The World of Information Systems

The World of Information Systems:  

Let us first consider the world of information systems practice, focusing on methods and techniques that have been in use since before the Internet.

What kinds of tasks and processes do information systems professionals engage in? What products do the processes produce? What quality concerns drive their daily work and improvement initiatives? How is the division of work organized among professional specialties, and within and across project organizations and industry sectors? Which areas of work can be automated, and which are retained as human tasks?

 Processes

The predominant overarching organizing concept in most information systems curricula is that of the system development lifecycle

The overall process of creating and deploying an information system is broken down into a number of well-defined interdependent processes. These typically include planning, requirements elicitation, analysis, specification, design, implementation, operations and support, maintenance and evolution. Verification and validation, including testing, is another set of activities that needs to be carried out in parallel with the main production processes. Some of the lifecycle activities involve participation from users and stakeholders. For example, technical feasibility and business priorities and risks are reviewed at predefined checkpoints. When externally provided components or subsystems are involved, there are processes for procurement and integration. Processes are also needed to manage the information content –during system development, as in defining the schemas, and during operation, as in ensuring information quality [Vassiliadis et al., 2001].

Systematic process is therefore a central concept in the field, imported initially from practices in large scale engineering projects. The systematic approach is used to control budget, schedule, resources, and opportunities to change course, e.g., to reduce scope, or to realign priorities. Nevertheless, lack of systematic process continues to be a concern, as a contributing factor to poor quality or failure of software and information systems. Substantial efforts are used to institutionalize good practices in processes, through standards, assessment and certification, and process improvement initiatives (e.g., Capability Maturity Model Integrated (CMMI) [Chrissi et al., 2003], ISO 9000 [ISO, 1992]).

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