Metaphors and their meaning for information systems development

Information systems development is rife with problems, as witness the large numbers of systems that fail or fall into disuse. This paper hypothesises that the presence or absence of particular user metaphors might have an impact on the successful development of particular information systems. The paper introduces nine main metaphors-journey, game, war, machine, organism, society, family, zoo and jungle-that the authors identified in interviews with a cross-section of users. Four key attributes of the metaphors are identified: whether they are goal or alternative oriented; whether their environment is chaotic or ordered; whether their scope is internal or external; and the type of leader featured in each metaphor. Key attributes of six different types of information systems are then identified. Several connections between the presence of metaphors and the successful development of information systems are found after mapping the metaphor attributes onto the six system types: cooperative systems, competitive information systems, traditional MIS, expert systems (and artificial intelligence), decision support systems and executive information systems. Observations suggest that systems analysts may find more success in developing systems that go beyond the traditional information system when organism or game metaphors are used by organizational members. Mappings of attributes revealed that the zoo metaphor was not useful in developing any of the six system types considered. Use of the family metaphor suggested success only for the development of traditional MIS and decision support systems.