South African Computer Journal 1993(10)
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Item The key issues in information management in the mid-1990s. Back to business basics through the commercialisation of the ISD(South African Computer Society (SAICSIT), 1993) Remenyi, DSJThis paper takes a business or commercial perspective of the key issues in Information Management for the mid-1990s. It focuses on how organisations may use information systems to improve their efficiency and effectiveness as well as how these systems may be used directly in the process of wealth creation. This is referred to as bringing the ISD back to business basics. In this context the paper looks at the major concerns which exercise the minds of senior information managers and information technology directors as they proceed into the mid-1990s. This paper expounds the view that the next few years will see a greater emphasis on the business aspects of information systems i.e. their commercialisation rather than a simple concern for the employment of the technology itself. Although the issues specially addressed in this paper have been drawn from research in the business area the same principles are relevant to other organisations in the government, in educational institutions and other not-for-profit enterprises.Item Expert systems for management control: A multi-expert architecture(South African Computer Society (SAICSIT), 1993) Ram, VThe use of Expert Systems technology in management decision making domains is increasing rapidly as business environments worldwide grow more turbulent and as the cost of development tools decrease. Research effort in this field however, is concentrated largely on confined areas such as market analysis, financial diagnosis and production scheduling. The development of an Expert System to support a wider management area presents problems of both size and complexity since such a system would require a large monolithic knowledge base which would exhibit the associated problems of maintainability, consistency and reduction in inference speed. This paper describes a blackboard based Multiexpert architecture that is capable of integrating the problem solving capabilities of a range of confined expert systems in order to provide problem solving support for a wide area such as management control at the strategic level. The system consists of several dedicated expert modules in the area of marketing, finance, production and so on as well as a control module that handles problem decomposition, task allocation and dynamic scheduling. A prototype version of such a system has been successfully implemented in Prolog.Item Assessing the usability of computer systems(South African Computer Society (SAICSIT), 1993) Parker-Nance, TC; Warren, PRUsability problems with computer systems can be divided into three broad categories: problems due to the socio/political environment, problems due to the usefulness of systems, and problems due to the accessibility of utility. Any assessment of the usability of computer systems must span all three of these categories. This paper focuses on the problems associated with the accessibility of utility. These problems can be divided into three classes: firstly, problems due to the use of different systems when completing a single job; secondly, problems due to the way a user thinks about completing a job; and thirdly,problems arising from the interaction of the user and the system via the interface. Analysis techniques to assess the accessibility of utility in each of these areas are briefly outlined and applied to systems at Volkswagen.Item SSDE: CASE in education(South African Computer Society (SAICSIT), 1993) Norman, MJ; Berman, SoniaSoftware Engineering is a difficult and time-consuming discipline to learn. CASE Tools are generally expensive, prescriptive and tedious to use. Structured Software Development Environment (SSDE) was developed as a teaching aid which can assist students with aspects of the software development life cycle, with a minimum of cost and effort. SSDE provides the system designer with an interactive menu-driven environment, and a framework within which he can conveniently express and manipulate his proposed solution. This representation is in terms of both a conceptual model and a detailed software logic definition. SSDE provides tools for both high-level (or logical) and low-level (or physical) design. It allows a user to follow his own preferred methodology rather than restricting him to one specific strategy. Experimental usage of SSDE at the University of the Western Cape showed that it is an effective tool for students of Software Engineering.Item An enquiry into property-goal type definitions of the term "information system"(South African Computer Society (SAICSIT), 1993) Mullany, M; Dos Santos Gomes, A; Miller, RAfter reference to IS authors such as Lay [7J it becomes evident that there is as yet no unified definition of the term "information system." This research has attempted to extract, from the relevant literature, the supposed properties and expected goals of information systems that would enable the formation of such a definition. A questionnaire was designed to investigate support for the properties and goals suggested by the IS literature. Kendall association coefficients for the scores obtained were then determined to measure the levels of consensus among samples of 32 academics and 32 practitioners, both individually and as groups. The goals and properties of an information system were separately examined in order to approach an acceptable definition which Lay [7] claims is thus far lacking among academics and practitioners . In the group of 32 academics, highly significant (p << 5%) consensus was found between the IS properties identified in the literature and claimed by the respondents. The same was found for the group of 32 IS practitioners. Highly significant agreement between the groups of respondents was also found. In short, little doubt exists that these IS professionals have a very well developed idea of what an IS should exhibit in terms of properties and goals. However, very little ability on their part formally to define an information system was observed.