Educating Information Systems Professionals

Educating Information Systems Professionals: The Tertiary Educational Challenge

Roy I. Morien and Olive Schmidenberg

Curtin Business School Information Systems & Management Curtin University of Technology Perth, Western Australia.

GPO Box U1987, Perth, 6001, Western Australia Fax: +61 9 351 3076 Voice: +61 9 351 7440 e-mail: [email protected]

Extracted from The Proceedings of apitite'94 (Asia Pacific Information Technology in Training and Education), Brisbane June, 1994

INTRODUCTION A strange and puzzling contradiction has been reported in the computer press and literature over the last 10 years. On the one hand, the information systems and technology (IST) industry is perceived by many as dominated by an unrelenting tide of innovation and change. At the same time, the practitioners involved in that industry are frequently perceived as being conservative and obstructionist, opposing innovation, unwilling (or unable) to ensure that their skills remain current and useful. This paper sets out to highlight the record of complaint and accusation against IST practitioners, and the educational challenge that it presents. The authors trace a path through the literature, describing a 10 year record of warning and alarm, which has, it appears, gone largely unheeded by information systems professionals and business educators. This is achieved by the citing of quotations from a number of articles, papers and books. Two major streams of concern and experience are traced; one being that of constant warnings that IST professionals are professionals at risk, unless major changes in attitude, professional development, and reskilling come about. The other is the doleful record of substantial failures of information systems, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars worth of development being discarded, often accompanied by significant business losses. This grim record of conservatism, obstructionist attitudes, vast waste of corporate resources, and failure to maintain forward looking and professional attitudes, is taken to what is seen as the logical conclusion for many practitioners; redundancy, unemployment, career disasters, as reported in the computer press. This is seen not as an economic outcome of Australia's and the World's recession of the late 80's, but as an inevitable outcome of the practitioners' refusal, or inability, to remain current, or to adapt to change. Within Australia there has been a net gain in the number of IST positions, yet there has been a significant rise in the number of unemployed IST practitioners. The practitioners at risk have become the unemployed casualties of their own intransigence and failure, or inability, to accomodate and learn. It is the lack of demand for their particular, now obsolete, skills, not the lack of demand for IST practitioners, which has been the major contribution to their plight. It is suggested at the conclusion of this paper that the education of IST professionals, especially at tertiary level, must include a greater emphasis on broad based studies on business practice and management, including the implications of business, environmental and technology dynamics and change, and the management of change. The IST practitioner must be seen first as a business practitioner, not just a technical officianado. The practice of IST development and propogation within business enterprises must also be treated as, and taught as, a profession, where the professional practitioners must comprehend their professional obligations and ethics, including ongoing professional development, contemporary relevance and competence, and responsibilities to clients. It appears from the literature that, certainly in the attitudes and practices of many IST practitioners, the criteria of success are far removed from that applied by the users of the information systems (that is, those information systems which were actually implemented, and not scrapped as costly, ineffective, mistakes.). Whereas the practitioner sees a successful outcome in terms of technical efficiencies, and technical successes, these frequently fail to include issues of usefulness, relevance, effectiveness, or business valueadded, which are the criteria of success applied by the administrative and managerial personnel in the organisation. It also appears from the literature that information system development methods which are apparently in use within the industry are far too rigid and inflexible, and are even described as dangerous; preventing the development of effective, timely, information systems.

