Pitfalls in Analyzing Systems in Organizations

Despite the availability of elaborate methods for defining data and business processes, huge amounts of time and effort are wasted on system projects that produce disappointing results. An important contributing factor is the significant difficulty business and IT professionals experience when they try to describe, evaluate, and/or analyze systems in organizations even at a cursory level. Between 1997 and 2003, the author's information system courses for evening MBAs and EMBAs have required students to write two group papers that present a business-oriented analysis of a real world system in an organization and propose preliminary recommendations for improvements. If these working students are representative of the types of business professionals who are involved in systems in organizations, it is plausible that the major types of pitfalls demonstrated by their papers are representative of the pitfalls that contribute to disappointing results with systems. An examination of 202 group papers submitted by evening MBA and EMBA students between 1997 and 2003 revealed pitfalls in the following categories: difficulty defining systems in organizations, difficulty identifying the information in information systems, aversion to using measures of performance, reluctance to mention organizational and personal issues, susceptibility to techno-hype and jargon, inadequate critical thinking, and difficulty applying abstractions and formal methods. This paper illustrates these problems through examples from 25 of the student papers. Assuming that typical business professionals encounter the same types of pitfalls, both MBA programs and analysis and design methods should provide concepts and techniques that help in identifying and minimizing the related problems. © Steven Alter, 2003 2