Steven Alter is Professor of Information Systems at the University of San Francisco. He holds a B.S. in Mathematics and Ph.D. in Management Science, both from MIT. While on the faculty of the University of Southern California, he revised his Ph.D. thesis and published it as Decision Support Systems: Current Practice and Continuing Challenges, one of the first books on this important type of information system. Professor Alter's journal articles have appeared in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, MIS Quarterly, Communications of the ACM, Communications of the Association for Information Systems, TIMS Studies in Management Sciences, Interfaces, Data Processing, Futures, and The Futurist.

Prior to joining the University of San Francisco, he served for eight years as a founding vice president of Consilium, Inc. (which went public in 1989 and was acquired by Applied Materials in 1998). His many roles included starting departments for customer service, documentation and training, technical support, and product management. He participated in building and implementing early versions of manufacturing software currently used by major semiconductor and electronics manufacturers in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Upon returning to academia he decided to work on a problem he observed in industry, the difficulty business people have in articulating what they expect from computerized systems and how these systems can or should change the way work is done. His initial efforts in this area led to the 1992 publication of the first edition of this text. The second edition and this new third edition benefit from additional research on how business professionals understand information systems.

When not working, he indulges his love of music by playing cello-piano duets and string quartets with friends and by stumbling through Chopin's easier piano pieces when no one else is within earshot. His other hobbies include hiking, skiing, and international travel. The photo is from a hike in Yosemite during a beard-growing experiment.

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