From: kling@ics.uci.edu (Rob Kling)
Subject: Clarification re. Behind the Terminal
Newsgroups: comp.groupware,comp.infosystems
Date: 14 Aug 92 20:28:24 GMT

Re: Paul Eggert's comments.....

Dear Paul,

I'd like to keep this reply short .... but there are several
misperceptions in your note which merit comment and some
correction.

First: Re. Barry Boehm's Software Engineering Economics. I don't
have my copy in this office, so I can't check it again. But Boehm
is sensitive to issues of organizational context ... and his book
was an extremely important contribution to helping managers and
professionals estimate the costs of large scale (aerospace-like)
software development projects. The center point of the book is a
quantitative cost-estimation model: COCOMO. Boehm's book does not
deal with issues of systems analysis -- ie., what systems are
appropriate to build. He deals with different issues.

==============================
Second: You claim: "The only mention of traditional methods in
Kling's case study was a dismissive remark about how a
traditional system analyst would probably have made the mistake
of choosing TeX over WordPerfect. This brief and (in my view)
incorrect remark hardly constitutes an honest comparison of two
rival systems."

The case study is described in section 3, with relatively little
analysis. The analysis of the case which contrasts discrete
entity and web models runs through much of sections 4.0 and 5.0
.. two fairly long sections.

(This is a complex article and cannot be readily comprehended by
on-line scanning).

================================
Third:  You claim: "Kling's article presents an extensive
bibliography for web-like models, but for ``traditional'' models,
instead of citations the article contains only a conveniently
weak description that has little to do with how system analysis
is practiced or taught.  If you turn to real practitioners, or
even real textbooks, you'll find a much different picture."

I encourage you to examine the following books about systems
analysis or the management of information systems in
organizations:

Functional Analysis of Office Requirements: A Multiperspective
Approach. G. Schafer. John Wiley 1988.

Professional Systems Development: Experience, Ideas and Action.
Niels Erik Anderson, et. al. Prentice Hall, 1990.

Managing Information Systems for Profit. Tim Lincoln (ed). John
Wiley, 1990.

Corporate IS Management: Text and Cases (3rd Ed.) James cash, et.
al.  Irwin, 1992.


Management Information Systems: A Contemporary Perspective. (2nd
Ed) Kenneth C. Laudon and Jane P. Laudon. McMillan, 1991.

Information Systems: A Management Perspective. Addison-Wesley,
1992.
==========================
This is a representative selection of generally better books used
to teach end-user IS implementation in colleges and universities.
Each of them is sensitive to the role of organizational context,
in some way, with varying levels of attention. The attention is
often strategic (ie, link IS and organizational strategy).

A few of these books mention the term "infrastructure" (a key
element of web models) but discuss it in 1-2 pages of a 300-500
page exposition.  Most don't use that term, but rfeer to specific
elements of infrastructure, most commonly to training end users.
None of them examine the issue that an organization's skill
levels may be a key part of systems analysis: either in placing
constraints on what kinds of systems would be appropriate to
design or acquire .... or in making demands for significant
organizational development re. setting conditions systematically
shifting the skills and practices of managers, professionals and
other system users.

------------------
Fourth: I agree that my bibliography could include specific
citations to the gaps that I see in contemporary books such as
these. I had an extensive set of references to books and articlke
which rest on discret entity models in "Defining the Boundaries
..." I decided to write "Behind the Tremainal" more as an
exposition of the value of treating infrastructure as a central
analytical construct than as an elaborate critique of the
literature.

==================
I appreciate your coments ... because they help me better
understand how various readers interpret the paper.

Best wishes,

Rob Kling
Newsgroups: comp.groupware,comp.infosystems