Identifying and Selecting Systems Development Projects

1. Identifying and Selecting Systems Development Projects

2. Contemplative Questions • From where do IS project ideas come? • What is corporate strategic planning, and how does it relate to Information Systems planning? • What activities occur before projects are identified and selected?

3. Main Issues • Sources of projects • Management and business units • Managers who want to make a system more efficient or less costly • Formal planning groups • Projects are identified by • Top management • Steering committee • User departments • Development group or senior IS staff • Top-Down Identification • Senior management or steering committee • Focus is on global needs of organization • Bottom-up Identification • Business unit or IS group • Don’t reflect overall goals of the organization

4. Identifying and Selecting IS Development Projects • Classifying and Ranking IS Development Projects • Performed by top management, steering committee, business units of IS development group • Value chain analysis is often used • Method to analyze an organization’s activities to determine where value is added and costs are incurred • What if you are a member of the steering committee— • What information is important to you? • What determines your success or failure? • Why not fund every project?

5. Value Chain Analysis

6. Deliverables and Outcomes • Primary Deliverable • Schedule of specific IS development projects • Outcomes • Project Acceptance • Project Rejection • Delay • Refocus • End-User Development • Proof of Concept

7. Why bother with planning? • Consider the technological environment • Is planning beyond 3 years a waste of time? • What about 5 years? • The book says • “Improperly planned projects result in systems that cannot be shared across an organization” • “As business processes change, lack of integration will hamper strategy and business process changes” • What do you think?

8. Corporate Strategic Planning • Corporate Strategic Planning • Process of developing and refining models of the current and future enterprise as well as a transition strategy • Is this important to IS planning? Why or why not? • Planning results in several outcomes • Mission Statement • Objective Statement • Competitive Strategy

9. Outcomes of Corporate Strategic Planning • Corporate Strategic Planning • Mission Statement • A statement that makes it clear what business a company is in • Objective Statement • A series of statements that express an organization’s qualitative and quantitative goals for reaching a desired future position • Objectives are critical success factors • Competitive Strategy • The method by which an organization attempts to achieve its mission and objectives

10. Information Systems Planning (ISP) • Information Systems Planning (ISP) • An orderly means of assessing the information needs of an organization and defining the systems, databases and technologies that will best satisfy those needs • Three key activities: • Describe the Current Situation • Describe the Target (or Future) Situation • Develop a Transition Plan and Strategy

11. 1. Describing the Current Situation • Approaches • Top-down Planning • Generic methodology that attempts to gain a broad understanding of the information system needs of the entire organization • Bottom-up Planning • Generic methodology that identifies and defines IS development projects based upon solving operational business problems or taking advantage of some business opportunities

12. Examples of Terms • Locations: Denver, Chicago, Tokyo, Singapore • Units: VP Manufacturing, Purchasing Clerk, Sales Representative • Processes: Customer Billing, Materials Forecasting, Performance Appraisal

13. Exercises • Exercise #1. Create a conceptual data model for the following organizational terms: • Locations • Units • Functions • Processes • Data • Information Systems • Exercise #2. Create a few matrices using the above terms as rows and columns. What do the cells tell you? • Exercise #3. Suppose you are employed by an IT vendor. Your boss asks you to visit a new client and “find out as much as you can about them”. Would the above terms help you? In what order would you ask about them?

14. 1. Describing the Current Situation • Approaches • Top-down Planning • Generic methodology that attempts to gain a broad understanding of the information system needs of the entire organization • Bottom-up Planning • Generic methodology that identifies and defines IS development projects based upon solving operational business problems or taking advantage of some business opportunities

15. 2. Describing the Target Situation • Update list of organizational locations, functions, etc. to reflect desired locations, functions, etc. • Matrices are updated to reflect future states • Planners focus on differences between current lists and matrices and future lists and matrices

16. 3. Developing a Transition Strategy • Broad, comprehensive document that looks at both short and long-term organizational development needs • Consists of a series of projects

17. Electronic Commerce Applications • From a planning perspective, Internet projects are no different than other projects • Frequently E-Commerce applications can be categorized as: • Intranet • Internet-based communication to support business activities within a single organization • Extranet • Internet-based communication to support business-to-business activities • Value chain analysis is useful here also, especially in view of value chain reconfiguration

18. Internet Development • Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) • The use of telecommunications technologies to transfer business documents directly between organizations • Internet vs. Intranet/Extranet Apps • Intranet/Extranet – Developer knows how application will be run and used • Internet – Developer faces various unknowns • Both are challenging, although the challenges can be quite different