Executive Information Requirements

1. Executive Information Requirements

2. Problems Determining Information Requirements • Single-function systems • information ignorance • individual interviews • unstructured interviews • not allowing trial-and-error in the design process

3. Cross-functional Information Systems • Most systems are viewed as being functional instead of cross-functional. • Most of the information needed to improve decision-making within a function will come from outside that function. • This is why it is important for an organization to share information if it wants to improve productivity. • Single-function systems promote dysfunctional “islands” of information

4. Improving the Decision-Making in Order Processing • How important is each customer to the business? • How promptly does each customer need delivery of the order? • What is the profitability of each order? • What is the credit status of each customer? • What is the shipping schedule for delivery to each customer? • Has the customer recently been upset because a previous order was late?

5. Information Ignorance • Most managers don’t know what information they need. • Approaches: • user “sign-off” • catalog • Result: Information overload

6. Joint Application Design • Interview managers in groups rather than individually. • Group or collective experiences and memory are essential in recalling information. • The memory of each manager can be pooled to do a more thorough job of recalling key requirements. • Note: different functional areas sometime have different agendas

7. Unstructured Interviews • “What information Do you need”? • Managers don’t know what information they need.

8. Information Requirements Interview Techniques • These techniques can be considered both planning approaches and information requirements gathering techniques: • Business Systems Planning (BSP) • Critical Success Factors • Ends/Means Analysis • The methods use indirect questions to “back into” information requirements.

9. Framework for Information Requirements Interviews Information Information Problems Decisions Solutions BSP Information Critical Success Factors Decisions CSF Information Information Ends Means Effectiveness E/M Efficiency

10. Business Systems Planning • What are the major problems encountered in accomplishing the purposes of the organizational unit you manage? • What are good solutions to those problems? • How can information play a role in any of those solutions? • What are the major decisions associated with your management responsibilities? • What improvements in information could result in better decisions?

11. Critical Success Factors • Critical success factors are the key activities for any organization in which performance must be satisfactory if the business is to survive and flourish. • Critical success factors differ among industries and for individual firms within an industry. • Example: Four industry-based CSFs for supermarkets: • have the right product mix available at each store • keep it on the shelves • provide effective advertising to attract shoppers to the store • develop correct pricing

12. Critical Success Factors - II • Objectives of Automobile Industry: • growth in earnings per share • high return on investment • CSF’s: • attractive styling of product line • efficient dealer organization • effective cost control in manufacturing • CSF approach encourages managers to identify what is most important to performance and then develop good indicators of performance.

13. Critical Success Factors - III • What are the critical success factors of the organizational unit you manage? • What actions or decisions are key to achieving these CSF’s? • What information is needed to ensure that the critical success factors are under control? • How do you measure the specific CSFs?

14. Critical Success Factors - IV 1. What objectives are central to your organization? 2. What are the critical factors that are essential to meeting these objectives? 3. What decisions or actions are key to these critical factors? 4. What variables underlie these decisions. And how are they measured? 5. What information systems can supply these measures?

15. Ends/Means Analysis • Can determine information requirements at organizational, departmental, or individual manager level. • Focuses first on the ends or outputs (goods, services, and information) generated by an organizational process. • Then it defines the means (inputs and processes) used to accomplish the ends.

16. Ends/Means Analysis - II • Concerned with both effectiveness and efficiency of generating outputs from processes. • Effectiveness - how well outputs from a process match up with input requirements. • Efficiency - the amount of resources required to transform inputs into outputs.

17. Ends/Means Analysis - III • What is the good or service provided by the business process? • What makes these goods or services valuable to recipients or customers? • What information is needed to evaluate the value? • What are the key means or processes used to generate or provide goods or services? • What constitutes efficiency in providing these goods or services? • What information is needed to evaluate this efficiency?

18. Ends/Means Analysis: Example • Consider requirements for an inventory system: • Ends specification: inventory kept as low as possible with an acceptable level of availability. • Means specification: inputs and processes used to accomplish the ends include: • forecast of future needs • amounts on hand and on order • items obsolete or unusable condition • stock safety policy • demand variations • cost of ordering and holding inventory

19. Ends/Means Analysis: Example - contd. • Efficiency measures: • number and cost of orders placed • cost of holding inventory • loss from disposal of obsolete or unusable inventory • Effectiveness Measures: • number of items out-of-stock • seriousness of stock-outs (in terms of lost business). • The importance is in generating these effectiveness measures.

20. Trial-and-Error Development • Managers are not allowed to determine and refine their conceptual requirements into detail information requirements through trial and error. • Trial and error, or experiential learning, is an important part of problem solving. • Consider: • you try clothes on before purchase • test-drive cars • change college majors • have several relationships before marriage • rearrange furniture several time when redecorating • look at houses before buying

21. Prototyping • A prototype is a mock-up of the system or a working model of the system, built to learn about its true requirements.

22. Summary • Failure to get requirements “right”wastes time and is costly. • Cross-functional, joint application design encourages identification of non-obvious requirements. • Conceptual requirements can be identified in structured interviews. • Detail requirements can be identified through prototyping.