What are the two most frequently experienced causes of frustration in IS professionals and users while working on an IS plan?

Working on information systems (IS) plan takes patience and perseverance. In order to have a good outcome, IS professionals should do profound analysis and must consider a variety of factors. Without a thorough understanding of the problem and organization’s need the IS plan is intended to solve, and without knowledge of the best practices for organizing the required data, the implemented IS plan becomes an unwieldy beast that requires constant attention. Developing an IS plan is never an easy task. That is why there are methods that IS professionals try to follow and standards they try to thrash out. IS plan should serve the company and the users the way it is expected. Learning from my experience from the previous semester, IS professionals’ task does not end with a scrutiny of the information systems. Indeed, they must evaluate the entire message in terms of coherence, the quality of hanging together in the IS plan. To achieve its purpose, statements must be organized appropriately. They must be ordered in a logical manner and should support the business plan of the organization so that the transition between each one contributes to the overall objective of the plan. After answering the first question, my next purpose is to respond to the next question, “What are the two most frequently experienced causes of frustration in IS professionals and users while working on an IS plan?”

According to Freud, it is not simply the nature of the frustrating incident that determines how people will react to it. Rather, there is interplay between the situation and the psychological characteristics of individuals. The level of maturity of the individual also plays a part in the reactions to frustration (Barker, Dembo, & Lewin, 1965). With maturity, there is an increase in the variety of responses to a situation employed by individuals, in the control of the environment, and in their ability to employ problem-solving behavior and plan steps to obtain the goal. It would appear that learning, which is culturally determined, is a major factor in developing socially acceptable responses to frustration.

Frustration occurs when there is a condition, which interferes with or stops the realization of a goal. It makes us feel useless or worthless. Any interruption to our action or task can be very frustrating. Level of frustration experienced by an individual clearly can differ depending on the circumstances surrounding the frustrating experience and on the individuals themselves. There could be so many causes that lead an IS professional to frustration. Same thing happened to me. I made a list of my goals, when and how to attain those goals. I made my own schedule to help me budget my time and succeed in attaining the goals. But then the outcome was in contrast to what I had expected. I thought if I took those actions then all things would go right. This time, I should say that I am not a good planner but I will still keep on trying. I made a realization that the failure was not because I failed to plan and not because I planned to fail but there was something missing and I have to find out what it was. I learned from that experience and I should do the right thing next time.

Going back to the question, I need to identify the causes of frustrations not the frustrations itself. Similar to my experience, IS professionals fail to have a good plan. It might be because they are only focusing on one factor and others are taken for granted. Since we are dealing with information systems, that is why IS planning requires profound analysis and should consider all factors and all the necessary things that would contribute to the improvement. IS professionals may get tired of the unending revisions of IS plan, they should never ignore themselves be dominated by the feeling instead they should keep on working and let the perseverance power over.

My second idea on frequently experienced causes of frustration in IS professionals and users while working on an IS plan is the lack of support from the management or from the personnel. Without the support, the IS professionals efforts would end up in frustration.

New technologies are emerging and old ones are outdated. Many major technologies can have a life expectancy of less than five years. These pressures have resulted in a drive for new approaches to planning and managing information technology (IT) services. That is why many of the organizations right now are having a greater investment in IT and information systems (IS). This is now the moment that organizations would try to hire IS professionals to have analysis and improvement on their information systems to help them compete in the market.

Design systems by IS professionals could also frustrate users in the workplace. Users find it hard to understand and use the implemented system. This frustration can affect workplace productivity, user mood, and users’ interactions with other co-workers. It also can affect their emotional state. These frustrating experiences also harm organizations by undermining productivity, lowering quality, and raising stress levels. Improving user interface design is one clear opportunity and it would benefit many users. To build better interfaces, more user involvement is needed in the interface design process. Designers should follow the interface guidelines that exist. User training will also help, especially if it addresses problem solving strategies that will help build self-efficacy. Even small changes in the interface can make a big impact on user satisfaction. IS professionals should also be better situated as the intermediary and be able to get better information between users and vendors when understanding frustration in the workplace.

