Effective Systems Design and Requirements Analysis

Because an important feature of ETHICS is the participation of users in the systems design process, it is necessary to be clear about what participation means and what it involves.

An attribute of most of today’s computer systems is their flexibility in terms of work organization. Unlike some shop-floor technology, such as the moving assembly line, they do not as a rule force a particular pattern of work activities on those employees who have to interact with them. Provided that systems analysts recognize the advantages of flexibility and do not design in technical constraints, most computer systems can accept a variety of task structures. To help systems designers, managers and other interested groups take advantage of this flexibility and achieve good organizational as well as good technical design, the author developed the ETHICS method.

If the proposed system is a large one and incorporates a number of sub-systems that have to be integrated, the next, and most important, step is to set specific efficiency, effectiveness and job satisfaction objectives for the new system. Alternative design strategies can then be tested against these and the strategy that best fits the objectives is the one chosen for implementation. This is a key step in ETHICS. Objectives are derived from the careful diagnosis of efficiency, effectiveness, and job satisfaction needs that has been carried out by the design group. The objective setting process can be complicated and usually involves negotiation between the different members of the design group if they represent different constituencies, for example, different functions or grades.

Before ending this section on ETHICS it is interesting to see how the ideas on participation and work humanization which it contains fit in with the ideas of the past and the present. Let us start with the past.

So how does ETHICS work in practice? Here is an example of how a software house used ETHICS as a general problem-solving tool to improve its performance and job satisfaction.

Salespeople try to persuade us that if we buy the right machine our information problems will be solved. Unfortunately, this simplistic view rarely proves to be correct. While it is important to acquire high quality and appropriate software and hardware for specific problems, getting these systems in, accepted and working effectively is invariably more of a social than a technical problem. Success will depend as much on a good understanding of the social and business situation into which the technology is to be introduced, as on technical facility and expertise.

Requirements analysis, or deciding what information you as a user need from a computer-based information system, is one of the most important aspects of choosing and implementing a management information system (MIS). Yet it is also one of the most difficult. Conventional design methods say very little about it and seem to assume that information needs are easy to identify and will emerge spontaneously once the manager recognizes that he or she has a problem. These ‘hit or miss’ approaches are causing users to spend large sums of money on information systems that provide a poor fit. They have little relevance to real needs and may soon fall into disuse.

The Royal Hospital is a medium sized district hospital. It has 657 beds and provides acute services for the resident population of Plushing and surrounding areas. Its services include Accident and Emergency, General Medicine and Surgery. The hospital has an annual revenue income of £41.5 million and a capital budget of £1 million. This supports 1898 full-time staff. The hospital is in the process of reorganizing itself with the following objectives in view:

This chapter concerns a shortened version of the questionnaire that is used for QUICKethics. It covers only one key task. Completed questionnaires are shown for a number of people involved with the Royal Hospital case.

Managers have difficult and demanding jobs and they require accurate, up-to-date, timely and relevant information if they are to work effectively and take the right decisions. Although they still rely heavily on face-to-face meetings, telephone conversations and informal interaction they increasingly recognize that they can do all of these things better if they are supported by a good computer-based information system. But, to achieve this, managers must be able to specify their information requirements clearly, so that an information system can be created that directly addresses these needs.

The first use of QUICKethics was at Trafford General Hospital in Manchester. The organizers of this project were Laura Roberts, the Resource Management Project Manager, and Barbara Pennington, the Resource Management Project Nurse. At an early stage in thinking about the introduction of ‘resource management’ they decided that the route to successful implementation of the new systems was user participation.

The Community Dementia Team (CDT) consists of a manager, four staff nurses and a secretary. The manager is responsible for the running of the team, holds the budget and reports to the Community Services Manager and has a place on the Steering Group, a multi-disciplinary group of senior managers who meet monthly to oversee the running of the CDT.

South Tyneside Health Care NHS Trust is a third wave Trust, having been formed from the South Tyneside Hospitals Unit and the South Tyneside Community Unit on 1 April 1993. The Trust has approximately 800 beds, 600 of which are short stay and 200 of which are beds in Community Hospitals.