Plan de mantenimiento para el módulo de automatización

In this paragraph I finally describe the steps that together compromise my MIS design method. The method is new; although Mason and Mitroff proposed the five key variables of every MIS, they did not specify the order in which these should be determined for a MIS under design. In fact, their point is that the five key variables are interdependent and therefore should be approached as a whole, i.e. in parallel and not sequentially. Unfortunately, all this is not very practical because we can only consider one thing at the time.

Considering one variable at the time has its difficulties because of the interdependency between the five variables. This means that deciding on the value of one variable restricts the possibilities of others. For example, different modes of presentation match different psychological types. This means that specifying the psychological type of the user(s) also largely determines what mode of presentation the MIS will have to employ.

However, Mason and Mitroff seem to imply that the strength of interdependency between different pairs of variables actually varies. I have attempted to illustrate the strongest interdependencies in Figure 10. The sequence of the steps of my design method are based on this.

The arrows in Figure 10 depict the direction of influence. For example, deciding on the organizational context of the upcoming MIS largely determines the kind of decision problems that will be relevant. The set of decision problems in turn determine what the most suitable evidence generation methods are. The other deciding factor for the most suitable evidence generation method is the psychological type of the users. This variable also directs the choice for the mode of presentation employed by the MIS.

Given these interdependencies, there seem to be two possible approaches to deciding on the best configuration of the five variables. The first is to start by deciding on the psychological type of the users, followed by the selection of the most suitable evidence generation method and the appropriate mode of presentation of the MIS. When this is done, the type of organizational context can be

28 determined. The last step of this approach is to identify the class of problems that the MIS will provide information about. The hope is that the class of problems will be compatible with the evidence generation method that was decided upon in a previous step. If this is not the case, the designer has no choice but to review the configuration and decide which variable should be configured differently to make the whole set more coherent.

Figure 10 – A visual representation of the strongest interdependencies between the five key variables.

The second approach consists of a somewhat reversed order and starts by deciding on the organizational context of the MIS under design, followed by the class of problems. Next, based on these preliminary results, the most suitable evidence generation method for problems of this nature is chosen. At this point the number of possible modes of presentation that match with the rest of the variables is probably reduced significantly. Finally, the designer determines psychological type of the user(s) of the MIS under design. Here too it is hoped that the result is an internally coherent configuration of the five variables. If not, a second analysis is necessary to resolve the conflicts. For this project I have decided to follow the first approach, which means I started by determining the psychological type of the users, the evidence generation method and the associated mode of presentation. The reason for this decision is that the DMs had already expressed their preferred configuration of the latter two. I had also observed the culture and people at Ymor enough to derive the likely psychological type of the DMs.

However, as I have said, there is a chance that the first attempt results in an incoherent configuration of the five variables, no matter which of the approaches is taken. What makes the configuration incoherent is that at least two of the variables are given values that are incompatible with each other. For example, suppose an evidence generation method is chosen that works well for problems of a structured nature. If the actual relevant problems then turn out to be of a very unstructured nature (i.e. ‘wicked’ problems), then we could say the class of problems is incompatible with the chosen evidence generation method. In those cases, a second analysis phase is necessary to determine how to resolve this conflict.

29 Unfortunately, this turned out to be the case with this project. After the first analysis I found that the evidence generation method that the DMs preferred was not compatible with the unstructured or ‘wicked’ class of problems that they face. I therefore performed a second analysis phase with the purpose of transforming the nature of these problems from unstructured to more structured ones. It is for this purpose that the BSC model was used.

Figure 11 summarizes the design process that I have just described.

Figure 11 – A summary of the steps of the MIS design method applied during this project