Page [2] Extracted from The Proceedings of apitite'94 (Asia Pacific Information Technology in Training and Education), Brisbane June, 1994

The literature which is the basis for this paper includes: 'Programmers and managers often resist the proven new ideas...' 'Programmers are understandably reluctant to change languages...' Nosek & Sher [1983] 'Many installations encounter significant resistance among their technical staff when (high level languages) are put to use.' '(The up or out policy)....forces Obstructionists to leave.' 'Technical people often turn out to be very conservative in their approach to their own work.' Abbey [1984] '....the managers interviewed showed a keen interest in hiring generalists for programming and systems functions.' 'The managers stressed that generalists rather than "techies" have more to contribute to data processing departments.' Friedman & Greenbaum [1984] 'We no longer have room for average technicians; IS people either have to build business or organisational skills or make sure they maintain technical currency.' 'We are changing the rules on IS people: Experience may no longer be an asset, and old skills are not as valued as before'. Earl [1987] 'We focus on business graduates rather than computer science graduates. All senior MIS managers have MBAs...' 'The emphasis is on communication skills, project management and business understanding rather than just technical competence.' 'IS jobs are undergoing fundamental changes...IS organisations are becoming more business oriented.' '....despite increasing pressure to redefine their jobs, some IS professionals are clinging to technical skills that are no longer relevant' '(they are) unwilling to take seriously the growing dispersion and redefinition of information technologies.' 'They (IS staff) hold fast to skills that are becoming obsolete. Increasingly, they are professionals at risk.' '...some MIS people are finding it difficult to accept change because they identify themselves with existing technologies or procedures, and have trouble letting go when a better product becomes available.' 'Making the discovery that hard-won knowledge is now obsolete isn't easy for many DPers.' 'The responsibility of acquiring the necessary business and attitudes falls on the shoulders of the IS practitioner' 'People have to become much more responsible for their own careers. They have to act like individual entrepreneurs, like doctors and lawyers.' Hartog & Rouse [1987] '....Software Tools are usually bought by the DP boss, but how many of them really feel comfortable with anything other than the tools they used and understood years ago?' Page [3] Extracted from The Proceedings of apitite'94 (Asia Pacific Information Technology in Training and Education), Brisbane June, 1994

Khosrowpour & Lanasa [1989] 'The problem is embedded in the mindsets and experience of the (IS) professionals....Their experience and training, their perspective, are based upon obsolete technology and methodology; they cannot extricate themselves from their background, because they cannot see beyond it' 'Many of the new systems that are developed using the old methodologies are failures' 'Users are finding the failures of IS less and less acceptable' McLanahan & Perotti [1991] 'Rapid Application Development has been demonstrated in many projects to be so superior to traditional development that it seems irresponsible to develop systems the old way ... It seems astonishing that the majority of IS organisations are still building systems so painfully slowly.' Martin [1991] '...Westpac's highly ambitious CS90 project was described as 'under review' after five years of development and an investment believed to be $200-$300 million....CS90 is no longer a project' 'ANZ Banking Group...The reversal of policy has meant the retrenchment of ..more than 1200..of the data processing staff' Plunkett [1992] 'The process of software development, although still young, is as rigid and slow to change as early cave drawings.' 'The structured methodologies that we've followed have locked us into a stiff and unbending discipline that alienates our customers.' Arthur [1992] '...A survey of over 500 development projects over 10 years noted that 15% of the projects were cancelled, aborted, postponed or delivered products that were never used' Urquhart [1993]

The Career Crisis for IST Practitioners The set of quotes shown above, derived from a variety of trade magazines and academic journals, and books, can be summarised as follows: 1. IST practitioners have often been conservative and obstructionist in their work. 2. There has been a continued reluctance for IST practitioners to adopt new technologies, for a variety of reasons. 3. Experience and competence at current techniques and practices have been burdens for practitioners when faced with the need to update their skills. 4. The often narrow, technical outlook of many IST practitioners is not appreciated, and more 'liberal arts' education is considered preferable. 5. The methods and practices adopted and used by IST practitioners are rigid, bureaucratic and unacceptable to many users and clients. 6. The criteria of success for IST practitioners are far removed from that applied by the users of the informations, and are often contradictory and meaningless in a business context. These trends and observations may have found their inevitable peak in a lead story from Computerworld Australia, April 16th, 1993, entitled 'Out-of-Date Professionals get the Chop'. That newspaper article made some grim, and in many ways damning comments. Page [4] Extracted from The Proceedings of apitite'94 (Asia Pacific Information Technology in Training and Education), Brisbane June, 1994

