Matching input with output helps balance management system components

How do we design input for management tools to really help managers manage? In approaching a manager's domain of responsibility as a system, we consider three essential system components: the management tools, the manager, and his or her operation. The manager and operation are collectively the user of the tools. Both the interface between the management tool and manager and the interface between the management tool and operation are critical for successfully understanding and designing those tools. In practice, the user deals with both interfaces at once. Information systems designers and designers of other management tools don't consider input formats as crucial to management tool design. They should! Because input and output are often iterative, matching the formats improves system balance. A balanced system implies successful management tools. For a strategic-, tactical-, operational-, or clerical-level endeavor, the best portrayal format will differ. Also, individual managers choose formats to support decision making. We must help the user translate between the basis for the decision and the effect of the resulting action. The measured changes in the operation are best translated as information if those changes are formatted consistently with the basis for the decision the changes reflect. A database application for a federal government budget office shows the importance of the concept. The manager generates his or her output format. The output format dictates the input format. For the wide variety of users on the system, there is an equally wide variety of information portrayal formats. Each user has individual needs from the system and preferences for interfacing with the system but shares tools, data, and information. True data or information sharing requires this concept. When looking at a domain of responsibility as a generalist, we define conditions for successful management tools. These conditions show input format design to be connected to and equally important to output design and influential on the success of the manager. Information specialists who design those tools must build in the same conditions.