The Work System Method: Progress to Date, Extensions Related to Service Concepts and Challenges for the Future

The work system method was developed to address a void in established systems analysis and design approaches. The goal was to provide a set of ideas and a method that business professionals might use with or without the help of consultants or IT professionals in order to evaluate a system from a business perspective, think about system improvements, and communicate about realities faced by new or improved information systems. Successive versions of the work system method were developed based on direct and indirect feedback from hundreds of MBA and EMBA students writing papers about systems in their own organizations. The underlying ideas have been presented at ICIS, AMCIS, IFIP, and SIGSAND conferences, and in articles in CAIS, CIO Insight, EJIS, IBM Systems Journal, Decision Support Systems, and IRMJ. Basic ideas about work systems have been incorporated into IS, systems analysis, and process improvement courses at many universities This tutorial discusses motivation and definition of the work system method, T-reliant work systems as the core of the IS field, the work system framework, the work system life cycle model, the service value chain framework, work system principles, continuous design variables in analyzing systems, and the latest version of the work system method and current work to extend the work system method