Recognizing the Need for Change in Human Aspects of Information System Planning

The assignment at the University of Washington's iSchool to create a group site in SharePoint was an excellent choice to help us as teams and individuals discover issues around teamwork and technology as an intrinsic part of today’s information engineering challenges. The many technical limitations preventing access and the freedom which technology allows when applied well are two ends of the same scale of usefulness. Impediments I encountered to gaining access to the iSchool system and SharePoint combined with my expectations about the way information should best be presented made me consider my own work in the information management field, as well as social conventions, such as hierarchies in a free society, power and responsibility, and the tradition of prayer when beginning new endeavors[1].

Consider human factors in the designs of large scaled structures and the difficulty of accomplishment in building anything -- it’s not just the fact of scale of the Great Pyramid at Giza that is such an amazing engineering feat, it is the fact that it was ever made by people working together at all[2]. This lead me to wonder what is required to plan and build effective systems. Projects working with people and technology are inherently difficult to accomplish; what methods do people use to remove doubt, and successfully overcome problems.

While technology is generally considered an enabler, the human factors of what to implement, when to implement, and how to implement makes building useful systems more complicated. The more information and tools there are available, the more scattered individual efforts may become as demonstrated by our cohort’s first assignment strategy. Moral issues might not be considered at all. Many serious problems in technology are from the outset considered unsolvable. Clearly it is the human element which makes building new technologies and changing or integrating old ones so difficult, and many times unsuccessful.

There was little or no planning focus at the beginning of the SharePoint project. As a group we did not consider if we should do what we were asked, or how best to accomplish these tasks for the entire group as a unit, or evaluate ethical considerations. We simply accepted the assignment and acted upon it, trusting each other to put our best skills to the task. In class, we discussed the role of planning in product and software design and development, and then the groups broke into discussions.

Initially, I assumed we would meet to plan our projects. The brief meetings which did occur had little effect on our group or on the whole cohort. What actually happened was a very eager group of individuals acting alone performed actions, and then reported back to the MSIM2008 and their own groups respectively, usually via email. None of these actions hurt the group, but on the whole one could argue that they decreased the value of what could have been possible. The apparent strategy was we worked enthusiastically to create evidence, information as thing[3], and as a by-product accumulated knowledge, to prove the assignment complete.

The roles that Mountford[4] described in her article, the “explorer”, “artist”, “judge” and “warrior” all were found in the energy and expertise of the group effort. Another role I would like to propose, ‘the planner”, was not found (one could conclude that these are combined as parts of the judge and warrior) in anything but informal ways. One informal way was ad hoc meetings and without these Leader-Planner-Admins we could not have been as successful as we were. Documenting this assignment serves in the role of Leader-Planner-Admin, as a reflection, a meditation, not just as the judge, but combines aspects of all the others.

An example of this concept of individual effort situation was when one of the cohort students purchased space on a remote storage server for external sharing purposes. When the student announced that he had made this purchase, another disappointed student responded with the fact that he owns and leases server space and would have provided the group the same storage space at his cost. Another example was when a team member reported that he had set up a cohort focused Google Group, with read access set to public, even though we already had a University hosted SharePoint server, and the ability to set up many subsequent SharePoint sites, for a variety of demanding needs. During a brief meeting with the technical Leader-Planner-Admins we came to the understanding that if anyone wanted Google set to private we would do so. In practice our Google Admin waited until several votes arrived for private to change the setting.

The lack of cohesive planning lead to confusion regarding the reasons for the public Google group’s existence. Problems about the accessibility of the other storage area ‘the Share’, and SharePoint sites lead to questions about how each was to be used. No common consensus was reached. Impromptu Leader-Planner-Administrator’s ad hoc meetings in the class concluded there was no harm, but I felt that confusion by the class made them less likely to take advantage of the resources. In practice this means conducting searches in at least three places to find class notes and other information.

Experiencing issues using SharePoint I responded with information to my cohorts that the Microsoft browser and SharePoint were built to function together, and advised them to access the SharePoint sites using Microsoft Internet Explorer; however, this lead to serious discussions regarding Open Source verses Microsoft’s proprietary software. There is a significant rift in preference of open source technology over proprietary technology that runs deep in our cohort. I felt the class could benefit from a session on how to use the Microsoft technology due to simple questions about use and configuration which came from my fellow students. Despite these issues and problems I remain hopeful that through common consensus use of the SharePoint, the Share, and Google Groups repositories will grow.

