Pitfalls in Analyzing Systems in Organizations

Journal of Information Systems Education, Fall 2006 by Alter, Steven

ABSTRACT

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 representative of the types of business professionals who are involved in systems in organizations, it is plausible that the major types of pitfalls demonstrated by their papers are representative of common pitfalls that contribute to disappointing results with systems. An examination of 202 group papers submitted by evening MBA and EMBA students between 1997 and 2003 revealed pitfalls in 9 categories related to system and information definition, performance measurement, treatment of personal and organizational issues, susceptibility to techno-hype and jargon, inadequate critical thinking, and difficulty applying abstractions and formal methods. This paper illustrates these pitfalls using examples from student papers. Assuming that typical business professionals encounter the same types of pitfalls, both MBA programs and analysis and design methods should provide concepts and techniques that help in identifying and minimizing the related problems.

Keywords: Pitfalls in analyzing systems, Systems analysis by business professionals, Information system education, Introductory information systems course

1. IMPORTANCE OF SYSTEMS ANALYSIS PITFALLS

Why is the success rate of system-related projects so abysmal? Every other year the Standish Group publishes a new study showing that fewer than a third of IT-projects are completely successful and many are complete failures, (e.g., Standish Group, 2004) One frequently encounters claims that a substantial percentage of CRM projects or ERP projects or outsourcing projects are partial or total failures. New technologies encounter surprisingly long assimilation gaps. (Fichman and Kemerer, 1999)

One of many reasons for these problems is that business professionals are often ineffective in communicating with IT professionals, identifying system-related problems, determining system requirements, and implementing systems in their organizations. Starting around 1992 I decided that my introductory IS courses should address these problems by focusing on how business professionals can think about systems for themselves. Just as they can memorize IT-related jargon, students can easily memorize the steps for analyzing a system and can discuss those steps in the abstract. It is much more challenging for them to use those steps in an open-ended situation that has not been pre-digested as a published a case study. My IS courses address this challenge directly because I believe that the ability to start analyzing systems from a business viewpoint is the most important thing MBA and EMBA students can learn from an introductory IS course.

As a way to think about systems, my courses teach students about the work system method (Alter 2002; 2006), which focuses on the work system whose performance is to be improved as a result of the analysis. Examples of work systems include a firm's systems for hiring people, finding sales prospects, designing products, manufacturing products, and developing an annual plan. The work system method is organized around nine elements that can be used to describe any work system. The first four are components of the work system, including the work practices, participants, information, and technology within the system. Five additional elements round out a basic understanding of any system in an organization: the products and services produced, the customers, environment, infrastructure, and strategy.

2. DATA AND METHOD

To accomplish the goals of these introductory courses, each course required students to write two group papers. The first paper developed and justified tentative recommendations for system improvements based on a preliminary analysis of a real world system in an organization. The second focused on processes through which real world systems change or are supported. Starting in 1997 I began requesting that students submit electronic versions of their major papers. This helped in the continuing development of ideas for understanding and analyzing systems from a business viewpoint.

This article is based on examples culled from 202 group papers submitted between 1997 and 2003. Over 90% of these papers concern a real world system at a group member's employer. Thus, the papers were not attempts to assemble material from the Web or to analyze an existing case study. The use of group papers had many effects. Students working together sometimes clarified each other's ideas and generated better analyses than would have appeared in individual papers. However, management of writing and reviewing processes was often haphazard in student teams. Some papers did not hang together well due to poor writing skills, inadequate review, and/or interpersonal conflicts within the teams.