Many researchers -and their advisors on research method -adopt a doctrine called empiricism, which claims that researchers may only use empirical methods. This restrictive doctrine impoverishes any academic discipline where it is dominant. The main reason is that a discipline only qualifies for the status of a science after it has progressed beyond empirical generalisations to explanatory theories; but although empirical methods are useful for discovering the former, they are inherently useless for creating the latter. So the empiricist doctrine retards scientific progress. Researchers should be aware of this danger, and research methodologists should attempt to counter it.

When people write a report that involves a complex argument towards a conclusion, they can use a design tool called the inference tree, which enables them to outline the argument, and quickly detect reasoning errors in the outline. Yet when the argument is very complex, the inference tree may spread over several pages, so that writers may often have to flip back and forth between those pages. To prevent unnecessary flipping, they can draw the tree as a hierarchy of modules, similar to a modular hierarchy of program flowcharts or structure charts, where a major module controls several minor modules. In drawing the tree, writers can adopt four principles of Computing: modularity, the criterion of minimal coupling between modules, and the methods of forward and backward chaining to draw all the modules.

Many researchers -and their advisors on research method -adopt a doctrine called empiricism, which claims that researchers may only use empirical methods. This restrictive doctrine impoverishes any academic discipline where it is dominant. The main reason is that a discipline only qualifies for the status of a science after it has progressed beyond empirical generalisations to explanatory theories; but although empirical methods are useful for discovering the former, they are inherently useless for creating the latter. So the empiricist doctrine retards scientific progress. Researchers should be aware of this danger, and research methodologists should attempt to counter it.

A manager facing the decision whether to proceed with a proposed computer system development project needs to determine whether its benefits are worth more than its costs. This can be done by applying a simple mathematical formula to calculate the project's 'net worth', as the sum of the annual benefits obtainable during the system's life span, less its development costs. The formula recognizes that a system's annual benefit, comprising enhanced informational value plus reduction In data processing cost, will change as a result of obsolescence, cost of capital, organizational growth and learning.

When people write a report that involves a complex argument towards a conclusion, they can use a design tool called the inference tree, which enables them to outline the argument, and quickly detect reasoning errors in the outline. Yet when the argument is very complex, the inference tree may spread over several pages, so that writers may often have to flip back and forth between those pages. To prevent unnecessary flipping, they can draw the tree as a hierarchy of modules, similar to a modular hierarchy of program flowcharts or structure charts, where a major module controls several minor modules. In drawing the tree, writers can adopt four principles of Computing: modularity, the criterion of minimal coupling between modules, and the methods of forward and backward chaining to draw all the modules.

When they write essays, many students merely attempt ‘to fill pages with material gathered from sources’ (Erion, 2000). Consequently, they produce inane arguments of the form: Adams said this, Brown said that, Cohen said the other, etc. Conclusion: much has been written about this topic. This is unacceptable both in academic ICT courses and subsequently in the ICT profession. In academe, a written argument should ‘make a leap from the raw materials of the library to an informed opinion’ (Fasel, 1963). In the profession, a written argument should similarly make a leap from a present state of affairs to a desired future state. So in both situations, writers should be able to devise a report that contains an argument from available facts towards an intelligent conclusion. This kind of report is called an ‘expository report’ (Trimble, 1975), or an ‘argumentative report’ (Dykeman, 1974).

Yourdon and Constantine (1979), De Marco (1979), and Gane and Sarson (1979) introduced the data flow diagram (DFD) more than a quarter of a century ago, as a systems planning tool that is particularly useful in the fields of software engineering and information systems development. But the DFD is not restricted to those fields. Empirical research projects are systems too (which consist of interconnected sources, data, collection processes, files, analysis processes, knowledge, and users), and those systems are similar to information systems. This article reports how the DFD can also be useful in planning empirical research projects. This finding should be advantageous to research planners, individual researchers, research advisors, research supervisors, or research managers. And it should be especially advantageous to research planners in information and communication technology (ICT) because they know DFDs already, so they can get the planning advantages with little or no extra learning effort. This finding was obtained from two research projects. The first was planned without the aid of a DFD and failed. It was then replanned with a DFD and redone in a second project, which succeeded.

When a firm's systems department has insufficient resources to carry out all requested development projects immediately, managers serving on the Data Processing Steering Committee need to decide which project should be completed first, second, third, etc. This can be done by ranking the projects in sequence of a 'priority criterion'. In the past net present value (NPV) was used for this purpose. However, in a small systems department, where projects are carried out in series, NPV is inappropriate. A more accurate measure of priority is a project's 'net worth' divided by its duration.