Investigation of current

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Information Systems Development
Feasibility Study
Requirements Analysis
Investigation of current Environment
Business systems options
Requirements Specification
Definition of requirements
Logical Systems Specification
Technical system options
Logical Design
Physical Design
Physical Design
Implementation
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Information Systems Development
An information systems development methodology
can be defined as a collection of procedures,
techniques, tools and documentation aids which
will help the systems developers in their efforts
to implement a new information system.
PEOPLE
we have already seen that an evaluation of the
value of different methodologies, the framework
proposed by Avison Fitzgerald, involves
PHILOSOPHICAL considerations - those on which the
methodology is based. This aspect can be as
important, possibly more so, when we consider the
viewpoint, the Weltanschauung, of the people
involved with information systems development.
This does not only include developers, but the
users and the clients as well.
Avison Fitzgerald (1995). Information Systems
Development Methodologies, techniques and tools.
2nd Edition. p10
Weltanschauung world view
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an IS contains the raw data of an organisation
Information Systems Development
FACTS
An information systems development methodology
can be defined as a collection of procedures,
techniques, tools and documentation aids which
will help the systems developers in their efforts
to implement a new information system.
facts are transformed into information, which
should be
RELEVANT TIMELY ACCURATE VERIFIABLE

• The information provided should
• improve the decision
• be recent enough to be useful
• be error free (and bias free)
• accuracy confirmed by audit trail

Avison Fitzgerald (1995). Information Systems
Development Methodologies, techniques and tools.
2nd Edition. p10
4
Information Systems Development
people go about accumulating facts and
transforming them into information by processes
of
An information systems development methodology
can be defined as a collection of procedures,
techniques, tools and documentation aids which
will help the systems developers in their efforts
to implement a new information system.
COMMUNICATION
such as
interviews questionnaires reading
documents preparing documents diagrams meetings di
alogues
Avison Fitzgerald (1995). Information Systems
Development Methodologies, techniques and tools.
2nd Edition. p10
5
2. FACTS
RELEVANT TIMELY ACCURATE VERIFIABLE
Information Systems Development
Is ISD only a three-strand project?
1. PEOPLE
the viewpoint, the Weltanschauung, of the people
involved with information systems development.
This does not only include developers, but the
users and the clients as well.
3. COMMUNICATION
interviews questionnaires reading
documents preparing documents diagrams meetings di
alogues
is programming something different?
6
Lets address each in turn in more detail
1. PEOPLE
We cannot divorce the way we think about the
world, about our own being, from the way that we
do our job or the purposes of work. Indeed, what
we believe are the purposes and origins of all
actions.
equally, we are not operating in isolation, in a
void, working on a blank canvas on which we can
create any such thing that individually we may
imagine or might find suitable.
we are working within a tradition and culture
which limits our freedom, either knowingly or
hidden behind our taken-for-granted assumptions
about the way things are.
Weltanschauung world view
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The search for natural laws as long been seen as
the central task of science, at least since
Newton. But the way scientists were supposed to
proceed was first systematically described by
Francis Bacon (17th C)
...the method of critically testing theories, and
selecting them according to the results of tests,
always proceeds on the following lines. From a
new idea, put up tentatively, and not yet
justified in any way, conclusions are drawn by
means of logical deduction. These conclusions
are then compared with one another and with other
relevant statements, so as to find what logical
relations (such as equivalence, derivability,
compatibility, or incompatibility) exist between
them.
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The Logic of Scientific Discovery by Karl R.
Popper
I shall certainly admit a system as empirical or
scientific only if it is capable of being tested
by experience. These considerations suggest that
not the verifiability but the falsifiability of a
system is to be taken as the criterion of
demarcation.
in my view there is no such thing as induction.
Thus inference to theories (whatever that may
mean), is logically inadmissible.
My proposal is based upon an asymmetry between
verifiability and falsifiability an asymmetry
which results from the logical form of universal
statements for these can be contradicted by
singular statements.
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Bacon and Popper are both, however, very much a
part of the rationalistic tradition
SCIENTISTS
The rationalistic tradition
Much of Western philosophy can be seen as a drive
to come up with more systematic and precise
formulations of just what constitutes valid
reasoning - and this is closely tied to the
scientific method

• characterise the situation in terms of
  identifiable objects with well-defined properties
• find general rules that apply to situations in
  terms of those objects and properties
• Apply the rules logically to the situation of
  concern, drawing conclusions about what should be
  done

