The determination of user information requirements during the development of management information systems.

Abstract

One of the major causes for the failure of Management Information Systems (MIS) is that they do not satisfy the users' information requirements. This, in turn, is most often caused by the fact that those requirements are difficult to obtain accurately and completely. Simply "asking" the user what he needs is inadequate. This thesis reviews the Information Requirements Analysis (IRA) literature, briefly describing some of the techniques available for determining the users' information requirements. It then reports on a survey which attempted to investigate the degree to which the extensive MIS literature involving information requirements determination has had practical impact on the way in which MIS's are actually developed.