[Sigia-l] IA system components - add to the list!

[Arno Reichenauer]

Listera <listera at rcn.com> wrote:
> Why a theory?

and

> As I always ask: "What if you could define IA perfectly?" What then?

Quite easy. I can see three main reasons and benefits for it.

First: Solving problems: A theory allows you to draw on generalized knowledge to find solutions for problems. I’m sure everybody has something like this in his mind, a personal view on what she’s doing, how she’s doing it and what solutions there are for certain problems. To develop a theory is just a question of sharing it and coming to a common understanding. Without any of  this (personal) generalized knowledge, it would every time be a first-time situation and you’d have to start from the beginning to find a solution for a problem. So a theory to me is just a common agreed-upon understanding about what IA as a process CAN cover, the different ways it CAN be done and what the results CAN be. No holy wars here. Just the highest common denominator. If somebody does something which I don’t, nevermind. Just add it to the list for a start. 

Second: Communication within the community: Seems to me that this would be the same as to ask why to have a discussion list for IA. Isn’t the goal of it to share ideas, ask and answer questions and thereby help each other to mature as an IA and in the end to advance IA itself? That’s exactly the same with a theory, only a more generalized version of it. So every time somebody asks, “I need to do a xyz, who can help me?”, there would be a) a common understanding what he/she is exactly asking for, b) a set of best practices how it can be done, and c) a set of criteria for evaluating the quality of the result. And everything would have been derived from past experiences in the field. What’s wrong with that?

Third: Communication to clients: After all, we have to sell IA to our clients. What if after your perfect presentation, your prospective client says, “but your competitor down the street told me he would also be doing HTML-programming for me!” and you don’t? Of course, to be able to argue here “that’s not IA, because IA is this and that”, calls for a very settled definition of IA. This takes a lot of time, but we have to start some day, so why not today?

Enough for that.. what I actually intended was to collect comments on the components I named, not on my view of IA or the should-we-define-it-or-not-discussion. Sorry if I wasn’t specific enough.. Therefore, again my question: what do you think of the components I named?

Arno


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