Infology : a study to identify possible elements of infology in some system development methodologies

Abstract: The purpose of this work is to identify possible elements of infology in some systems development methodologies. To reach the aim two objectives were identified: to gain an understanding of the concept of infology and secondly to study different kinds of methodologies and analyse them to find out possible elements of infology. In order to reach the aim of this work a literature study was performed. Four methodologies were chosen for the analysis and the selection represented a wide range of different methodologies. They were: Soft Systems Methodology (SSM), Effective Technical and Human Implementation of Computer based Systems (ETHICS), Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method (SSADM) and Yourdon Systems Method (YSM). The infological approach has been characterised and the fundamental characteristic of infology is the distinction between data and information. A consequence from this distinction is that the users of the intended information system should participate in the developing process in order to understand the complex and dynamic relations in an organisation and information system. The results of this work have shown that the soft methodologies (SSM and ETHICS) have a high degree of infology and the more hard methodologies (SSADM and YSM) have a low degree of infology.