Living with Labels (A personal reflection on IS, SE

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Living with Labels(A personal reflection on IS,
SE CS)

• Dave Bustard
• University of Ulster
• SEISN

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Spot the Difference?

• Implement a C compiler for a Pentium III
  processor
• Implement a database for hospital patient records

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Consistency?

• Professor of Computing Science
• Head of the School of Information Software
  Engineering
• in a Faculty of Informatics
• MBCS, CEng, MIEEE
• Member UKAIS, UKSS, SEA
• Research area software engineering

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Why?

• Tackling a mess
• Reducing conflict
• Personal clarification
• Amusement?

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Why Not?

• One should never quarrel about words, and never
  get involved in questions of terminology What
  we are really interested in, our real problems,
  are problems of theories and their truths.
• Karl Popper
• Objective Knowledge an evolutionary approach,
  1972

Checkland Holwell 98 (p.88)
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Basic Question

• Are software engineering and information
  systems different fields?
• Yes!
• if you define them that way!!!

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My Research Interests

• Computing Science
• Software Engineering
• requirements engineering
• systems thinking
• business - IT alignment
• methods integration
• risk management
• OO development ...

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Overlapping Fields
BM
EE
CS
More ...
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SE Definition?

• the judicious application of the theory of
  programming to practical, industrial-scale
  problems
• Jim Woodcock,
• CAR Hoare Symposium, Sept 99

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CS SE?

• CS everything relevant to the (effective)
  creation, maintenance, and use of computing
  systems
• SE everything relevant to the (effective)
  creation, maintenance, and use of software

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CS SE
CS
SE
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IS IT
IS
IT
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BM IS IT
BM
IS
IT
?
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Concept Hierarchy of Concerns
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Issues

• Software engineering or systems engineering?
• What is the practical interpretation of
  information

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Concept Top Down Analysis
Bottom Up focus on the problem/solution
Top Down focus on the encompassing system

• Top down approach sets the context

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Concept Systems Approach

• An approach to a problem which takes a broad
  view, tries to take all aspects into account and
  concentrates on interactions between different
  parts of the problem.

Checkland 81
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Concept System Co-Evolution

• defined evolutionary plan
• aligned business technology support
• change can be business or technology led

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Summary

• see system development as part of an on-going,
  evolutionary, change process