Considering the Human Relations Approach school of thought, the analyst and developer must appreciate that in most cases it involves the never ending evaluation of the problem within an organisation. They will need to adopt, in part, a soft systems process in order to propose solutions to it. The problem will always be of a complex nature where human activity is involved. The system will need to be continually developed in order to satisfy the organisations and the users within it.
Analysis and Systems Development Techniques
A Human Relations Approach will infringe on formal analysis and systems development techniques. The analyst and developer may use interviews, questionnaires, and observation of tasks to yield qualitative data, and a rich picture of the problem they are faced with. However, they need to be aware of the limitations of using such techniques. It is not easy to quantify and can be open to misinterpretation. Users of the system may not complete questionnaires, or they provide incomplete answers. This could be due to low morale within the organisation, lack of knowledge or misinterpretation to the questions being asked. It could be that the users of the system are restricted to answers that are not relevant to their job.
The analysts and developers may have also used terminology the user cannot understand. As for on-site observation, we already know that if people are being watched they can behave in a different manner e.g. The Hawthorne effect. Observation is not enough to tell the analyst and developer the nature of the system they are dealing with.
Use of structured analysis does not take into account any intangible benefits. Changing the work routine of an employee to increase morale is difficult to measure in quantifiable terms.
Analysts and developers may have to consider an organisation by looking at the whole picture. For example, by examining the leadership of management style. This is because the main thesis of systems analysis focuses on the objective rather than the subjective real-word problems like that of staff morale which do not/cannot form part of the formal analysis process. The analyst here will need to draw on experience and judgement values of the managers themselves as managers select the strategy to pursue and play a large role in systems development, which can conflict with employees’ needs.
Management will want a system that will improve the efficiency of their business. They will look for systems that will increase the speed their employees are able to output a given product or service. A slow system will affect staff morale because the employee is unable to meet the productivity quota set by the management team.
A study conducted by OASIG Survey, a DTI support special interest group concerned with the organisational aspects of information technology, used interviews on a sample of consultants and system developers. They discovered that many organisations are not successful at utilising non-technical i.e. human and organisational aspects in information technology, and often failed to site how work could be organised to make the information system more effective.
Amongst their findings was the continuing practice of adopting structured system tools resulting in end-users not being considered in the development, and thus the implementation and design of new technology systems. When interviewed, the majority of end-users complained that although the analysts and developers would approach them for input regarding the current system, the design was left for management and the implemented system failed to meet their needs or expectations.
Analysts and developers, when looking at a current system, will ask why it is not working. They need to look at the communication and information flows between management: if the user understands why they are doing something, if there is a lack of information due to training or limitation of information flowing between systems.
The analyst and developer will see how this could be incorporated into the current system. They will want to look at what erro