Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
CONCLUSION
Exploration and comparison of methodologies are undertaken for academic and prac-
tical reasons (Avison & Fitzgerald, 1995). Academic study of methodologies should inform
future information systems development by providing frameworks that allow categorization
of the ever-growing number of methodologies and approaches in such a way that some
understanding of their relationships can be obtained. In the “real world,” organizations are
faced with changing environments and paradigms and by apparent failure in the delivery of
systems that can support and adjust to these changes. An understanding of the reasons for
the wide range of choices allied with informed selection of appropriate methodologies to meet
specific circumstances may help to explain some of the immediate failures and to reduce them
in the future.
Helping students to move from a “single right choice” view or from the perception of
a methodology as simply a recipe is a difficult process. It typically requires that the learner
critically test and perhaps abandon previously held views, acquired through formal educa-
tion or through workplace experience. To ensure that this process is rigorous but “safe” for
the learner requires a clear framework to help them work through the process and a supportive
learning environment. The course that forms the focus of this paper has attempted to provide
these requirements, but the process is still difficult and a potentially threatening task for some
learners and for the learning facilitator. For the learner, it requires exposure to a potentially
confusing plethora of methodologies, critical and reflective thinking that may lead to the
potential abandonment or adjustment of some existing and deeply embedded views. For the
learning facilitator, it means helping to build a learning environment that is confrontational
but supportive, broad in scope but clear in direction, and that offers the learner structure but
also encourages diversity and risk taking in thinking. The promotion of critical and reflective
thinking built around argumentation would appear to be one key element in attaining this goal,
and hopefully, the argumentative approach outlined here will, with more development, act
as an appropriate framework with which this can be achieved.
The approach described in this chapter is challenging for students who come with a
belief that the subject will teach them a number of recognized and formulaic methods that will
allow them to build successful information systems. It comes as something of a shock to some
of them to engage in a reflective and active questioning approach that challenges previously
held beliefs. Such an approach may be inappropriate for undergraduate students, but at the
Masters level, it is the author's belief that such challenges are appropriate and necessary in
the field of information systems development. Checkland remarked that the prime value
embodied in a systems approach is that continuous, never-ending learning is a good thing,
suggesting that, “This means that soft systems thinking will not appeal to determinists,
dictators or demagogues. It
will
appeal to all those people in any discipline who are
knowledgeable enough to know that there is much they do not know, and that learning and
re-learning is worth-while” (Checkland, 1999). It is hoped that the approach taken in the course
described here will go some way to equipping future systems developers with the attitudes,
tools, and skills to engage in a satisfying process of continual reflective learning and
relearning and so better understand the complexities of information systems development
methodologies.
