Textbook

Information Systems: Achieving Success by Avoiding Failure

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Information systems are particularly prone to failure. Some systems never materialize, others appear late and/or over budget and those that are implemented often fail to deliver the promised levels of performance. Worse still, developers and users experience the same types of problems occurring over and over again, despite the publicity given to those systems that have failed spectacularly at enormous cost. Concentrating solely upon information systems failures, this book provides a means of analysis that promotes learning from failure with a view to preventing failure in the design, implementation and operation of information systems.

Table of Contents

About the Authors.

Preface.

Acknowledgements.

1. Opportunities for Learning.

2. What is an Information System Failure?

3. Chalk and Cheese.

4. Systems Concepts.

5. CAPSA.

6. The Systems Failures Approach Part 1: From Situation to System.

7. The Systems Failures Approach Part 2: Comparison and Synthesis.

8. Information Systems in Practice.

9. Using the Approach to Look Forward: Electronic Patient Records.

10. Other Approaches to Understanding IS Failures.

Index.

Excerpts

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Author Information

Dr Joyce Fortune is a Senior Lecturer and Head of the Technology Management Department at the Open University. Her teaching and research interests include systems failures, quality management and technology strategy. Her most recent papers have covered a wide range of topics including risk in project management, human rights and ethical policing, emergence and systems approaches to failure. This is her third book on systems failures.

Professor Geoff Peters is Professor of Systems Strategy at the Open University and Chairman of UKERNA Ltd, the company that manages JANET, the UK’s academic and research network. His main research interests are failure in complex human systems and change in higher education systems. He has edited and authored books on system failures, systems behaviour, corporate universities and the works of Sir Geoffrey Vickers.

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