Identifying and Selecting Systems Development Projects

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Identifying and Selecting Systems Development
Projects
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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?

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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
• Dont reflect overall goals of the organization

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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 organizations 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?

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Value Chain Analysis
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Deliverables and Outcomes

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

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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?

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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

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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
  organizations 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

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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

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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

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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