Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
INTRODUCTION
Information systems development can broadly be approached from a “hard,” or
engineering, perspective or from a “soft,” human-activity-oriented position. The hard
approaches tend to assume a belief that real-world problems can be “formulated as the making
of a choice between alternative means of achieving a known end” (Checkland, 1981) and tend
to lean toward project-management-based methods, techniques, and tools that have been
successfully used to create artifacts such as bridges, computer technology, and spacecraft.
These hard approaches have been developed over a number of years and are supported by
considerable literature, a body of knowledge, and detailed methods to support practical
project management. Although these approaches have proved to be largely successful in the
production of a range of artifacts, they appear to have been less successful in the
development of management information systems. Studies of the effectiveness of informa-
tion systems development frequently indicate failure to deliver a viable object in line with time,
cost, quality, or usability requirements.
Educators are thus faced with an interesting problem in considering how to teach
students about the development of information systems. A hard stance has the potentially
attractive feature in that it lends itself to “cookbook” approaches with clearly defined
problem, rigid method, and limited range of possible outcomes and provides students with
tangible skills. The weakness inherent in such an approach is that it does not take account
of the real-world features of technological change accompanied by social, political, financial,
legal, and ethical influences and pressures. It can also be argued that such “cookbook”
approaches do not appear to work in practice. However, many students appear to be
comfortable with the hard end of information systems, that is, with the traditional systems
development life cycle (SDLC) or project-management-oriented approaches. In many ways
this is to be expected when they have typically previously experienced educational programs
that have strong leanings toward employable skills, or they work around cases that have
single outcomes and are framed within a relatively static problem situation. Removing the
complexities of unexpected change, organizational politics, shifting priorities, multiple
worldviews, and so on, offers a simplified view of the world within which can be engineered
artifacts that meet a given, and unchanging, specification. This allows the basics mechanics
of systems development to be experienced, essentially from a “hard” perspective.
An alternative approach is to use a “soft” orientation to develop a teaching and learning
environment that acknowledges and actively explores how the complicating factors that exist
in human activity systems align more closely with the real world. The “softer” approaches
more strongly take account of the complex and dynamic relationships between the systems,
the designers, the users, and the organizational and broader environment. This view
differentiates natural or designed systems from human activity systems, the latter being
interpreted as the perceptions of human actors who are free to attribute meaning to their
perceptions (Checkland, 1981). As the environment, availability of information, business
paradigms, and so on, change, so may the interpretation of the system or system requirements
by different actors. Not only do the actors need to be considered, but there is also a need to
take an holistic view of the organization under consideration, examining perceived relation-
ships and networks of social interaction rather than relying upon formal functions and
structures (Espejo & Harnden, 1989). One of the problems with the softer approaches is that
even after reading extensive and well-written work describing, for example, Beer's Viable
