Development of computer-based information systems: A communication framework

Author Highlights for the Past 35 Years

This essay reviews leading contributions to The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems over the past 35 years, both in terms of identifying leading scholars who published most frequently in the journal as well as papers that have been cited most frequently. Using standard scientometric methods, I identify the leading authors who published five or more papers since 1982. In terms of analyzing highly cited papers, I organize the analysis into four time periods of nine years each, a structure that reveals that The DATA BASE has been a longstanding venue for IS scholars to introduce their early work - whether conceptual or empirical. Notably, several esteemed IS scholars published early conceptual versions of their ideas in The DATA BASE - often many years before they followed up with related work in other journals. In terms of highly cited papers, the analysis in this essay also reveals that The DATA BASE shifted toward publishing empirical papers after 1990 and, despite the prevalence of positivist, quantitative research during the past 25 years, qualitative research has also become prominent in the journal. More recently, the journal has also featured several literature review papers on important topic areas, such as virtual teams, technostress, IT outsourcing, and IT security. This essay reviews leading contributions to The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems over the past 35 years, both in terms of identifying leading scholars who published most frequently in the journal as well as papers that have been cited most frequently. Using standard scientometric methods, I identify the leading authors who published five or more papers since 1982. In terms of analyzing highly cited papers, I organize the analysis into four time periods of nine years each, a structure that reveals that The DATA BASE has been a longstanding venue for IS scholars to introduce their early work - whether conceptual or empirical. Notably, several esteemed IS scholars published early conceptual versions of their ideas in The DATA BASE - often many years before they followed up with related work in other journals. In terms of highly cited papers, the analysis in this essay also reveals that The DATA BASE shifted toward publishing empirical papers after 1990 and, despite the prevalence of positivist, quantitative research during the past 25 years, qualitative research has also become prominent in the journal. More recently, the journal has also featured several literature review papers on important topic areas, such as virtual teams, technostress, IT outsourcing, and IT security.

Information resources project management communication: personal and environmental barriers

Knowledge is more than the retrieval of sets of information: it is the task of explaining them and contextualizing them and empowering the information to change the face or workings of a corporation. Placed in this sophisticated role, 20th century project managers now find themselves revolutionizing the concept of what information and information management means to themselves and their corporations. The Information Resources Project Manager (IRPM), the program/project manager leading a multi-departmental or multi-organizational ad hoc project, is becoming the maker of meaning and can become the driver of organizational learning. The task undertaken by IRPMs often may be to help their organizations make sense of their interpretations of their environment. To flourish in this role, the IRPM must constantly be aware of the barriers to effective communications. This brief theoretical review of communications barriers serves as a checklist for the IRPM whose attention must be directed more and more heavily to audience and the very humanness of communications.

Language Quality in Requirements Development: Tracing Communication in the Process of Information Systems Development

Knowledge transfer, communication, and shared understanding between project stakeholders are important factors in requirements development and in the information systems development process. Nevertheless, the impact and analysis of language and linguistic communication during requirements development is still an open issue. In our research, we claim that requirements development depends on the ability to deal with language and communication issues in practice and reach shared understanding of requirements. We propose the concept of language quality as a suitable means for analyzing the emergence of coherent and meaningful requirements. By applying the thereby developed dimensions of language quality to a real information systems development project, we are able to obtain practice-grounded propositions to further evaluate the consequences of different actions on the interaction and communication process of stakeholders in requirements development.

In search of GSS impact on groups: an exploratory field study

The fundamental goal of a group support system (GSS) is to support the work performed by groups and teams. More often than not, the projects undertaken by groups and teams occur over a period of time longer than a single meeting. However, the lack of longitudinal studies is a concern that has been highlighted in meta‐analyses of GSS research. For example, little is known in regard to the GSS impacts on group member behavior in traditional meetings after their exposure to GSSs. This field study looks at a single work group using a GSS to complete an organizational restructure over a period of ten weeks. The goal is to observe the impact of changes in two sets of groupware‐team member characteristics: the perceptions of groupware over time and the impact of GSS usage on individual team member behavior in future meetings.

Tell me a good story

This paper reports on a participant-observation study examining how clients use narratives to convey information during ERP requirements analysis interviews. Techniques drawn from narrative analysis are used to analyze the structure and content of different types of narratives clients tell during requirements analysis interviews. First, findings reveal that interviewees organized their experience, sought to persuade listeners, and conveyed information to analysts using "stories," "habitual," and "hypothetical" narratives. We argue that cClient narratives provide a pragmatic view of the information system, offering insight into the ways the system is actually used and the habitual practices of the work environment. Second, narratives function to signal the embeddedness of the information system in its larger organizational and social context.While analysts may be inclined to dismiss narratives as messy or asuncodeable data, we argue that the insights they provide merit attention. To the degree that narratives give insight into users' perspectives on organizational issues, they provide knowledge that is essential to any information systems project. This is especially true for ERP projects that, unlike other systems projects, seek to integrate processes spanning the entire organization. ERP projects typically require departments with very different priorities and vocabularies to radically rethink the organization and its habitual practices. Work habits, values, and dilemmas faced by users as recounted in narratives are likely to carry over after the legacy system has been removed. Hence, a sound grasp of these factors is surely advantageous for analysts in assessing the current and future environment of the organization. Future implications for research and practice are also discussed.

