During the last ten years has seen great changes in the education of MIS professionals. New skills and issues have come into the foreground. Unfortunately, the available textbooks have not kept up on the graduate level to cover the range of subjects necessary. While technical monographs are available, they are usually far too detailed for course work. As such, these MIS notes have been expanded to include subjects of survey design, MIS organizational management, knowledge management, and project development methodologies.

These notes are prepared for Management Information Systems (MIS) graduate and undergraduate students at Drexel and West Chester Universities. For several years, I had been teaching senior undergraduate seminars and MBA MIS courses. The senior seminar course requires the completion of the development of a real systems project. The students in this course had requested outlines and standards as a guide for completed the projects. The traditional introductory, analysis and design MIS texts are missing this type of explicit instructions and guidelines. The original purpose of this document is to provide that guidance. A similar problem has arisen regarding the introductory MIS course for the MBA program. Because of the swift changes in information technology, it has become important to both review the present status of MIS technology and to help the students understand the issues of technology assessment and MIS management. This issues are not well covered in any single MIS text. These texts are designed to cover traditional topics and tend to be several years hold in technology. I have included in these notes these supplementary topics.

This present version of these is the eighth revision. Several sections have not been completed. Diagrams and examples have yet to be added. It is being distributed to students at Drexel University and West Chester University for their comments and class use only.

The focus of these notes is on practical standards for MIS. I have relied heavily on industrial and commercial sources. The preparation of these notes has been an ensemble project. Several professionals have collaborated with me in it preparation these include: Sherry London of Drexel University, Virginia W. Lieb of Certainteed Corporation, and Frances Voltis, a former student at Drexel University. Materials were obtained with permission from Dr. Leland Wilkinson of SPSS. and Dr. Kenneth Lewis of E. I. Du Pont de Nemours, & Co., Inc.

Several other groups and individuals were extremely helpful in the preparation of the notes. Of particular note are: Joseph A. Girardi, David Bartges, and Frank Pater of E. I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co., Inc. and Dave Moskowitz of Productivity Solutions, Inc. Assistance was also obtained from IBM and DEC Corporations.