SharePoint allows for images to be displayed giving each site a unique look and feel. My personal experience has demonstrated that a strong visual identity aids recognition and will make experiences using these sites feel more familiar and personal. Therefore, I sought images for the sites which would reflect the purposes behind the site’s use but are in the public domain. After reading about ethical concerns[5] I have substantially more questions about copyrights, property and power than I did before.

To ensure that any image I choose would be a safe image from a copyright perspective, I settled on a drawing to form the logo for Group5, from the High Renaissance goldsmith and artist, Wenzel Jamnitzer, b.1508–85. For the MSIM2008 logo I chose to create an entirely new design, based on my skill, made on a computer I own, using legally licensed software. My motivation was to aid in the identification of the group, with as little attachment to it being changed or discarded in the future as possible. Also Group5 needed customization using the web parts such as for calendar functions, discussion forums, and to change positions of parts in the page layout, making them more accessible. Everyone feels the need for systems to provide for personalized customizations to make them useful and not all needs are the same.

In summary, implementations in information management need to encompass approaches for planning in a better way than how our group and the larger cohort approached it. The need to plan is inherent in good system design and should not be included just because law requires it, such as the SOX act, as just a last ditch patch to system flaws, or as an afterthought. The individual efforts of students to provide alternatives to the iSchool supplied SharePoint server were helpful, however, in the long term, they seemed to be more confusing as many students either did not know where to look for information or were forced to look in many different places. Also, customizations of the SharePoint were directed by each teammate’s need for certain functionality, including customized look and feel, scheduling, discussion and positioning capabilities, and the need for such preferences should be included as part of systems design, including on the backend for Administrators, or system members.

During a recent interview, an iSchool professor voiced his desire to inculcate the cohort to plan and build better information systems. Thus prepared by our university level education, we would go out into the world to change and improve it. In the same conversation he expressed his well founded belief that the University itself would be unable to change its own information systems due to deeply engrained, incurable, and obstinate problems with systems and entrenched human issues.

This mindset tends to invalidate our education in real practice, unless a radical, progressive system can be created which effectively deployed enables intelligent[6] information system change anywhere it needs to be. Overcoming these kinds of objections begins with the belief that the transition is possible. Otherwise people at grand, thoughtful, and complex institutions will continue to experience interminable technical issues wasting money, time, and increasing their own and other’s frustration for the foreseeable future. This will place such institutions behind their more flexible competitors, and in time may reduce their odds of independent long term survival.

[1] Fleming, Alice (1979) Alcohol: the Delightful Poison: a history. New York : Delacorte Press. Page 32.“The rituals of ship launching started with an old pagan rite.”

[1]Khenpo Namdrol, Rinpoche, (1995). The Practice of Vajrakilaya. Ithaca, New York : Snow Lion Pub. Pages 25-32. Regarding obstacles and starting rituals, the 8th century arrival of the teacher Padmasambhava (traveled to Tibet to establish and transmit Buddhism) started the transmission of his religion by building a monastery:
“Once he arrived in central Tibet, he blessed the site where the king has been trying to build Tibet’s first Buddhist temple, and so finally, Samyé monastery was able to be constructed.”

On preparations to performing religious practices:
“…prior to performing any important practice such as a great accomplishment ceremony, or drupchen. … Then our practice of secret mantra will be free from any malignant force and auspicious circumstances will be securely established from the very outset.”

[2] This is true even with an absolute ruler in charge, Khufu, a king whose negative reputation lasted until 450 BC when Herodotus, the 5th century Dorian Greek Historian, “was told further stories of that king's cruelty to his people and to his own family in order to ensure the construction of his pyramid. ” and documented that kings reputation. We don’t want to emulate these kinds of means for accomplishment. Khufu. (2006, November 14). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 23:16, November 14, 2006, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Khufu&oldid=87840300, cashed on Webcite at: <http://www.webcitation.org/5KMKZIiXA>.

[3] Buckland, M. K. (1991). Information as Thing. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 42(5), 351-360.

[4] Mountford, S. Joy, (1990). The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co.

[5] Moore, A. and Unsworth, K. (2005). Introduction. Information Ethics: Privacy, Property and Power. Seattle, WA: UW Press. “The Euthyphro Objection to Theological Ethics”

[6] Choo, C.W. (2002). Information Management for the Intelligent Organization: The Art of Scanning the Environment. Chapters 1-2.