'Veteran IT professionals with outdated skills are losing their livelihood in scores as IT shops migrate to new environments or adopt new technology' '...in perhaps the saddest irony of the 90's, a wealth of experience may be the greatest handicap that the unemployed veteran IT professional faces today' 'The IT industry is like one of those electric hares on a greyhound track; even the best of the breed can never catch up' 'In the IT industry today, if you don't keep yourself up-to-date you might as well forget about having a future.' 'It seems the more leading edge the technology, the harder it is for the old guard to adapt.' 'The old dyed-in-the-wool programmers have a harder time with the transition, because the latest technology is often new and threatening' '..the net gain to Australia in 1990/91 of computing professionals was the highest on record with 3818 permanent and longterm arrivals' This latter quote clearly implies that there is still a significant demand for competent, skilled IST practitioners. It therefore appears that it is the lack of current skills which is causing the unemployment problems, not economic matters related to recession or business downturns. This clearly indicates IST practitioners' failure to maintain currency and relevance. The Tertiary Education Challenge It is obvious that the education of IST professionals at tertiary level must be broad. Just to teach technical and narrow skills is futile. However, there does appear to be a significant demand for specific skills in certain areas. Which Skills The conundrum for tertiary education institutions is to discover the best match between skills teaching, and the broader education requirements. A real problem must exist for tertiary education vis-a-vis skills teaching. If the marketplace is moving as quickly as some commentators assert, the tertiary education institution may find it impossible to guess the technical marketplace for specific skills to teach their graduates. It is also relevant to query whether new graduates can realistically claim sufficient competence at certain skills to allow them to compete with experienced practitioners. The knowledge about technologies and specific tools and products, rather than specific skills at them, is probably the best asset that a new graduate can have. The following quotes are apt statements in this regard. Training refers to the processes of equipping people with useful but potentially obsolete skills without general applicability through processes which demand little intellectual understanding. Thus training tends to leave the trained in inflexible and vulnerable positions without the versatility to create new futures for themselves. Watts [1989] ....it is fruitless for universities and polytechnics to try to adapt their undergraduate courses to meet short-term needs for specific skills. It is a truism that degree courses should emphasise understanding of principles, which remain valid, rather than the acquisition of specific skills, which rapidly become obsolete. Software Engineering Journal [1989] 'The fast changing high-tech atmosphere makes many MIS courses outdated in less than five years... The curriculum in MIS should be designed to prepare students for careers rather than, as is often the case, training a student in the tools and techniques to obtain a first job.' Jacobson et al [1989]


It can be clearly seen that IST practitioners have been left in the 'inflexible and vulnerable positions' described by Dr. Watts, and certainly are perceived as not having 'the versatility to create new futures for themselves'. This appears to be the situation described in the 'Out-of-Date Professionals Given the Chop' article from Computerworld Australia. The GartnerGroup Research Report [GartnerGroup 1993] states that IS teams comprising personnel with highly specialised skills, including Business Modelling, Facilitation, Prototyping and Use of Advanced Tools and Methodologies, will provide significant advantages for the firm. However, it is also interesting to note that this research report was based on a survey of perceived changes in skills requirements over the period 1993-1997. It leaves room to wonder whether this means that 1998 may bring a different set of skills requirements. Given that courses offered by tertiary education institutions normally have a much longer lead time than just 4 years to develop courses, and then graduate students from those courses, it almost seems that skills-oriented courses could always be in a position of graduating students with already obsolete skills. It is obviously necessary that tertiary institutions must inculcate in their undergraduates the attitude that on-going personal and professional development is essential. This certainly comes under the heading of 'professionalism and ethics'. The I/S Analyzer [1988] states that the IST practitioner now needs skills in the following areas: Technical Skills, Human Resource Skills, Business Knowledge, Transitional Skills. It is this latter which holds particular interest. To quote the publication, 'Transitional skills are deemed necessary because systems professionals face drastic changes, brought about by business changes and more flexible and easy-to-use technology'. 'Transitional training will emphasize understanding and effectively dealing with change, migrating to new technologies, learning to work closely with people in other areas of the company, understanding organisational behaviour, and broadening technical knowledge.' Urquhart [1993] concludes that 'Given the documented failure of projects and evidence of communication problems in the software definition stage, ... strengthening developers' personal skills would make at least as a valuable contribution to project success as the adoption of system development methodologies'.


