Spreadsheets and Databases

During week 4 you will also understand and experience the difference between spreadsheet and database technologies. Spreadsheets are very important for the analysis of computational links among the parts of the spreadsheet model allowing to see the effects of changes of various variables on the large group of dependent variables.
This is especially important in DSS systems. One of the crucial parts of building such formula connections is the ability to productively use absolute and relative references – which is the topic of the exercise.
But databases can also be used for situational analysis. The main tool here is the SQL language allowing to create “Views” of the whole database or big tables by formulating what has to be in such views and how it should be presented. Views can serve as the basis for further enhancements in charts, further queries, or special “relational operations” on data. Although systems manipulating SQL in order to create interesting and important views cost a lot of money, the basic knowledge and experience in SQL handling allows you to do such analysis with corresponding supporting data and charts for free.

More on Week 4 Concepts

This week we goes beyond understanding of information systems as a bunch of technologies allowing to move information between several points and/or create intermediate stocks of data to be properly collected and delivered somewhere later. The systems of the described type are usually classified as Transaction Processing Systems (TPS) but in a more general case can be seen as systems extending information connectivity among systems entities and processes. Such systems are like well trained sportsmen with quick reactions adequate to the changing situation.
Although this is important, there could and should be something else even more powerful with a totally different goal. This something else different from quick connectivity reactions is… intelligence. Very often it is not about being “well connected” and the speed of reactions but intelligent decisions in a more strategic sense. The class of systems attempting to aid this area includes Information Systems (as the verr-ry beginning), Decision Support Systems, Knowledge Management Systems, and Intelligent Information Systems (using artificial intelligence, or AI, algorithms and approaches).

The Web 2.0 technologies combined with social network functionality (if properly designed) create a link between these two classes of systems. They add elements of collective intelligence based on peer-to-peer and peer-to-crowd spiral improvement of the intelligence of ideas and solutions. But they are not enough…

We are back to the systems directly designed for organizational intelligence enhancements either by empowering people or using AI. Of course the combination of Collective Intelligence and such systems might prove to best bet.

This week you will explore the aspects, mechanisms, promises, and real uses of such systems.

Week 4. Various Systems

So far you’ve learned various aspects and components of information systems (IS) as well as tried various tools that together can form a small IS or be a part of a large one. For example, blogs, as you realized by now, can be used as mash-ups or tools of combining the live results from many other products and sources in a way that if the source changes – the embedded result in the blog also changes (they maintain the live link). You also learned ways of determining the boundary of your IS by controlling permissions and collaborations in your blog as well as how controlling sharing parameters in various tools. This knowledge will empower you in your personal life and at work allowing to support your knowledge with your own small IS serving you diligently and increasing your powers and abilities. This week we are looking not at the parts of systems and IS but at their types. Although there could be limitless types of IS depending on their design and application, some important classes are important to know and recognize since they have many features and methods of use in common. Thus information systems (a vague term since all of them could be called “information systems,” but in this case we use the name as the book determines it) increase your ability of seeing things in a more advanced way since the real world is not what you directly see with your eyes but the numbers, features, and parameters hidden from such direct view. Here come IS allowing you to see (like in those sci-fi movies) the entities of the real world as they really are in all their properties, changing views and angles and focuses as you need to inspect some features closer and some from a bigger perspective. Decision Support Systems serve not as much as vision enhancers but as enhancers of your abilities of making decisions. Human abilities to juggle numbers and keep various relationships among multiple parameters in mind are severely limited. Here come DSS. They allow you to use such tools as scenarios (when you change some assumptions and see what will happen to ALL parts you are interested in by providing formulas of the corresponding relationships), optimization (when the system quickly finds for you the best decision among many possible), and many others. Armed with such tools you become super beings (cyborgs, if you wish, as part human and part systems) far more advanced in your mental abilities than those who doesn’t use special supporting systems. And you can use this power throughout all your life experiences no matter what you do and where you work. Although many industrial systems of this kind are very expensive, there are some simple tools that already upgrade your abilities significantly and some of them we are learning in this course. This is kung fu of modern life. The more you put in work and understanding of the material of this week – the more you will get out of it.

More on CI and Enterprise 2.0

Since some of you study psychology, it might be interesting to know the origins of the Social Cognition. Russian psychologists Lev Vygotsky discovered something which can be seen as a sci-fi plot. Every child has so called zone of proximal development (ZPD) as ability to solve problems for particular age. For example, there are problems that a 3-year old cannot solve but a 4-year old can. Then he placed a bunch of kids of a certain age in a situation when they actively socialize (like in a collective game). Then he gave then a problem outside of their ZPD, but they were able to solve it. Once separated, their problem solving ability went down again to the one corresponding to their ZPD and not beyond. He called this phenomenon “Mind of Society,” which means that some higher intelligence arises from collective interactions that is bigger than anyone’s in that group, and that exists only when the group exists.

