Feedback on Solving the Problem to Design an Information System

From: Linda Lane
Sent: Sunday, November 19, 2006 2:00 PM

To: Mike Eisenberg
Cc: Cheryl Metoyer; Jagadish Yadavadri
Subject: Feedback on Solving the Problem to design an Information System

Hi Dr. Eisenburg,
Thank you for attending our class on Saturday. It was great to have you, your Big6 & 3 process outline was very clear and useful.

It's a great class to be in. Dr. Metoyer makes easy to enjoy and assimilate information by calling for group and individual participation and comments. Personally I learn better in interactive environments.

During the session I caught your comment in response to my claim that we had solved the problem. Briefly you said that we were not asked to solve the problem but to create an information system. It is likely that you did not hear Dr. Metoyer's comment that she would consider solving the problem (perhaps for extra points) but that was not the main thrust of the exercise.

However solving a problem may be core to developing an information system, especially when the end user can be considered every living person.

In discussions with my class study partner Jaggi Yadavadri (a Senior Software Engineer, from India) originally he felt that the problem the information system endeavored to resolve was communication and information for the WTO group. But after a period of debate and refinement we agreed that poverty, thus war-famine-overpopulation and so forth were the root and not just a symptom of the problem.

Then Jaggi used the key term "Heart of the Problem" This caused me to look even more closely at the situation that we were asked to create a solution for.

At this point I reasoned that a lack of belief itself was the core problem, and that the pivot point or critical informative pivot was to change the belief system, which too is an information system. Belief is a human information system. Behind belief stands the commitment to change through information systems like a call to action and so forth.

In order to do this I would first need to change my own belief system, because informing those out there somewhere starts with the proper motivation, with the one, with ourselves. Otherwise how can one justify it? Only if I can believe it is possible myself to cure world poverty and so forth can I hope to design an effective system to do so. Then, once I believed it, then could I hope to communicate and convince Jaggi. Using our own framework we could endeavor to create an effective system information, communication, and recursive feedback to change belief systems, which Jaggi is easily able to model.

To this end I thought of someone familiar to us all who did the impossible, a human model. To Jaggi I offered the example of a simple man, an attorney who was able to lead his people to do something that no one considered possible at the time. A man using non-violent means in total deference to the country of India's deeply rooted ethical view, got the British to leave willingly. Someone who, had you told him at, say age 20, that he would lead his nation to freedom through this method, marked by periods of fasting (of all things), and communicating through local meetings -- would not have believed it himself.

Immediately Jaggi understood the example and believed it was possible. Thus we were immediately able to begin designing the system.

What we solved was the belief in ourselves that it was possible to solve the real problem, and communicate that critical informative pivot and those complex and wicked human problems related to it.

Cheers!-Linda