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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://hdl.handle.net/2451/14510
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| Title: | THE PRACTICE OF OFFICE ANALYSIS: OBJECTIVES, OBSTACLES, AND OPPORTUNITIES |
| Authors: | Sasso, William C.
Reitman Olson, Judith
Merten, Alan C. |
| Issue Date: | Feb-1986 |
| Publisher: | Stern School of Business, New York University |
| Series/Report no.: | IS-86-07 |
| Abstract: | Office analysis is a technique for supporting the first stage in modern
systems analysis and design, the invention phase. The process involves
first describing the activities that take place in a given office,
focusing not on who is doing what with an object, but rather on the high
level information processing activities that change or move the object's
information content. After having described the activities, office
analysis prescribes modifications of the existing system, by identifying
both potential reconfigurations of work and additional technological
support. These prescriptions are based primarily on theory from
cognitive psychology about the strengths and weaknesses of humans as
information processors (e.g., they are fast and powerful in creating
information, but slow and error prone in transporting information from
place to place). This paper describes how office analysis works and what
makes it hard to do, including the facts that office work is intangible,
seems to lack focus, and often involves intermingled and parallel
streams of activity. There are, however, major advantages to successful
analysis: requirements for new information systems are founded on
careful scrutiny of the work done in the office, assigning those
activities better done by computers to automation and those by people to
people. We argue that the application of office analysis techniques will
make more efficient use of an organization's resources, including human
resources, to accomplish its information processing activities. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/2451/14510 |
| Appears in Collections: | IOMS: Information Systems Working Papers
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