Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
appropriate. The overall aim is to produce a balanced, pluralist, or complementarist view rather
than suggest that either “hard” or “soft” approaches are the “right” way to develop systems.
THE COURSE IN PRACTICE
Two major problems were experienced by some students in the operation of this course:
first, difficulty in understanding the idea of a guiding “philosophy” to underpin methodolo-
gies, and second, some difficulty in developing and presenting a critical or balanced view of
the wide range of available methodologies.
The symptom of the first problem was typically expressed as a feeling that “philosophy”
had little connection to the “real world.” Those students involved in information systems
projects in their working life were, initially, the most resistant to a theoretical or philosophical
analysis of development methodologies. The most commonly used phrase was, “But surely
that's just common sense?” Bringing them constantly back to literature describing failed
systems kept their scepticism bounded by the unavoidable fact that development failures are
commonplace, and that we need to try to understand why this is the case and then consider
a variety of possible approaches that may help us at least understand why this high level of
failure prevails.
The learning strategy adopted to help students gain some understanding of how a
particular “philosophy” would influence a project was achieved through a “role-play”
session examining a single, short case study from the viewpoint of a number of key figures.
The objective of the exercise was for each student to attempt to express a view of a relatively
simple case study through the worldviews of a specified individual drawn from an “A to Z”
(or, perhaps more practically, Ackoff to Zuboff) of significant individuals typically repre-
sented in the IS and IT quality literature. Each student was allocated a single name to research
with the objective of producing a biography (an element of the marked assessment) of their
allocated character to try to gain insight through the background, writings, and significant
achievements of that individual. In the actual role-play session, each student suggested the
views that they felt their individual would have been likely to adopt if confronted with the
simple case study. As each student presented “their” credentials and argued the case for their
particular approach to be adopted for the common project, it became apparent that they began
to appreciate the notion of an underlying worldview. The development project that forms the
focus of this exercise is one that the author studied in Adelaide (Banks, 1999) and has the
attraction that the actual project manager is invited in after the debate sessions to allow the
students to raise any issues that they feel to be significant.
Although the role-play session revealed to the students how individual worldviews
would influence the way that a given scenario was approached and the impact upon selection
of method and tools, etc., it did not transfer to their written debate work. They still tended
to adopt a single view of their chosen topic that was typically based upon their own
experience, their previous studies, or a limited range of literature. This second problem area,
that of students finding difficulty in developing and presenting a critical or balanced view
of the wide range of available methodologies, is addressed by encouraging students to
explore belief, inquiry, reflection, and argument. A basic outline of the literature used to
explore these issues is presented below.
