Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Take a look at one aspect that is important to software development:
the objective of avoiding miscommunication. Miscommunication can be
expensive. It can lead to rework and delays. In some instances, it can
result in irreparable damage to the product delivered or a business
relationship.
What compounds the problem is that, in many situations, one is not
even aware that a miscommunication has occurred until its effects are
seen at some later stage. A good communication plan or strategy, therefore,
should include feedback or evaluation cycles. Communication is, at the
minimum, a two-way street.
Communication Models
Communication and human discourse have been modeled for ages. All
good models are abstractions and must be recognized as such.
One of the most influential communication models comes from Infor-
mation and Communications Theory. It was designed in 1949 by Claude
Shannon, an engineer for the Bell Telephone Company, to study the
problem of transmitting messages efficiently. The terms and concepts
related to this subject have specific engineering meanings that are different
from their common English usage. A message is a set of signals for
transmission, and no meaning is assumed. The objective is to ensure that
a message transmits correctly and efficiently. Some of the definitions and
findings resulting from this model are counter-intuitive. If understood
properly, there are findings and points of interest that can map to many
areas in software design and development.
Information is the measure of uncertainty in a system. There is more
uncertainty if there are more choices in the messages that can be sent.
When there is a lot of uncertainty, one needs more information to minimize
the uncertainty. Another way of looking at it is that messages that are
infrequent, which have a low probability of occurring, have more infor-
mational value. If a computer job runs every day correctly, and one gets
a daily message saying that it ran properly, then a message that the job
failed is a “surprising” message that carries more information because it
is a less frequently occurring event. Report designers use this concept to
design reports that highlight exceptions because such information gets
more attention.
Noise is anything that significantly interferes with receiving the mes-
sage. There are encoding and decoding techniques designed to overcome
the effects of such noise — that is, recover the original message sent
through a noisy channel with some calculable degree of certainty. For
example, if one is trying to say something to another person across a
