Information Requirements for Decision Support Systems: A Task Behavior Orientation

Introduction It has been argued often and convincingly that requirements determination is the most critical phase of information systems development (Byrd, Cossick, and Zmud, 1992; Dalal and Yadav, 1992). System misuse or disuse can often be traced to an inadequate requirements determination process. The majority of information systems developed for organizations require post-implementation revisions to meet users\u27 needs (Wetherbe, 1991). Although information systems are expensive to develop initially, changes made after a system has been completed are much more expensive than making the same changes during the design process (Boehm, 1981). Consequently, research that can enlighten and improve the requirements elicitation process can make an important contribution to the quality and cost-effectiveness of software development efforts. This paper proposes a task behavior-oriented approach to the determination of information requirements for the design of decision support systems (DSS). It is argued that the behavioral nature of DSS requires a shift from the data-driven requirements determination approaches used to construct transaction processing and similar systems. The current trend toward task performance-centered DSS in industry (Gery, 1995) also supports a shift in requirements determination focus. Typical informationrequirements determination (IRD) methods include structured interviews, questionnaires, observation, and joint application design, among others (Whitten, Bentley, and Barlow, 1994). In most of these techniques, users are asked questions relating to goals,data, problems, and critical success factors, for example, and the answers are used to infer system requirements. However, these methods may not adequately specify the actual task performance behaviors in which users engage, as the methods are generally data-focused. Further, the level of requirements elicited through such methods is often too general to be of significant use to analysts attempting to understand behavior. Tools designed to elicit more specific task behaviors are likely to be of greater benefit, since such behaviors are better descriptors of user needs and arguably can lead to more complete system requirements (Keen, 1980). Because DSS are developed to support organizational tasks that decision makers perform, it is arguable that the requirements determination for such systems should more directly address users\u27 performance of those task

Information Cascades in the Adoption of New Technology

This work presents a theory of information cascades, based on the work of Bikhchandi, Hirschleifer, and Welch (1992), to explain fad-like behavior in the adoption of new technology. An information cascade occurs when an individual ignores his or her own private signal about the value of a technology and relies, instead, upon the observed actions of others. This can lead to serious problems if the observed actions in question are based on still other observed actions rather than private signals. The present research provides an operational model to assess information cascade theory and empirically tests the model in the context of the adoption of electronic commerce technologies. The results suggest that information cascades play a large role in the adoption of such technologies

Investigating Evaluative Stopping Rules in Information Requirements Determination

Information requirements determination (IRD) is often considered the most important phase of IS development. Research directed at the cognitive challenges of IRD has presented a variety of narrative and diagrammatic tools for eliciting information and representing requirements. However, none of these addresses the cognitive processes used by systems analysts when assessing the sufficiency of the information acquired during IRD. This research identifies the stopping rules employed by analysts to decide when to stop gathering requirements for system development. Experimental findings show that the cognitive limitations of analysts result in flawed application and evaluation of stopping rules, producing premature termination of the IRD process. Further, the results show that the use of a strategic prompting tool reduces the risk of premature stopping by the analyst

Directed Questions for Structured Interviews in Requirements Determination

Requirements determination is a critical stage in systems development. Despite its importance, however, few studies have provided empirical tests of requirements determination issues (Vessey and Conger, 1994). The present study tested several questioning approaches in structured interviews: an Interrogatories technique (Couger, 1996), a Semantic questioning technique (Lauer, 1994), and a Task Characteristics technique developed as part of the current research. Experimental results showed that the Task Characteristics technique elicited a higher quantity of requirements and more detailed requirements from subjects in an application development task than did the other two approaches. Further, the three approaches elicited qualitatively similar requirements, indicating that the use of only the Task Characteristics tool is likely best for systems analysis practice

Promoting the Use of Information Security Measures for Threat Prevention and Threat Detection

Wording, or framing a message differently has been shown to influence the audience of a message in different ways. In this study, we use a special type of message framing known as goal framing to promote the use of different types of security measures. Consistent with our predictions and prior literature, results of our pilot study provide preliminary yet promising evidence that framing a message positively works better for promoting the use of preventive security products while framing a message negatively works better for promoting the use of detective security products. We discuss the implications of our finding for information security theory and practice and identify opportunities for future research in this domain

Investment in Information Security Measures: A Behavioral Investigation

In a pilot study, we employed a series of novel economic games to investigate the underexplored behavioral aspects of security investment decisions and security investment structure decisions (i.e., budgeting the security expenditure among different types of security measures). In our study, decision makers exhibited a bias toward investing in prevention even though investing in detection and response yielded the same return on security investment. We also demonstrated that it is difficult for human decision makers to determine the optimal security investment amount even when return on investment is readily calculable. Nearly all participants invested in security when the risk was so small that the economically justifiable security investment amount was zero

An Empirical Investigation of Build-or-Buy Decisions in Software Development

When an organization seeks to apply a computerbased application to its business processes, the decision of whether to build or buy software must typically be made. Much previous research has bypassed the build-or-buy decision stage. Even the limited studies focusing on the build-or-buy decision have tended to focus on checklists or guidelines for decision criteria and decision procedures. Thus, the build-or-buy decision process has not been explored fully from the behavioral perspective. The present research provides new insights into decision makers’ actual behavior when making build-or-buy decisions. Based on the belief processing model of Smith, Benson, and Curley (1991), a model is developed to describe the actual cognitive processes involved in the build-or-buy decision. Two hypotheses based on the theoretical background are proposed and will be investigated in an empirical study. We then describe the research methods for the empirical study in some detail. We conclude with a short discussion

A Broad View of Systems Analysis and Design: Implications for Research

This article presents a broad view of systems analysis and design (SA&D) research. Although SA&D is a critical area of research in the information systems field, relatively little such research has been published in leading IS journals. To point toward increased research opportunities for SA&D work, this article presents a framework that illustrates the broad range of activities within the SA&D area. This framework contrasts with narrower views that consider SA&D to be concerned primarily with software development. The framework positions SA&D activities in a two-dimensional space. We identify theoretical and practical research issues that apply across the full range of SA&D activities as well as issues that apply to specific situations. Research opportunities in SA&D are described and discussed

More Enduring Questions in Cognitive IS Research

In the April 2012 issue of the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Michael Davern, Teresa Shaft, and Dov Te’eni published an article titled “Cognition Matters: Enduring Questions in IS Research”. Their paper reviewed much of the history of cognitive research in the IS discipline, especially that related to human-computer interaction and decision support systems. While we believe their article is excellent in many respects, we also believe that it omitted a great deal of the most basic cognitive research performed in the IS domain over the past 10-15 years, especially work in the area of systems analysis and design. Our purpose in this paper is to supplement the work of Davern et al. by discussing much of this recent work. We use two theoretical lenses to organize our review: basic cognition and behavioral decision-making research. Our review provides many illustrations of IS research in these areas, including memory and categorization (basic cognition) and heuristics and biases (behavioral decision making). The result, we believe, is a fuller picture of the breadth of cognition-based work in the IS discipline in general and systems analysis and design in particular. The paper provides further evidence of the importance of cognitive research in IS and suggests additional enduring questions for future investigations