Does IS Education AddressEnterprise IT User Concerns?

Bart LongeneckerUniversity of South Alabama

Paul RosenthalCalifornia State University, Los Angeles

Jack RussellNorthwestern State University

Linda T. TaylorScience Applications International Corporation

ISECON 2008 - Phoenix

This panel will discuss whether the IS2002 and MSIS2006 model curricula and supporting textbooks meet the requirements of our students in the current environment of

• knowledgeable users, • packaged application systems, and• complex infrastructures, interfaces, and architectures.

Panel Overview

Questions to Be Addressed

Does our IS education enable our students to answer the very important user and CIO questions: • why will it cost so much and take so long?• how can I be sure this will be one of the 50% of

projects that succeed* rather than the 50% that fail?

* How do we define “success” so that it is mutually understood and agreed to by all of the stakeholders?

Upgrading Our Curriculum

Paul H. RosenthalProfessor, Information Systems

California State University, Los Angeles

My Primary Concern

Lack of training in the justification of enterprise information systems for both

Users and IS Professionals

Users say it’s important!

I conducted an informal survey by asking the importance of the following questions at a recent Business Forum luncheon meeting

Why does it cost so much?Replies: Important 100%

Interesting 0%Not Relevant 0%

Why does it take so long?Same results

Students say its Important!

From a survey of business students in the Managing Information Systems class during finals week.

Teach Project Estimating• It is possible to estimate Software Projects accurately.• Such estimation is useful. Why?

Once all stakeholders agree on estimation procedures, negotiations can involve inputs (features and resources) NOT outputs (time and dollars).

• Function Point measures are the most popular for Information Systems estimation.

Illustration Follows

Function Points MethodologyAnalyze information domain of the application and develop counts

Weight each count by assessing complexity

Assess influence of global factors that affect the application

Compute function points

Establish count for input domain and system interfaces

Assign level of complexity or weight to each count

Grade significance of external factors, F such as reuse, concurrency, OS, ...

degree of influence: N = Fi

complexity multiplier: C = (0.65 + 0.01 x N)

function points = (count x weight) x C

where:

i

Analyzing the Information Domain

complexity multiplier

function points

number of user inputs number of user outputs number of user inquiries number of files number of ext.interfaces

measurement parameter

3 4 3 7 5

countweighting factor

simple avg. complex

4 5 4 10 7

6 7 6 15 10

= = = = =

count-total

X X X X X

My Other Major Concern

Lack of adequate training in Physical System Design

The key objective in producing a useful physical design is ensuring that all stakeholders (developers and end users) understand the true scope of the system, which must include a realistic evaluation of its complexities.

– Essential is the use of this data by the

development and implementation team for

program, data, and interface design.

Physical Program Design

A physical design is created from a DFD- based logical design, by separating processes, data stores, and interfaces by – time (daily vs. monthly, day vs. night ...),– place (client or server, centralized vs.

distributed...), – online vs. batch, – manual vs. automated, etc.

A Physical Level System DesignMembership

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We need to raise the content level of our courses so that our graduates will be able to

• specify, estimate, design, and implement high quality and successful systems, and • continue to reduce our industry's high project failure rate.

Note: “Successful systems” are defined as those measured and confirmed useful by their end users in their operational environment

SUMMARY STATEMENT