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ChaptEr 1

THE STATE OF SYSTEMS ANALYSIS
AND DESIGN RESEARCH

John EriCkson and kEng siau

INTRODUCTION

Successful implementation of information systems depends heavily on a thorough and well-
executed systems analysis and design (SA&D) effort. While organizations have been building
information systems for nearly fifty years, information systems failure is still a common occur-
rence (Avison and Fitzgerald, 2006; Hardgrave, Davis, and Riemenschneider, 2003; Schmidt
et al., 2001; Siau, Wand, and Benbasat, 1997; Smith, Keil, and Depledge, 2001). The field of
systems analysis and design remains very much an art rather than a precise science. Traditionally,
the area of systems development has suffered from abysmally low success rates, typically cited
in the range of 25–35 percent. Even though David Rubinstein (2007) cited an overall doubling
in success rates between 1994 and 2006, the success rates claimed in Rubinstein’s summary of
a Standish Report still stand at about 35 percent. While the apparent improvement is welcome
news, 65 percent of systems efforts are still considered failures. The stubbornly high failure rates
in systems development projects highlight the continuous need for quality research in nearly every
area of systems development.
Over the past twenty years or so, a number of different ideas regarding systems development
have revolutionized the field. One such revolution involves the movement from structured systems
development to the object-oriented perspective (Armstrong and Hardgrave, 2007) triggered by a
more or less wholesale move toward object-oriented programming in the 1980s. Another trend is
forward engineering, where models developed can be automatically translated into programming
codes. While the goal of complete executable modeling remains tantalizingly out of reach, some
progress toward that end has made it possible in some cases to make more than 40 percent of code
executable. More recent trends in systems development promote the idea of arranging existing
program code modules rather than writing the code itself, such as Web services or service-oriented
architectures (SOA) (Erickson and Siau, 2008); they also highlight a desire to move beyond the
programming function itself. In addition, new ideas and emphases such as agility (Erickson,
Lyytinen, and Siau, 2005), extreme programming, agent-oriented approach, and cognition (Siau
and Tan, 2005a, 2005b; Wei, Chiang, and Wu, 2006) in the context of systems analysis and design
have assumed increasing importance to academicians and practitioners. Continuing research into
these areas, especially concentrating on the analysis and design efforts of the larger systems de-
velopment process, remains a high priority, with a goal of reducing systems development failure.
This volume consists of chapters that address these concerns.

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