Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Information Problems: What and IS really solves

In my session with EM-TECH students this trimester (3-SY 2007-2008), one of my advisees asked me to comment on their statement of the problem for their capstone project. I was surprised to see the problems they wanted their proposed Information System (IS) to solve (Retention, Quick Turnover, etc.).

Knowing what information systems are, these problems are definitely NOT what an IS can solve. I remember my lecture Down-To-Earth IS I delivered in the University of the Cordilleras, where I highlighted that IS professionals without contention should have an
understanding of these business problems but should also be able to see the deeper reason and motivations (based on information) how these problems are happening and could be prevented.



In my opinion, any business pain, situation, concern or problem needs to be further analyzed by any IT professional in order to determine solutions that either allows people working on these concerns to REGULATE (if not to PREVENT) and SOLVE (if not to MINIMIZE) these to occur or happen. As such, any IT professional has to see that these situations may be cases of any or all of the following:

  1. Data Capture problem (data needed to solve or prevent the problem from happening has not been collected, completely collected, nor correctly collected)
  2. Data Storage problem (should data were collected, they are not stored and eventually completely forgotten)
  3. Processing problem (there is a need for consistently enforcing business rules and policies, standards and consistent processing, and control mechanisms to avoid abuse and errors)
  4. Access and Distribution problem (the people who are to address these concerns are not given access, or having difficulty in accessing important information that will enable them to make decisions and actions to prevent problems from occurring, or to work on their task more effectively and efficiently)
  5. Presentation problem (should information be available, are they presented in a fashion that the people concerned can easily use them in order to respond quickly and effectively to solve the problems)

To put it simply, IS does not solve business problems. Instead they address the information required of people who addresses these problems in order to PREVENT it to happen, or should it already happened, make immediate decisions in order to correct the problem.

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