value chain
firm infrastructure
general management, accounting, finance, strategic planning
human resources management
support recruiting, training, development
activities technology development
R&D, product and process improvement
procurement
purchasing raw materials, machines, supplies
inbound sales and
operations: outbound
primary logistics: marketing: service:
machining, logistics: installation,
raw materials advertising,
activities assembly, ware housing, repairs, parts
handling, testing promotion,
distribution
inventory pricing
1
missions, strategies and their realization
drives
and
business strategy sets
goals
where IT what must
can help be done
information systems strategy
informs hardware system
capabilities requirements
and
enables
information technology strategy
Fig. 1.10 the relationship between business, IS and IT strategies
2
all systems (manual and/or automated)
have these characteristics
system boundary
what the system
inputs does outputs
control
feed-forward feedback
how the system
is controlled
3
types of systems
transaction processing systems each can be
implemented as
management information systems
online
decision support systems and/or batch
distributed
expert systems
and/or centralized
real-time (control) systems corporate
and/or departmental
other and/or public
4
the three perspectives
technological
hardware, networks, databases, CASE tools ...
social
how do individuals and organizations use information,
how are they affected by technology…
professional
practices and standards, policies, quality practices ...
5
personal computers, word processing,
workstations, mainframes, spreadsheets,
hardware components, presentation software,
CPUs, memory, disks, website design,
peripherals web search engines,
palmtops ... document management
CASE tools ...
hardware software
communication
e-mail, fax,
wireless communication, technologies for
telephone,
networks, internet ... analysis and design
6
functional decomposition
of business
business
function
supporting
function
7
typical
suite of
systems
8
decomposition
of a business system
9
conceptual complexity !
Where does one system end, and another start?
If a system is a subjective view of reality,
then who’s view do we work with?
How do we cope when:
• the system is too large to be understood by any one person?
• technology is changing all the time?
• user requirements are changing all the time?
• new development tools and techniques and methodologies
are constantly needed?
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we have coping strategies !
methodologies: waterfall, prototype, extreme . . .
time-tested techniques for: verification, validation,
estimating . . .
abstraction and decomposition
modeling methods: structured, object-oriented . . .
tools for: project control, design control, configuration
management . . .
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what we want to avoid / prevent ...
from end user’s perspective ...
What system? I haven’t seen a new system. (vaporware)
It might work, but it’s dreadful to use. (lots of reasons)
It’s pretty, but does it do anything useful? (not an improvement)
from client’s perspective ...
If I’d known the real price, I’d never have agreed.
It’s no use delivering it now –we needed it last April.
OK, so it works, but the installation was such a mess,
my staff will never trust it.
I didn’t want it in the first place.
Everything’s changed now –we need a completely
different system.
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what we want to avoid / prevent ...
from the developer’s perspective ...
We built what they said they wanted.
There wasn’t enough time to do it any better.
Don’t blame me –I’ve never done O-O analysis before.
How can I fix it –I don’t know how it’s supposed to work.
We said it was impossible, but no-one listened.
The system’s fine –the users are the problem.
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