Software Development for Information System - Achieving Optimum Quality with Security

Literature Review

Day to day business operations in an organization generates data that an Information System (IS) processes into strategic or tactical information that helps the management in effective decision making. Its biggest advantage is that Information can flow up in the MIS information pyramid faster and more effectively. There exist three levels of information management in any organization (Laudon & Laudon, 2011). The first one is “Executive level that comes on the top level of management pyramid and at this level of management long-term and unstructured decisions takes place. The Second level is a Managerial level that comes on the middle level of management pyramid and at this level of management semi-structured decisions take place covering weeks and months. The Third level is an Operational level that lies at bottom of the management pyramid where structured decisions need to be taken on daily basis.

There are mainly two broad categories of IS which are utilized at aforementioned three levels of “Information Management” in any organization. Let’s take a quick look at different possible types of an IS which are used at different management levels of an organizations (Tiến, 2012).

• 1.

  Management Support System: It supports managerial level strategic decision making for achieving competitive advantage and business level tactical decision making. It further comprises of Management Information System (MIS) which facilitates managers with pre-specified analysis and reporting tools, Executive Information System (EIS) which facilitates executives with strategic as well as tactical information management and Decision Support System (DSS) that facilitates executives with strategic as well as tactical information management. It provides interactive support for non-routine decisions what-if analysis for End-users through text and graphs.

• 2.

  Operation Support System: It supports business processes and operations. It further comprises of Enterprise Communication System (ECS) that facilitates operations through team collaboration and communication, Process Control Systems (PCS) which supports operations and monitor and control industrial and manufacturing process. And Transaction Processing Systems (TCS) which supports operations, and updates operational databases.

It can be seen from the above discussion that Information Systems are mainly software-based solutions. Therefore, it is important to understand what quality practices are required for the development and maintenance of an IS.