Today, when there are no more ways to compete by simply using more resources, the Collective Intelligence (CI) is becoming an extremely hot issue. The task is in finding such method of connecting group members and such forms of interactions that allow creating higher organizational intelligence without hiring more people, or seeking much smarter people. This is the edge of competition by using all technologies that we study in our course and some others. As a result of this course you will not only know about systems and IS, but also about ways of creating Enterprise 2.0 that uses these new forms of resources (CI and its variations).

Web 2.0 and CI

The best way of learning systems, and IS features in particular, includes the design of a small information system versus just learning buttons for the current version of Excel and Access. Normally, the development of an IS ,even of a small size, is quite expensive and/or requires a lot of man/hour investments of highly skilled systems developers. Only organizations with sufficient capital were able to develop and use IS...The evolution of software as a service (SAAS) and various types of accompanying web services created a possibility of new methods in IS development – assembly of systems out of existing services LEGO – style. This simplicity has led to a dramatic increase in end-user creativity and development capabilities.

In this course I want you to learn the most simple but effective ways of such system development for personal and organizational use. Become a one-person army, hmm... The basic services we were using so far included free blog development and support services, Zoho sheet, Zoho db for database development and, what is most important, services allowing sharing and collaboration. Already this set of tools, if learned a bit deeper than you've down so far, allows for some basic IS development.The new, mostly free, and easy to use services that can be incorporated in any custom IS design/redesign led to a new phenomenon: social networks. But the most important effect goes beyond increased activity of emerging social structures. This new unleashed power is studied in Collective Intelligence (CI) dealing with creation of super intelligences out of rather simple processing performed by its parts. Example include ant societies, various swarm intelligence examples, and... effective teams and organizations. This possibility of acquiring enhanced intelligence is the biggest asset and advantage an organization can dream about nowadays, which comes not as much from the mere infrastructure presence, but its proper architecture and processes in accordance with this new Web 2.0/CI developments. Web 2.0 technologies released the power and creativity of regular IT users making them producers/users (produsers). These Web 2.0 technologies paired with proper CI organization (where effective collaboration is the key) are the main and the most fascinating developments in modern IS.

Week 2 Databases

Although a database table might look like a spreadsheet, the capabilities of a database management system (software engine behind the databases) are quite different. For better understanding you might go to the Featured Samples (while on the Home page in your Zoho Reports site) to see that after the initial tables are created and filled with data, the rest of the database consists of various queries (that could be saved for future easy customer use), reports, charts, etc. All other database products, created from the data tables by using simple and effective tools, allow to SEE and ANALYZE a LOT of DATA form MULTIPLE POINTS OF VIEW, as compared to the relatively small amount in typical spreadsheets.

Well designed and developed (in terms of convenient analysis) databases - is what create added value to the initial data collection often stored in some input “flat” files. Data warehouses (or smaller data marts) are systems enhancing this analytical and decision support function of organizational (and even personal) data.

In my professional capacity, I was often asked by organizations that invested a lot of money into collection of valuable data – to help them make better use of this information (bang for the invested buck, if you want). This usually results into the development of an information system with a database at its core (this is why they call them “information systems” :)

More points to learn :)

Keeping your critical thinking ON, you still might benefit from some commonality of conceptual knowledge among people allowing for productive discussions and work.
So here I want to emphasize that not only IS are systems, but that they make systems out of non-systems by connecting things and processes together in a new mutually beneficial way. This is a new power of business growth: not by using more resources, but including more stuff in the orbit of their networks.

The reason why we use quite a few software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools in this course is that many of them are free, easy to use, and are very powerful mechanisms of connecting things, processes, and people over the Internet. They are the modern resources of organizational and individual power. Simple hardware, like smartphones and publically available software services can allow individuals to have full office support on the run (go mobile, like you can do with this course). Mafia understood the benefits of being connected long ago :)

Week 2 Critical thinking, but good learning...

What I am going to say now is probably a bit counterproductive, but important.
Karl Marx said: “Subject everything to doubt.” If the book or your professor (even me :) says that there are 5 types of something or 4 methods of something - think a little and you can come up with a few more or merge some of the offered points. When they say “something is such and such” – it is usually not (sounds almost like Zen :) But while our learning remains the same as in ancient times when there was no Internet, few books, and stable socio-technological environments, learning is often seen as memorization of these points and then spitting them out during the test. Yes, you still have to do it, but the value of creative and disruptive thinking is high.