An empirical validation of a contingency model for information require-ments determination

A contingency model for system development was subjected to several conceptual and operational adjustments and empirical tests. According to the model, there should be a degree of fit between development project uncertainty and the strategy for determining information requirements, ranging from accepting initial requirements statements to experimenting with prototypes to discover requirements. This study introduced a new IRD strategy construct that focused on the extent of interaction between users and developers. The study also differentiated between perceptual and evidential outcomes, between process and product outcomes, and between users' and developers' points of view. The hypotheses predicted that the degree of fit between project uncertainty and the IRD strategy would account for perceptual and evidential project outcomes from both the user's and developer's points of view. Results indicated that only by relying on the new extent of interaction construct, was support found. From the developers' standpoint, the degree of fit appeared to be related to perceptual assessments of the process and product. From the user's standpoint, the degree of fit was only related to perceptual assessments of the process. There was no support for the hypothesized impact of fit on evidential outcomes.

Interpersonal skills for cooperative user-analyst relationships

Organizational behavior researchers recognize that an individual's effectiveness in an organization is likely to depend significantly upon his/her ability to influence or persuade others in order to accomplish assigned tasks. The ability to influence or persuade users to cooperate or comply with requests is likely to be important for systems developers as well. Based on organizational behavior literature, this article proposes assertiveness, reason, appeal to higher authority, coalition, bargaining, and friendliness as the relevent persuasion strategies in the user-analyst context.

The architecture and design of a collaborative environment for systems definition

Defining systems requirements and specifications is a collaborative effort among managers, users, and systems developers. The difficulty of systems definition is caused by the human's limited cognitive capabilities, that is compounded by the complexity of group communication and coordination processes. Current system analysis methodologies are first evaluated regarding to the level of support to users. Since systems definition is a knowledge-intensive activity, the knowledge contents and structures employed in systems definition are discussed. For any large-scale system, no one person possesses all the knowledge that is needed, therefore, the authors proposed a collaborative approach to systems definition. The use of a group decision support system (GDSS) for systems definition is first described and limitations of the current GDSS are identified. The architecture and design of a collaborative computer-aided software engineering (CASE) environment, called C-CASE, is then discussed. C-CASE can be used to assist users in defining the requirements of their organization and information systems as well as to analyze the consistency and completeness of the requirements. C-CASE integrates GDSS and CASE such that users can actively participate in the requirements elicitation process. Users can use the metasystem capability of C-CASE to define domain specific systems definition languages, which are adaptable to different systems development settings. An example of using C-CASE in a collaborative environment is given. The implications C-CASE and the authors' ongoing research are also discussed.

Key factors in knowledge acquisition

In recent years there has been a tremendous increase in the development of Expert Systems (ESs) in organizations. This increased development is straining the already limited supply of qualified ES developers. These ES developers have come to be know as Knowledge Engineers (KEs), and their job as Knowledge Engineering. The process of Knowledge Engineering is divided into two tasks: Knowledge Acquisition (KA) and ES construction. KA has been defined as "The process of extracting, structuring, and organizing Knowledge from several sources, usually human experts, so it can be used in a program." (Waterman, 1986; p. 392) This process of KA has been identified as the "bottleneck" that currently constrains the development of ESs.This paper summarizes what is known about the KA process in an effort to identify what the key factors are that influence the success of the KA phase of the Knowledge Engineering process. Due to the similarities that exist between ESs and traditional systems development, the literature that pertains to traditional Information Requirements Determination and to Systems Analysts will be utilized to guide this exploration. Case study reports of actual ES development projects and the practitioner literature from this highly applied field will also be referenced. A model of the knowledge Engineering process has been developed and will be used to help determine and discuss the key factors that influence the KA process.Five key factors have been identified and will be discussed in detail. These factors are: the attributes of the participants in the ES development process; elicitation techniques utilized in the process; the development of external representations; representation selection problems; and the verification of the ES by the Domain Expert who participates in its continued development via the user-system interface. These factors are presented, key issues identified, and research questions suggested for each area.It is hoped that the analysis of the key factors in KA will lead to the identification of the skills and techniques necessary to successfully perform the KA process. Once these skills have been identified, training programs can be developed to help reduce the shortage of qualified KEs and, ultimately, facilitate the increased development of ESs in organizations.