Pitfalls in Analyzing Systems in Organizations

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

3.9 Difficulty Applying Abstractions and Formal Methods

Many topics covered in business courses related to systems are abstractions related to concepts such as system, information, and process, which themselves are abstractions. Formal methods such as DFDs and ERDs involve the creation of abstractions using particular symbols and rules. Teaching abstractions and formal methods to non-technical MBAs and EMBAs often takes a surprising amount of time and effort. Possible reasons for these difficulties include lack of appreciation or interest in formal methods and preference for concrete examples rather than abstractions.

In introductory IS courses most MBAs and EMBAs quickly grasp the way an ERD describes the logical structure of a relational database, but without substantial practice they often have difficulty creating meaningful ERDs. The earlier group papers in the sample contained at least five examples of DFDs and ERDs that demonstrated a poor understanding of what these techniques try to accomplish. Around 2000 I concluded that attaining good results with these techniques would have required three or four times the amount of class time that I believed the topic deserved. I decided to cover ERDs in database examples and classroom discussions but to stop asking the students to produce ERDs in their group papers.

In contrast to ERDs, an example of a comparatively simple abstraction is the work system framework that forms the basis of the work system method (Alter, 2002; Alter 2006), various versions of which were used in the student papers. The first step in using the work system method is to summarize the situation in terms of nine elements mentioned earlier. The challenges of defining a system were discussed in several previous sections, but even applications of the individual terms in the model are sometimes problematic.

Example: System for granting credit to customers. An analysis of how a small manufacturer granted credit to its customers identified commercial credit reports as the product of the system. Those commercial credit reports were the products of organizations in the business of producing those reports, but for the work system of granting credit, the credit reports should be treated as information used within the work system.

4. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

This paper cited 9 types of pitfalls encountered by teams of evening MBA and EMBA students attempting to analyze real world systems in the organizations they work in. At least half of these students had five or more years of business experience and are therefore reasonably representative of the types of individuals who may need to make decisions about systems in organizations or who may serve as user representatives on committees devoted to building or maintaining systems in organizations. As a representation of the categories and extent of the difficulties that typical business professionals encounter the examples presented here are actually just the tip of the iceberg. All of these examples come from students who are ambitious enough to study for an MBA, who are part way through a course in information systems, and who have received some form of feedback about likely problems related to a proposed topic for a group paper. Typical business professionals attempting to understand a system by themselves or attempting to collaborate with IT professionals do not have the same advantages, but still face the same pitfalls and perhaps others.