Improving the Impact of Systems Thinking on Information Systems Development

Abstract

Systems thinking has had little impact on the development of information systems. To improve the impact of systems thinking, there is a need to influence the awareness, education and training of the people involved in information systems development (isD). This is difficult because information systems developers are not receptive to ideas which challenge the predominance of a technical orientation. There is increasing recognition that many technically good information systems fail because they are not acceptable to users or other stakeholders, yet this has not improved receptiveness to systems thinking. This paper reports on three cases which demonstrate the difficulties in challenging a technical orientation. Moving from the particular to the general, the paper looks at the lessons that the systems movement could learn from attempts by the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) community to improve awareness, education and training of HCI methods. the HCI community, with extensive support from the Department of Trade and Industry, has undertaken major national programmes to influence the practice and teaching of information systems development. These programmes have promoted ideas which challenge the technical orientation of isD and have had to address the problem of lack of receptiveness to such ideas. This paper discusses the impact of these programmes, and reviews the lessons that are relevant to the promotion of systems thinking as a means of addressing the high rate of information systems failures.