NOT ONLY THAT, BUT
A rationalistic orientation is regarded as the
very paradigm of what it means to think and be
intelligent.
information systems development largely follows
this rationalist tradition
But should it?
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consider the following
2. FACTS
Imagine that you are chairing a meeting of 15 or
so people, at which some important and
controversial issue is to be decided. As the
meeting goes on you must keep things going in a
productive direction, deciding whom to call on,
when to cut a speaker off, when to call for an
end of discussion or a vote, and so forth. There
are forcefully expressed differences of opinion,
and if you don't take a strong role the
discussion will quickly deteriorate into a
shouting match dominated by the loudest, who will
keep repeating their own fixed positions in hopes
of wearing everyone else down.
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2. FACTS
all these are not facts - they are
interpretations of the meeting.
what are the facts in such a meeting?
you were the chair it was a meeting 15
people present discussion on systems
development took place a variety of speakers
presented a vote was taken no shouting
match developed a consensus was reached a
new IS as outlined in the draft document was
agreed.
and some are noticeably negative interpretations
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you were the chair it was a meeting 15
people present discussion on systems
development took place a variety of speakers
presented a vote was taken no shouting
match developed a consensus was reached a
new IS as outlined in the draft document was
agreed.
but some of them could look like objective facts
because they recur in individual accounts

• 15 people in the meeting?
• has a signature list gone ALL the way round?
• were there a number of votes in which 15 votes
  were always counted?

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The meeting and decision making
You cannot avoid acting - whatever you do is an
action, even doing nothing
In a discussion, any notion of What needs to be
done?, is always already oriented in a certain
direction of possibilities
You cannot reflect on your actions
and a space of possible actions is revealed and
others concealed - an exclusionary bias exists
The effect of actions is unpredictable
Language is action
Nietzsche Life is lived forwards and understood
backwards
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2. FACTS
the rationalistic view accepts the existence of
an objective reality made up of things bearing
properties and entering into relations. A
cognitive being gathers information about those
things and builds up a mental model which will
be in some respects correct (a faithful
representation of reality).
BUT can things exist out there independently
of interpretation - is there really a difference
between the reflective, knowing subject and a
separable object?
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this is important, because of what computers
generally do
2. FACTS
computers manipulate symbolic representations
that some person generated on the belief that
they corresponded to facts
for example
there was a good deal of hindsight analysis of
the disastrous results for the US Military in
Vietnam having placed their faith in computer
analyses based on highly distorted and even
fabricated facts
the facts were not necessarily
fabricated, consciously or unconsciously
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• sentences say things about the world, and can be
  either true or false
• what a sentence says about the world is a
  function of the words it contains and the
  structures into which these are combined
• the content of words in a sentence can be taken
  as denoting objects, properties or relationships
  in the world, or sets of these

3. COMMUNICATION
The rationalistic tradition and language
The rationalist tradition regards language as a
system of symbols that are composed into patterns
that stand for things in the world - ultimately
they are grounded in a correspondence with the
state of affairs they represent. This concept of
correspondence can be summarised as
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• sentences say things about the world, and can be
  either true or false
• what a sentence says about the world is a
  function of the words it contains and the
  structures into which these are combined
• the content of words in a sentence can be taken
  as denoting objects, properties or relationships
  in the world, or sets of these

3. COMMUNICATION
If I give you this one assumption, this lecture
started at 12.30 and finishes at 13.30, answer
the following simple question
The question
Was I wearing a tie when I came in this morning?
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• the I is probably Peter Rawlings as I
  notionally posed the question by putting up the
  slide - but I didnt actually say the words

3. COMMUNICATION
Assuming this lecture ran from 12.30 to 13.30

• when I came in is referring to entering this
  lecture room because it is unlikely any of those
  present now were present when I entered UWE
  initially

Answer this simple question
Was I wearing a tie when I came in this morning?

• this morning is sometime between dawn and
  midday, and yet this lecture started at 12.30pm
  so this was a loose definition of morning

Your reply, either YES or NO, is heavily
dependent on a common understanding of the
question

• a tie is a piece of cloth worn around the
  neck, mainly by men, usually under the collar of
  a shirt. However, it could be any restraint I
  cycle to work so I wear one on each leg to stop
  my trousers getting dirty

