Information System and its Components
Information System
Information systems are an integral part of organizations the form of building blocks for the decision making. Information system helps to collect, process, store, and retrieve data to help the process of decision making. When decision making is based on data, information and facts, the chances of decision being a good decision increases. Using the information systems a company or organization achieve its goals like increased sales, better work force management, and increased profits.
Information Systems Resources and Components
Stair & Reynolds (2010) have explained in their book that by the resources and components we mean the ingredients of information system and how is it made. At an outset, we can define five components which make any information system. These are software required, hardware on which we use these software, a well-defined database system, a network through which information can flow and the people who create, manage and use this system. These components when pulled together make the information system useful for the resources of performing the four actions of extraction, transformation, loading, storing and retrieving the information. There are varieties of combinations possible between the five components. However, it is very important that each component in the paradigm is in synch with all the other components and they are functionally and technically compatible. The right hardware is required with the exact configuration which can be used to install and run all the compatible software needed for making the information system. Similarly a proper database which is both compatible and is in synch with these two components is necessary. A network which can manage this hardware, software and database is required because if it can’t move information from one place to another, the whole system will not work. Finally, we need the right kind of people with the right skills who can do their task and perform the responsibilities from building to using the information system (Stair & Reynolds, 2010).
Information Systems Use Current Time and Its Management Challenges
Gupta (2011) has mentioned in his book that one of the many important features of information system is time dimension. Any data or information which we look at is an event that happened at a specific time. Time is a dimension in our data which is used for multiple purposes. Every IT system including information systems use the current time to tag every transaction which is happening be it a retrieval of data from a source system, a write operation of information in the database or a report running on information system. There will always be a column which will store the current time somewhere in the information system to track this information. Thus we can say that it is used to tag the timestamp of an event happening, calculations of time difference between current vs. when a specific even happened and to make sure the information is of a right time that is needed and is not stale or incorrect (Gupta, 2011).
Even though this is very important and useful information however the right measures have to be taken to capture this correctly. There are many technical and management challenges with this. Some of them are; it is more resource intensive because we are asking the system to read the time stamp on each and every transaction, the formatting has to be considered because different countries use different formats, different time zones is another big challenge as we have to make sure that all the time stamp is stored in one standard time zone else this information would be incorrect, and the time it takes to process a transaction also increases due to more resources need.
Organization, management, and technology dimensions of information systems
Stair & Reynolds (2010) have mentioned that more important than any other information technology system, information systems are successful only when they are managed by all the teams and department in an organization including business, management and IT teams. These systems can’t work in isolation as these are blend of information between technology, management and organizational level. Which components to choose including the cost, reliability, vendors etc. are the organizational decisions and include this dimension. Which information needs to be captured, in what way the information has to be stored, what is the meaning and logic of every piece of information, when the data has to be loaded and the time when data has to be available are more of management aspects. Finally information technology owns the systems in the sense that based on other two dimensions; they implement the most feasible solution in terms of components, operations and management of information system (Stair & Reynolds, 2010).
It has been mentioned by Stair & Reynolds (2010) that in recent years what we call the digital age, information systems and information technology as a whole play a vital role in the success of any organization. It provides the competitive edge to the organizations because today organizations do not work in a local market but are global and thus the competition is also global. In these scenarios, it is only information systems which can provide the timely and right decision making abilities to an organization. From the organization’s perspective it has to make sure that it is very flexible and agile so that any changes required in the information system can be quickly adapted. While going hand in hand, these have to ensure effective and efficient functionality to manage the demands in the changing market. The investments made by organizations in information systems are by looking at the immediate need, the needs of future and the capabilities which the system has to improve organization’s competitive edge (Stair & Reynolds, 2010).
The Internet and Information System
Singh (2004) mentioned in his book that the advent of Internet has completely changed the way information technology and information systems work. There are two perspectives to look at. First from technology stand point, the connectivity of various sources and databases can be now built and used on one single core of protocol and network language. The success of internet has made the access to all the information quick and very cost effective. Virtually all the information now resides at a single place and no special networking capabilities have to be built to bring a special data segment from any source. Earlier, it was possible only to get structured data from the limited sources within our own network locally however now; even the unstructured data from any part of the world can be accessed and used. Internet has also made the systems efficient because now, the technologists or business people don’t have to worry about the difference in the technical or business meanings between different systems. It is very fast and quick today to merge information from multiple sources technically and otherwise. Before Internet could be used for information systems, the systems had very limited boundaries spanning within an organization. However, now the boundary less landscape has given complete flexibility to the people and organizations to utilize as much resources as possible (Singh, 2004)
Systems Development Life Cycle
In an article published in Tech Target by Rouse (2011), she has explained that it is a concept used in the field of project management that defines various stages involved in the development and implementation of an information system ranging from the feasibility analysis to the final implementation and maintenance. This is just a concept and there are many methods developed under this concept. Most important method is waterfall which is the original system development life cycle method. There were further models developed with some tweaks based on the need of the hour like “Rapid Application Development”, “Joint Application Development” and the “Spiral model”. Sometimes project managers in organizations also use hybrid models which are combination of two or more different models. One very important aspect of the life cycle is documentation. Documentation about the development and project management has to be done in parallel to the actual project which has many advantages. Without documentation the project is always at a high risk due to dependability on the existing systems and people. In General the system development life cycle has following steps:
Identify the gaps between existing system and required system
All the requirements are properly documented and evaluated
Initial design and blueprint is made of the system to be built
Development of the new system is done
User training happens after the system is installed
Testing and changes are made
The system is in production and users start to use it
Old system is removed and maintenance of new system is done (Rouse, 2011)
Key Management Challenges Involved in Building, Operating, and Maintaining Information Systems
Stair & Reynolds (2010) in their book Fundamentals of Information Systems have mentioned that the implementation, operationalizing it, and maintenance are very difficult tasks for management. I have listed some of the primary challenges which occur in most of the companies:
Identifying the gaps in the existing system
Lack of clarity in understanding what is required
Getting everybody’s approval to replace an existing system
Investment of huge money into a new system which is not directly a part of business
Justify the return on investment
Aligning business and IT people to understand what is required
Managing security and legalities of the new system
Training the people who have been using the legacy system for a very long time
The short term fall in the production of employees who start to use the new system
Maintenance outages
Accuracy in implementation also is not achieved all the times
Building the trust of executives in the new system and ask them to use the new systems for sensitive information like financial reports (Stair & Reynolds, 2010).
References
Gupta, G. (2011). Management Information System (an insight). New Delhi, India. International book house.
Rouse, M. (2011). System development life cycle. TechTarget. Retrieved April 12, 2016, from http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/definition/systems-development-life-cycle
Singh, M.P. (2004). Practical Handbook of Internet Computing. Tokyo, Japan. CRC Press.
Stair, R. & Reynolds, G. (2010). Fundamentals of Information Systems. Boston, MA. Cengage Learning.