Frustration is a natural feeling after all. Even non IS professionals experience being frustrated. It happens all the time when we fail to take the action and/or fail to attain our goals. Our response to it should be adaptive. Adaptive responses are constructive and are implemented to solve the problem that is blocking goal attainment. They may include preemptive efforts to avoid the problem, or once the problem is encountered, problem solving strategies to overcome or circumvent the problem.

What should be the nature of the relationship between the business plan and the IS plan?

As an individual with goals, I always remind myself to have a plan for the attainment of those goals. List the information, knowledge, skills, arts, crafts and sciences I need to master to achieve my goals in life. I already have my list since we were given a task on how we see ourselves ten years from now and the strategies to get there. I am thankful because I made my goals more specific, it helped me clarify my thinking, and did put a meaning to my existence. I am no longer the product of certain inescapable conditions and circumstances. Thanks to our instructor. Same as I did, organizations do also have their plans. Why do we need a plan and why do we have to plan? We need a plan and we need to plan because it will provide us with a success consciousness so that we would know where we are going and how to prepare ourselves for the journey.

For now, my purpose is to answer the question, “What should be the nature of the relationship between the business plan and the information systems plan?” The starting point is to define each term and finding out their functions and significance before identifying the nature of the two plans.

After reading quite a few articles, I have now my response. So first, what is a business plan? A business plan contains statements of goals of the organization and means for the attainment of those goals and the reasons why they are believed attainable. It may also contain background information about the organization. However, as what has been stated in Wikipedia – there is no fixed content for a business plan. The content and format of a business plan would depend on the created goals and the audience to whom the plan will be presented and the context of presentation. A business plan should contain whatever information is needed to decide whether or not to pursue a goal. When do we say that our goals are attainable? When we define our goals, it should be within our reach, we should be realistic. As these words are coming out of my mind, I realized that the goals I have stated in our previous assignment were somewhat unattainable but I am not saying that I should eat my words.

Second, we need to define information systems plan. But before that, what is an information system? It is a system of persons, records of data and activities that process the data and information in an organization. It includes organization’s manual and automated processes. An information systems plan contains the goals and the means of improving the organization’s information system. What are the expected changes three or five years from now? What are the developments that the organization should have? People and information are the assets of business. How could information be processed without the people who are working on it? In addition, how could people work if there is no information to be processed? In creating an IS plan, every aspect of the organization should be well examined and thought-out. We should always look out for the desirable characteristics of an IS plan in order to have quality in our product. We may also include the shortcomings of the organization as well as the solutions to those problems and the proposals. These solutions should be for a long-term.

To share with you my gratitude, we were so lucky because we were given a task to make an IS plan for our chosen company in the previous semester. It was an achievement for me because we were able to finish it before the deadline. It might be a little bit stressful but it was informative and I had fun. That was a great experience. A sample of a proposal that was made by the group was the encouragement to have databases for the organization’s transactions. In the paper, we stated the reasons why the organization needs to have those databases and the advantages. How the organization would be benefited and other recommendations were also stated.

Going back to the real subject matter, after defining the two plans and identifying their functions, I should now state my idea on the nature of the relationship between the two. Business plan and information systems plan work together as a team. Without each, one could not work well. Knowing that business plan can be stated as the overall purpose of the organization while an IS plan works on the information system’s development of the organization, we can now say that business strategies are supported and stimulated by information strategies. Business goals and activities should be in accordance with the information systems that support them. Any improvement in the information systems, would it be hardware, software or peopleware is expected that it would cater the needs in achieving the organization’s goals.

In today’s competitive world, there is a need to attain a higher level of competence in order to be more marketable. The presence of machines in business can at times have a dehumanizing effect on people, but we have to face the reality. This is the reason why business firms keep on developing plans, innovating and make large investments in information technology and in information systems in order not to be left behind and to cater the best service to their customers. The level of intensity gave business firms a motivation to work a lot harder and have a healthy competition among the firms.

Business and IS plan should be well planned. Each of which should never be taken for granted because they both have a significant impact and both working for the success of the organization. If I were to use an idiomatic expression to describe the relationship of the two plans, I would say that they do have this “mutual understanding”. How could I say that? Of course, as what I have stated, they work in accordance with one another. If I were to pinpoint the general purpose of the two plans, that would be the success of the organization. I am not saying as an expert because I am not. My words are based on my perspective.