Redesigning the Organization with Information Systems

1
Redesigning the Organization with Information
Systems

• Chapter 12

2
Change

• New environment factors are constantly emerging
• Societys needs are changed accordingly
• Way of doing business changes
• Business information need changes
• Old technologies lost competitiveness
• Old business SOP lost its competitiveness

3
Planned organization change

• Multiple perspectives
• Multiple platforms
• Unix, Apple, Microsoft?
• Multiple playing field
• Work arrangement
• Work performance
• Human resource development

4
Methods for creating a new system blueprint

• Enterprise analysis
• Critical success factors analysis
• Both are used to elicit organizational wide
  information requirements

5
Four levels of change / Spectrum of
Organizational Change

• NS, WS, ND, WD
• NS ? Automation like data processing
• WS ? Rationalization of procedures
• ND ? Business process re-engineering
• WD ? Paradigm shift

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Business Process Reengineering

• Radical restructuring of business processes
• From traditional database systems to web base
  analytical database systems
• From sequential to parallel systems like the new
  team approach mortgage processing systems

7
Assumptions outdated by new technologies

• Field offices by wireless communications
• One at a time by shared database
• Fixed inventory system by automatic
  identification and tracking technology
• Just in case inventory by networks, extranets,
  and EDI

8
Process Improvement

• The earlier in the business cycle a problem is
  eliminated, the less it costs the company.
• In the system development process, the time spent
  on analysis and design will lower cost on
  implementation and maintenance.

9
IS and TQM

• Cycle time reduction
• Benchmarking
• Simplifying the product or production process
• Improve the quality and precision of design as in
  CASE and CAD/CAM

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Systems

• Parts (components) new components create new
  relationships
• Purpose overall purpose stays the same
• Power / politics / position internal as well as
  power changes
• Process evolving until totally change the
  business paradigm (see Figure 12-3, page 387)

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Building a system

• Means to change the four Ps.
• Parts hardware, software, people
• Purpose serve different needs
• Power / position / politics some up and some
  down
• Process should be seamless not just process
  re-engineering

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Building a new system

• Is a planned organizational change
• Conversion
• Piloting
• Phase out
• In parallel
• Cold turkey

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Core activities in the system development process

• System analysis
• System design
• Programming
• Testing
• Conversion
• Production
• Maintenance
• System redesign

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Systems Analysis

• Stakeholders
• Feasibility study
• Technical feasibility
• Economic feasibility
• Operational feasibilty
• Information requirement

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Systems Design

• Design specifications
• Input, output
• User interface
• Database design
• Processing
• Manual operating procedures
• Controls and security
• Documentation
• Conversion and training
• Other indirect impacts and changes

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Logical vs. physical design

• Logical design lays out the components of the
  system and their relationship to each other as
  they would appear to users
• Physical design actually translate logical design
  into a functioning system of people and machine.

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Testing

• Unit testing conform to design
• System testing function as a whole
• Acceptance testing alpha version, beta version,
  gamma version, patchset

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Conversion

• Also called as migration or upgrade if it is from
  the same vendor
• Parallel strategy
• Direct cutover
• Pilot study
• Phased approach
• documentation

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Production and Maintenance

• Test units and production units
• Most companies hold two different systems for
  continuous improvement and maintenance on system

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The traditional Systems Life Cycle

• Used for medium or large complex system projects
• It has six stages (next slide)
• Has a formal division of labor
• Formal sign-offs or agreements between end users
  and builders are required as each stage is
  completed

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Stages of system lifecycle

• Project definition
• System study
• Design
• Programming
• Installation
• Post-implementation

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End products of different stages of system
lifecyle

• Project proposal report
• System proposal report
• Design specifications
• Program specifications code
• System performance tests
• Post implementation audit

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Limitations of the lifecycle approach

• Costly, time consuming, and inflexible
• It has to freeze specification and thus
  discourage changes after each stage is completed
• Thus it inhibit system-builders from exploring
  and discovering the problem structure

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Prototyping

• Consists of building an experimental system
  rapidly and inexpensively for end users to
  evaluate
• Thus, is best for extract users information
  requirements
• It is an iterative process of system development

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prototyping

• Advantages
• Good for requirement uncertainty
• Good for extracting users idiosyncrasy like
  end-user interface
• It encourages intense end-user involvement
  throughout the process

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prototyping

• Disadvantages
• It could gloss over essential steps in systems
  development, that is, it may ignore full
  documentation and testing
• It may prevent management from converting
  prototypes to a full production version

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Application software packages

• Is a set of prewritten, precoded application
  software programs that are commercially available
  for sale or lease
• As simple as creating labels
• As complicated as computer-aided design or
  computer-assisted manufacturing

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Application software packages

• Need to consider the amount of customization and
  reprogramming
• When the need increases, the cost will also
  increase exponentially
• The package evaluation process is based on
  requested for proposal (RFP)

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End-User Development

• There are many 4th generation languages around
• It is suitable for low processing and highly
  customized applications
• It tends to create a localized data trap
• Management should control the developments by
  incorporating them into its strategic system plans

30
Outsourcing

• It becomes popular because of its cost
  effectiveness, eliminating the need of support,
  upgrade, and maintenance.
• Due to control and competitiveness, outsource
  only those less critical and high cost routines
  such as payroll. (even in this function, there
  are some critical information functions)

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Application Development for the Digital Firm

• Critical Success Factors
• Agility
• Scalability
• Organizations need to be able to add, change, and
  retire their technology capabilities very rapidly

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Object-Oriented SW development

• Reusable objects
• Change from process oriented development methods
  to composition oriented development
• Need to be able to build up a large object library

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Rapid Application Development

• Visual programming
• Graphical user interfaces
• Iterative prototyping
• Assembled from prebuilt components

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Web Services

• Enable one application to communicate with
  another with no translation required
• Microsoft has incorporated Web services tools in
  its .NET platform
• An open plug and play architecture rather than
  a proprietary architecture

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Standards / Protocols

• XML standard description of data in Web pages
  and databases
• SOAP simple object access protocol, allows
  applications to pass data and instructions to one
  another
• WSDL Web Services Description Language, allows
  a Web Services to be described
• UDDI Universal Description Discovery, and
  Integration, allows Web Services to be listed in
  a directory of Web Services so that it can be
  easily located