For example, if you ask me what hardware is – I wouldn’t know what to say (but you should go by the book on your quiz). Technically, hardware is something responding to computer processing or being a part of it. But now with ubiquity of computing anything can become hardware if you manage to network it with the rest of the system. It can be your refrigerator, your TV, your car, even a brick or the surface of the table (see smart matter research).

Same with software (read the definitions on p.77 and you will see the problems even in dividing systems and application software) where on a deeper level of understanding the terms “program” or “data” can not really be satisfactory defined. Especially now when a new (not mentioned in the book) type of data/programs is becoming increasingly dominant. These artifacts are created by users (another problem of separating users from producers) like widgets, gadgets, and a bunch of other Web 2.0 products with open interfaces and continuous collaborative morphing.

So keep all this in mind not becoming too dogmatically trusting… Yet, the quiz grades are determined by the computer and will require good orientation and memorization, unfortunately :)

Value Chains

How does the concept of a value chain fit the common folk understanding of a system as a collection of parts?
One of the most important features of systems is their connectivity. Inside the system it is much higher than outside. This is how we can determine systems boundaries, which some times is not easy. For example such system as “friends,” which can work as a self-supporting group with powerful economic and social reactions, has quite fuzzy boundaries. Facebook draws the boundary where you draw it by simply marking people as friends. But then there are almost friends, half-friends, acquaintances, and so on with gradually increasing distance from your real feel of friendship. It can also be a dynamic system with new friends appearing as you go from the links to other friends, from your working relations, and other sources. But the main feature of a friend is that you are connected to them better than to non-friends, you can rely on them, you can call them whenever you want if you need their advice, in other words, you feel a better connection with them.

Same with any system... Ants from one ant house are much better connected with each other than with other ants. Parts in a car or software components in an IS are much more connected with each other (depend on each other, influence each other) than on entities from their environment.

But there is more to that. A good viable system has a special feature of the way this parts interact. They are not in the way of each other by competing with each other or just pursuing their own interests, but they play together well (like a good team versus bad team). Also they ALL HAVE A COMMON GOAL, which is stronger than their own interests, or at least strong enough to make them see ways of enhancing each other’s results making it really a nuclear chain reaction. Again, like in a soccer team a good player can gain a lot by scoring by himself, but sometimes THE WHOLE TEAM has better chances if that player will pass the ball to another player who has a better chance to score. This separates good viable systems from the bad ones. This is called VALUE CHAIN.

The book gives some good but simple examples of how various subsystems of a car wash add value to other parts in a continuous chain. Often it is a whole network versus a linear chain (like a sports team or members or work teams with supplementing skills). Demonstrating the chain of parts/steps increasing value of the previous stages was one of the requirements of A1.4 task but is the MAIN one for A1.3,

Intro

Congratulations with the successful start of the course (since you are reading this post :) ! I noticed that most of you are in various biz majors (mainly marketing) as well as other non-IT ones. Therefore you might learn a few useful things here.

This course is designed to enhance/offer an understanding in systems theory and information systems and technologies in particular. The first week is may be the most important since you are getting here the fundamentals of the "so-called" systems vision. Regardless of the variety of entities and processes surrounding you in your personal or organizational lives a stunning discovery has been made by Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy - the founder of the General System Theory (GST) - that they all are systems. More than that there can be created a science that can cover all types of systems as having common properties, features, and traits. Since then the theory has been evolving and now many organizations require from their leading employees "systems thinking" as ability to apply GST to any situation of any kind that they encounter.

After you get familiar with the main systems concepts we move to the applications of this theory to a specific type of systems – information systems (IS) and information technologies (IT). You will often find a term ICT (information and communication technologies) instead of IT. And finally, we will move to the role of IS/ICT in business and organizational systems. The Information Systems major in the Business School (has a minor too) offers students a professional grasp of the most general and widely useful knowledge, which nowadays is being used in all organizations/jobs – IS/ICT. With deeper knowledge and skills in this area students learn of how to dramatically enhance individual abilities by using various methods, skills, and tools that are offered in the major in order to enhance personal ability of consistently making best decisions under all circumstances, of how to put artificial intelligence to your personal and organizational service, of how to design systems that are the most important competitive resource for individuals and organizations, and how to develop electronic businesses and start-ups. This course offers you a glimpse (although important) into the IS/ICT world.

As one of the extensions of the IS activities we offer a completely online Web Development Certificate Program (just like Business Essentials) increasing your knowledge and skills in developing modern Web-based systems, sites, and organizations. This course might be a good foundation for this program.

There is a lot more to the systems theory than we can fit into this course. Such areas a Complex Systems Theory, Dynamic Systems Theory, Chaos, fractal systems, and Theory of Catastrophes are some of the more specific areas that being actively used in economics, finance, business, marketing analysis, medical and biological studies.