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Martin HEIDEGGER
Information Systems Development
1. PEOPLE 2. FACTS 3. COMMUNICATION
Knowledge is always the result of
interpretation, which depends on the entire
previous experience of the interpreter and
situatedness in a tradition.
is the existence of facts and the communication
between individuals based on an objective reality
as the rationalist tradition requires?
everything we say is said against the background
of experience and tradition, and makes sense only
with respect to it.
OR
are facts and communication (the meaning of
language) all based on people?
Sein und Zeit (1927)
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objectivitysubjectivity
Rationalism based on Galileo and Descartes -
Plato and Aristotle before. Rationalists accept
the mind-body dualism - there is an objective
world of physical reality, and a subjective
mental world of individual thoughts and feelings.
Heidegger rejects both the simple objective
stance (the objective physical world is the
primary reality) and the simple subjective stance
(my thoughts and feelings are the primary
reality), arguing instead that it is impossible
for one to exist without the other.
The interpreted and the interpreter do not exist
independently existence is interpretation and
interpretation is existence. Separation of
subject and object denies the more fundamental
unity of being-in-the-world
Heidegger in Sein und Zeit (1927)
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understanding
Western philosophical tradition is based on the
assumption that the detached theoretical point of
view is superior to the involved practical
viewpoint. The scientist or philosopher who
devises theories is discovering how thing really
are, while in everyday life we have only a
clouded idea.
Heidegger reverses this, insisting that we have
primary access to the world through practical
involvement with the ready-to-hand - the world in
which we are always acting unreflectively.
Detached contemplation can be illuminating, but
obscures phenomena by isolating and categorising
them.
we have primary access to the world through
practical involvement in actions
Heidegger in Sein und Zeit (1927)
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prejudice
"It is not so much our judgements as it is our
prejudices that constitute our being the
historicity of our existence, entails that
prejudices, in the literal sense of the word,
constitute the initial directedness of our whole
ability to experience. Prejudices are biases of
our openness to the world. They are simply
conditions whereby we experience something -
whereby what we encounter says something to us."
Gadamer (1976), Philosophical hermeneutics
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prejudice
Heidegger argues that the practices, in terms of
which we render the world and our own lives
intelligible, cannot be made exhaustively
explicit. There is no neutral viewpoint from
which we can see our beliefs as things, since we
always operate within the framework they provide.

Heidegger in Sein und Zeit (1927)
This does not negate the importance of trying to
gain greater understanding of our own assumptions
so that we can expand our horizons, but this will
never be objective and will always be incomplete.
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is programming something different?
... programmers are making commitments through
formalisation of their representations of
recurring situations which arise in a business.
A person writing a program does so within a
background of assumptions about how the program
will be used, and how its responses will be
interpreted.
Part of this can be made explicit in
documentation, but part is an implicit background
of what can be normally understood (see "Keeping
it simple" by Donald Norman).
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is programming something different?
Inevitably there will a breakdown because the
system is being used in a way that does not fit
the assumptions.
Concealment of the commitment of the programmer
to the dialogue performed by the programs in the
computer leads to an illusion of objectivity.
Since the "facts" stored by the computer cannot
be readily associated with a commitment by an
individual, it is easy to be blind to the nature
of their origin.
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an IS contains the raw data of an organisation
Information Systems Development
FACTS
facts are transformed into information, which
should be
RELEVANT TIMELY ACCURATE VERIFIABLE

• The information provided should
• improve the decision
• be recent enough to be useful
• be error free (and bias free)
• accuracy confirmed by audit trail

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Data Analysis?
the theory of data analysis embodies
objectivist assumptions of an independent reality
composed of entities, attributes and
relationshipsan independent existing reality is
thus accepted as both the ultimate source of
knowledge for creating a data model, and the
means by which the integrity of the correctness
of a data model may be validated
PEOPLE
Lewis (1994). Information Systems Development.
Published by Pitman
FACTS
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The starting point for thinking about information
systems must therefore be thinking about the
organisational activities that the information
system is to serve
Data Analysis?
PEOPLE
the concept of adaptation tells us
that business activities will be continually
changing
managing the relationship between information
systems and business activities over time is
needed to match the information provided by the
serving information system to the information
needs of the served organisation and its members.
FACTS
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Lewis is clearly influenced by Soft Systems
Methodology thinking the methodology developed
by Peter Checkland (Systems Thinking Systems
Practice)
PEOPLE
because of the kind of thinking it entails, IT
is not simply a new tool it stirs things up,
introduces uncertainties, gets people perceiving
their world in a new way.
Checkland Holwell (1999). Information, Systems
and Information Systems.
FACTS
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gets people perceiving their world in a new way
Which may well not be free of technological
concerns or implementation-independent
PEOPLE
FACTS
Technology and implementation models may be part
of our culture now and this may easily be
influencing our conceptions of the world.
Although database modellers have striven hard to
build implementation independent models, the
truth is that implementation capabilities do
affect business models
Are we now structuring the world in terms of what
could be stored in a computer viewing the world
in terms of the way we conceive a computer works?
Dorsey Hudicka (1999). Oracle 8 design using
UML object modeling.