What are Computer Scientists doing about it?
In conducting a survey of the literature on IS failure Kalle Lyytinen, pictured above, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Jyvskyl identified four major theoretical categories of failed IS (Lyytinen & Hirschheim, 1987): • Correspondence failure: This form of IS failure is based on the idea that design objectives are specified in detail. An evaluation is conducted of the information system in terms of these objectives. If there is a lack of correspondence between objectives and evaluation the IS project is regarded as a failure. • Process failure: This type of failure is characterised by unsatisfactory performance. Either, the IS development process cannot produce a workable system or the development process produces an IS but the project runs over budget in terms of cost, time etc. • Interaction failure: The argument here is that if a system is heavily used it constitutes a success; if it is hardly used, or there are major problems with using the system then it constitut
