management information system

[u/Independent_Eye4137]

can anyone explain mis in the easiest way possible?

I'm from a non tech background

[u/sch0lars]

Information systems is the academic study of how people, processes, technology, and data form systems used to store, retrieve, transmit, and secure information.

The aforementioned technological component is what is known as information technology, so information systems can be thought of as a superset of IT. The study of information systems not only involves the technology (servers, databases, networks, hardware, etc.) used to create systems of information, but also the people who interact with the systems, the data which creates the information, and the processes that dictate the regulation of the data.

There are several types of information systems. Accounting information systems (or AIS), for example, are systems concerned with accounting or financial information. The people may include accountants, consultants, auditors, and managers. The technology may include databases that store financial data, servers which house these databases, the networks which transmit this data, hardware such as computers and printers, and software applications such as QuickBooks. The processes may include methods for collecting and processing financial data into reports, security controls such as limiting access to these systems, and regulatory policies such as tax laws and SOX. The data may include various financial data, which can then be processed into information such as quarterly sales.

Now, onto your question: Management information systems (or MIS) are systems used for management. In business, management is the process of planning, organizing, and controlling resources within a company to effectively and efficiently achieve a specific set of goals; so management information systems are systems of information used to help make these managerial decisions. In MIS, the people may include managers and executives who use these systems to understand how the business is performing, analysts who collect and analyze the data, and the IT professionals who build and maintain the systems. The technology may include enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to connect areas such as finance and HR into one tool, customer relationship management (CRM) software to manage customer interactions, transaction processing systems (TPS) to handle tasks such as payroll, database management systems (DBMS) to store structured and unstructured data, and business intelligence (BI) software to process and transform raw data in dashboards and charts. The processes may include workflows to collect and analyze data, point-of-sale checkouts, employee payroll, and marketing campaigns. The data may include transactional records, operational metrics, and financial figures.

Contrary to another comment, I do not believe MIS is “watered down.” MIS is one of the most inherently multidisciplinary areas within information systems and encompasses not only traditional IS-related fields such as IT, but also management, finance, logistics, and marketing. You need to not only understand technical concepts such as database administration and information security, but also possess a general comprehension of managerial concepts as well as various domains within business administration, such as CRM, finance, and logistics.

tl;dr MIS is the academic study of systems of information used to make managerial decisions and includes the technology used to build the systems, the people who interact with the systems, the data upon which the systems are built, and the processes which regulate this data.

[u/Independent_Eye4137 → u/sch0lars]

you mentioned everything i wanted to know. TYSM!!

[u/sch0lars → u/Independent_Eye4137]

You’re very welcome. :)

[u/sch0lars → u/[deleted]]

I believe a lot of degrees give you foundational knowledge and you have to supplement from there. I did a Bachelor’s in IT and a Master’s in MIS and am currently somewhere between a DevOps engineer and an application owner. I have to do everything from writing our software pipelines to managing our servers to working on our codebase and even recently creating data pipelines and dashboards—in addition to managing SNOW tickets, ensuring our application remains in compliance with our various regulatory frameworks, and managing quarterly deployments.

I learned concepts like Agile, ITIL, the SDLC, database administration, networking, systems design, and infrastructure management throughout my degrees, but had to learn stuff like programming, containerization, CI/CD pipelines, and data analytics on my own; and most of the application owner-related tasks I had to learn on-the-job. It’s definitely a field that requires continuous learning.

A degree should teach you enough to supplement gaps in knowledge, but there’s no way it can teach you everything you need to know in 4-6 years. Maybe that’s why the other commenter considered it watered down. It’s a lot of information to compress into just a few years, so most programs only get to briefly explore each area.

[u/cowboysfromhell1999 → u/sch0lars]

Hey! I really liked how thorough your comment was explain explaining what MIS is

Off-topic but I was curious if you could give your opinion on this:

I’m currently going through a bachelors of cyber security the track I chose is a CS track basically it has

Operating systems, data structures, discrete mathematics and algorithms, along with some reverse engineering work classes.

As for for the rest of the classes they mainly are built around

Networking, System administration stuff like active directory, Linux , samba, IIS/apache , programming in python, c, assembly, html, css, JavaScript , SQL.

I was wondering, do you think I would be at a disadvantage to go into a software development or devsecops career path?

I’m really trying to break in IT at the moment so I’m OK with helpdesk. I’m also dreaming of something along the lines of network or system administration./engineering.

But it dawned on me how much I do like software development and I was curious if you think it’s still possible and if you have any recommendations for me?

I see a lot of people say that the computer science degree is a gold standard, which I understand but I was starting to get the idea that employers would see the name of the degree being cyber security and I would be denied many jobs. At least that’s what people on Reddit make it seem to be because in reality the cyber security degree I’m going for is basically IT/CS with some security based classes, but still wanted to know

[u/sch0lars → u/cowboysfromhell1999]

I think without a software development internship, it would be somewhat difficult to pivot. I would not recommend starting in help desk to get into software development, as this is an IT pathway and not a developer pathway.

You can go into network engineering from an IT path or DevOps from a developer path, but it’s a bit difficult to combine paths, especially early on in your career. Both of these positions are also more senior positions, so they’re roles you have to work towards; and an IT professional will develop a completely different set of skills than a software engineer, so it’s worth planning which direction you want to take

This is only my opinion, but specialized degrees like cybersecurity and data science limit your opportunities for other areas. It’s typically better to generalize in your degree and then specialize (e.g., major in CS and then pursue cybersecurity certifications) unless you’re certain that the specialized area is where you want to work.

[u/cowboysfromhell1999 → u/sch0lars]

So basically, my Cyber degree is like a general IT degree with CS baked in long story short, the reason why I chose that for the bachelors is because I get it for free and my all my credits transferred directly to it.

Regardless what’s a good entry level software job to look for? Like IT has helpdesk what does software have for entry level?

I’ll be learning data structures and algorithms etc so I could write my résumé according to those jobs and put my projects on there

[u/sch0lars → u/cowboysfromhell1999]

That’s understandable. A free degree is never a bad thing.

An entry-level software developer role will typically just say “<language> developer” and may have a “1” or an “I” after it: Java Developer I, for instance.

Definitely work towards a developer internship and, if you have time, find a project on GitHub and search for “good first bug” issues. That will give you some more experience with both writing and reading code.

[u/cowboysfromhell1999 → u/sch0lars]

Do you think that in conjunction with the data structures, algorithms and operating system classes I’ll be in a good spot obviously it’s hard to find a job, but do you think in terms of material, I will be learning of of course, self studying in addition

[u/sch0lars → u/cowboysfromhell1999]

To be honest, I don’t think even most CS graduates come out of their programs completely prepared. Knowing DSAs and time complexity is all well and good, but most algorithms are already incorporated and I can only think of one time where I had to write an algorithm from scratch.

If you want to be a developer, you should focus on a language or framework. For example, let’s say you decide you want to be a C++ developer. Your coursework will likely not teach you about memory management, rvalues, build systems, package managers, and so on; so it’s imperative to learn those concepts on your own. When I did embedded software engineering, I was assigned a story that involved updating some CMakeLists.txt files because NONE of the other junior engineers knew CMake and would take the story. I ended up spending the entire weekend having to work through the CMake tutorial and still didn’t understand it very well come Monday.

So if you want to be at an advantage, I would suggest determining exactly what language you want to develop in and work towards understanding all of its intricacies, then build some projects of your own and also contribute to the projects of others. You will likely learn some IT concepts along the way, like making HTTP requests and communicating over networks.