Abstract
Because of the close connection between computer systems and organizations, organizational aspects should be taught in system development courses. Dataflow diagramming is a frequently taught technique that can model formal aspects of information processing. Socio-technical methods are intended to cover relations between people and technology in an organization. To avoid learning two techniques, the dataflow technique has been extended with two organizational aspects from socio-technical methods: goals and exceptions. Two versions of the extended technique have been used in a university course for systems analysis and design. Organizational issues were taught together with the technique. The students’ work has been evaluated. The technique is sufficiently easy to learn for students. The students also learnt to involve users in analysing their tasks through a wall graph session. However, many students did not learn sufficiently well to consider organizational impacts of computer systems or to design systems to fit organizational requirements. A possible way to cope is to give the students better background in knowledge of organizations.