Chapter 13 - Building Information Systems

Building new systems produces organizational change because the act itself is a form of planned organizational change.  There are four kinds of technology enabled change, automation, rationalization of procedures, business process redesign and paradigm shift.  Currently many firms use business process management to redesign work flows in order to create dramatic changes in productivity.  Companies also use business process management to aid in six sigma, total quality management and promotion.

Systems analysis and design, conversion, testing, maintenance and production are all core activities within systems development.  Systems analysis is the study and analysis of existing systems and the identification of requirements for their solutions.  Systems designs shows how technical and organizational components fit together; as well as provide the specification for information system solution.

Structured methodology and object-oriented development models are the two principal methodologies for designing and modeling systems.  Structured methodology consists of the data flow diagram, which is the main tool for structured analysis, and the structure chart which is used for representing structured software design.  Object-oriented development systems display a collection of objects that combine processes and data; and is based on inheritance and class.

There are many alternative methods for building information systems.  The oldest method is the systems life cycle which requires that information systems be developed in stages.  Prototyping is another method and it includes building an experimental system quickly and at a low cost for end-users to evaluate and interact with.  Another method is using a software package, this method is convenient because it reduces the amount of design, programming, installation, testing and maintenance needed to build a system.  End user development is the development of information systems by the end user, they can be created informally and in a short amount of time.  The last alternative method the chapter focused on was outsourcing.  It includes using external vendor to operate or build a companies information system instead of using the companies internal information systems staff.

There are some new, more modern approaches to system building.  Many firms have starting using joint application design (JAD), rapid application design (RAD), reusable software components and agile development.  RAD uses object-oriented software, visual programming, fourth generation tools and prototyping.  Agile development breaks a large project into a set of smaller ones.  Component based software increases the speed of application development by combining objects into suites of software used to create business applications.