Conclusion The style of this paper has been to present quotes from a series of articles, papers and books published between 1983 and 1993, as a longitudinal literature review to show an ongoing concern and alarm about the skills and competencies of IST practitioners. The regularity and commonality of the message is especially significant in retropect. The almost inevitable outcomes of failing to heed that message are documented from the computer press. Tertiary education of IST practitioners must be more broadly, business based, emphasising ongoing professional development as a career necessity. However, there is evidence to suggest that tertiary educational institutions could implement both a technological stream, and a managerial stream in their MIS curriculum, and students may select the appropriate stream (Jacobson et al, 1990).


References and Further Reading: Abbey S.G. [1984] COBOL Dumped, Datamation, 1984 Arthur L.J. [1992] Rapid Evolutionary Development: Requirements, Prototyping & Software Creation, Wiley, 1992 Bemelmans Th.M.A. (ed) [1983] Beyond Productivity: Information Effectiveness, North-Holland 1983

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Cheney, P.H. & Lyons, N.R. [1988] Information Systems Skills Requirements: A Survey, MIS Quarterly, Vol.4, No.1 Earl M. [1987] Information Management: The Strategic Dimension, 1987 Friedman & Greenbaum, Wanted: Renaissance People, Datamation, 1984 GartnerGroup [1993] Application Development Skills for the 90's, GartnerGroup Research Note, May 28, 1993 Hartog, C. & Rouse, R.A., A Blueprint for the New IS Professional, Datamation, 1987 Healy, T. [1986] DP Teamwork, a necessity, Computing Australia, January 20, 1986, p. 24 I/S Analyzer [1988] Preparing For Tomorrow's Systems Jobs, Vol.26, No. 5, May 1988 Jacobson G. & Parviz, P-N (1990) Are Business Schools Preparing Students for Careers With Today's Information Systems Curricular, Journal of Management Systems, Vol.2, No.1, 1990, pp.15-23 Jenkins, G.H. [1986] Education Requirements for the Entry Level Business Systems Analyst, Journal of Systems Management, Vol.36, No.3, August, 1986. Khosrowpour & Lanasa [1989] MIS Professionals Attitudes Toward and Perceptions of 4GLs, Jnl.Of Information Systems Management, Fall, 1989 Martin J [1991] Rapid Application Development, McMillan Publishing Co., 1991 McLanahan A. & Perotti J. [1991] The Good Old IS Days Are Gone, Journal of Systems Management, April, 1991 Nosek J.T. & Sherr D.M. [1983], Getting the Requirements Right vs Getting the System Working - Evolutionary Development in Bemelmens [1983], op.cit. Plunkett, S., Banks Pay for the Wasteful Years, Business Review Weekly, Feb.21, 1992 Rifkin G. (1987A) MIS courses fall short, Computerworld, Vol.21, No.24, pp.120-121 Software Engineering Journal [1989] Page [8] Extracted from The Proceedings of apitite'94 (Asia Pacific Information Technology in Training and Education), Brisbane June, 1994

Editorial: Software Engineering Education, July Urquhart, C., [1993] Changing Skill requirements in Information Systems - A Skills Model for the Systems Analyst, Proceeding of the 4th ACIS, University of Queensland, September, 1993 Watts D [1989] Onetime ViceChancellor, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, WA, and Bond University, The Gold Coast, Queensland), in The Australian, January 11th, 1989 Winkler C. (1986) Battling for New Roles, Datamation, Vol.33, No.20 1986
