Systems and Organizations

Information is an organizational resource which must be managed as carefully as other resources.

Organizations are complex systems composed of interrelated and interdependent subsystems. Organizational subsystems are said to be interrelated and interdependent when a change in one subsystem affects other subsystems. An organizational boundary separates the system from its environment. System and subsystem boundaries and environments impact on information system analysis and design.

The three levels of management in organizations are:

• strategic management
• middle management
• operations management

Entity-Relationship diagrams help the analyst understand the organizational system. An E-R diagram is a graphical depiction of organizational system elements and the association among the elements. An entity represents a person, place, or thing. An associative entity can only join two fundamental entities. An attributive entity is used to represent an attribute of an entity, often a repeating group, and cannot exist without being linked to a fundamental entity.

A context-level data flow diagram is an important tool for showing data used and information produced by a system. It provides an overview of the setting or environment the system exists within: which entities supply and receive data/information.