouses, Internet and intranets,
multimedia
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• the hard or engineering approaches
• a functionalist view tasks, products
• objectives are primarily technical
• a methodology is an abstraction, a
  philosophy on which to base action
• a task list prescriptive, normative

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• the soft approaches
• interpretivist a subjective view of reality
• the broad socio-organisational context
• systems development is a social process
• ill-structured, complex problem situations

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• Frameworks
• for describing the concept of a methodology
• e.g. the meta-model of Olle et al (1991)
• for describing a specific methodology
• e.g. the system lifecycle
• for comparing and / or evaluating methodologies
• e.g. feature analyses
• analyses of results of using methodologies

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information systems development methodologies

• Structured Analysis
• Information Engineering
• Soft Systems Methodology
• ETHICS
• SSADM

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using a methodology
Analyst
Methodology
Situation
Avison and Wood-Harper (1990)
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the organisational context

• organisational culture - role, influence,
  management
• introducing and managing change -
• new information systems, new information
  technologies
• targets for change, resistance to change
• a model of the change process

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Revision
ways of improving quality and/or productivity

• user participation
• JAD/JRP sessions
• prototyping
• CASE technology
• reuse
• rapid application development
• outsourcing
• application packages/ ERP systems

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Revision topics

• Role and purpose of ISDMs benefits and
  limitations
• User participation
• Prototyping
• CASE tools
• RAD
• Organisational change
• Outsourcing
• Application packages
• Evaluating ISDMs
• An ISDM focusing on technological dimension and
  ISDM focusing on human dimension