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Started by Rob Kling
Fri, 14 Aug 1992 03:40
Re: Article - Behind the Terminal
Author: Rob Kling
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 03:40
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 03:40
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Dear Paul, Thanks for your very speedy reading and comments on my long article. I agree with your comment re. talk in organizations between peers. However, I'm discussing writings/theories of systems analysis and the talk between computer profesionals and end usersi as much as the practice/talk of systems analysts with their peers. Few of the books that I know about systems analysis take infrastructure into account -- and this is especially true of the texts which are used in university courses. I cite the better books, which I know of, in my article. I am very interested in any pointers which you can give to books and articles about how to do systems analysis which examine infrastructure and context as key features of a systems environment. /Rob
Re: Article - Behind the Terminal
Author: Paul Eggert
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 15:15
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 15:15
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Rob Kling writes: kling> Few of the books that I know about systems analysis take infrastructure kling> into account -- and this is especially true of the texts which are kling> used in university courses. I cite the better books, which I know of, kling> in my article. 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. Here's just one example: Barry Boehm's _Software Engineering Economics_ (Prentice-Hall, 1981), a book that has been often used in university courses. I'll quote from Boehm's introduction: As you begin to confront practical software engineering situations, you will find that they contain both programming problems and nonprogramming problems: operational problems, budget problems; schedule problems; problems in determining the relative priorities of users' needs. Bypassing the nonprogramming problems to concentrate on the programming problems will almost always lead to trouble later on. Far from ignoring infrastructure issues, Boehm puts several of them on the front cover of his book. He doesn't mention the web model -- after all, his book was written in 1981 -- but he clearly understands that social context is crucial, and I don't think that the web model would have helped him a bit. Although specialized to just software engineering, Boehm's work is far more ambitious and potentially useful than Kling's, because it's quantitative, not just qualitative. eggert> Kling presents no evidence that his models are better than other ad hoc eggert> frameworks for describing the social context of computing. kling> The paper provides some evidence through the analysis of one case study. kling> The main contrast in the paper is between web models and dicrete entity kling> models. 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.
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