Information Systems System Analysis 421 Class Two

1
Information Systems System Analysis 421Class
Two
2
Class Project

• Project start up
• Initial project information gathering worksheet
• Client alignment form
• Executive Summary
• Team alignment
• Project description
• Current situation
• Business objective
• Project scope
• Risk analysis
• Cost benefits
• Project duration and milestones

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Learning Objectives

• Describe the project identification and selection
  process
• Describe the corporate strategic planning and
  information systems planning process
• Explain the relationship between corporate
  strategic planning and information systems
  planning

5.3
4
Learning Objectives

• Describe how information systems planning can be
  used to assist in identifying and selecting
  systems development projects
• Analyze information systems planning matrices to
  determine affinity between information systems
  and IS projects and to forecast the impact of IS
  projects on business objectives
• Describe the three classes of Internet electronic
  commerce applications
• Internet, Intranets and Extranets

5.4
5
Project Selection

• Top Management
• strategic
• larger project size and duration
• Steering Committee (Approval committee)
• cross functional
• greater organizational change
• larger in size
• User Department
• narrow, non strategic focus
• faster development
• fewer users, management levels and business
  functions

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System Initiation

• Pieces
• Performance
• Throughput the amount of work performed over
  some period of time.
• Response time the average delay between a
  transaction or request and a response to that
  transaction or request
• Information
• Lack of any information
• Lack of necessary information
• Lack of relevant information
• Economics
• Costs are unknown
• Costs are untraceable to source
• Costs are too high
• N Profits Hew markets can be explored

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System Initiations

• Controls
• Too little security or control
• Decision making errors are occurring
• Processing errors are occurring
• Efficiency
• Effort is manual or excessive
• Duplication
• Service
• Inaccurate results
• Inflexible to business changes
• Not coordinated with other systems
• Difficult to use

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Project Selection
Perceived and real need
Existing and Available Resources
Decision Outcome Accept Reject Delay Refocus Proof
of Concept
List of potential and ongoing project
Project Selection Decision
Current Organizational Environment
Evaluation Criteria
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System Request

• Most system requests include four elements
• Project sponsor
• Business Need
• Functionality
• Expected value

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Identifying and Selecting IS Development Projects

• 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

5.10
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The Process of Identifying and Selecting IS
Development Projects

• 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

5.11
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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

5.12
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Identifying and Selecting IS Development Projects

• Selecting IS Development Projects
• Process of considering short and long-term
  projects
• Projects most likely to achieve business
  objectives are selected
• Decision requires consideration of
• Perceived and real needs
• Potential and ongoing projects
• Current organizational environment
• Existing and available resources
• Evaluation criteria

5.13
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Identifying and Selecting IS Development Projects

• Selecting IS Development Projects
• Outcomes
• Project Acceptance
• Project Rejection
• Delay
• Refocus
• End-User Development
• Proof of Concept

5.14
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Identifying and Selecting IS Development Projects

• Deliverables and Outcomes
• Primary Deliverable
• Schedule of specific IS development projects
• Outcomes
• Assurance that careful consideration was given to
  project selection
• Clear understanding of projects relation to
  organizational objectives

5.15
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Identifying and Selecting IS Development Projects

• Knowledge of overall organizational business
  strategy
• Improves project selection and identification
  process
• Provides sound guidance throughout the systems
  development life cycle

5.16
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Corporate and Information Systems Planning

• Traditional Project Identification and Selection
• Solves isolated problems
• Focuses on business processes
• Does not easily allow for organizational change

• Planning-Based Approach to Project Identification
  and Selection
• Focuses on present and future information needs
• Information needs change slower than business
  processes

5.17
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Corporate and Information Systems Planning

• Need for planning
• 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
• Corporate Strategic Planning
• Process of developing and refining models of the
  current and future enterprise as well as a
  transition strategy
• Planning results in several outcomes
• Mission Statement
• Objective Statement
• Competitive Strategy

5.18
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Corporate and Information Systems 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
• Corporate Strategic Planning
• Competitive Strategy
• The method by which an organization attempts to
  achieve its mission and objectives

5.19
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Corporate and Information Systems Planning

• 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

5.20
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Corporate and Information Systems Planning

• Information Systems Planning
• 1. Describing the Current Situation
• 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

5.21
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Corporate and Information Systems Planning

• Information Systems Planning
• 1. Describing the Current Situation (Continued)
• Planning team is chartered to model existing
  situation
• Identification of Organizational
• Locations
• Units
• Functions
• Processes
• Data
• Information Systems

5.22
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Corporate and Information Systems Planning

• Information Systems Planning
• 1. Describing the Current Situation (Continued)
• Matrices are developed to cross-reference units
• Location-to-Function
• Location-to-Unit
• Unit-to-Function
• Function-to-Objective
• Function-to-Process
• Function-to-Data Entity
• Process-to-Data Entity
• Process-to-Information System
• Data Entity-to-Information System
• Information System-to-Objective

5.23
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Corporate and Information Systems Planning

• Information Systems Planning
• 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

5.24
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Corporate and Information Systems Planning

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

5.25
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Electronic Commerce Applications

• Development process for Internet projects is no
  different than other projects
• Special issues need to be taken into account
• Electronic Commerce (EC)
• Internet based communication designed to support
  business activities

5.26
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Internet Development

• Internet
• Worldwide network of networks used for electronic
  commerce
• Intranet
• Internet-based communication to support business
  activities within a single organization
• Extranet
• Internet-based communication to support
  business-to-business activities

5.27
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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

5.28
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Summary

• Project Identification and Selection
• Identifying Potential Development Projects
• Classifying and Ranking Projects
• Selecting Projects for Development
• Top-down and Bottom-up identification process
• Corporate strategic planning
• Process of identifying the mission, objectives
  and strategies of an organization

5.29
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Summary

• Information Systems Planning
• Orderly means for assessing the information needs
  of an organization and defining the systems and
  databases that will best satisfy those needs
• Top-down process
• Electronic Commerce
• Internet
• Intranets
• Extranets
• Electronic Data Interchange

5.30
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System Initiations

• Requests for a system study can come from a
  variety of sources
• External consulting team
• Internal client community
• Internal but external to the area (Top
  management,Internal Auditors, Information
  Systems) Government
• Within Systems department
• Why are Systems project originate
• Solve a business problem
• Capitalize on an opportunity
• Comply with Government regulations
• Address complaints

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Project Selection Criteria's

• Management backing
• Appropriate timing
• Appropriate resource exists
• Cost benefit analysis
• Priority meetings - top gt down
• Enterprise Priorities - Top projects
• Functional top projects
• Department top projects
• Must do projects
• Support projects
• Discretionary projects

33
Justify Systems as Capital Investments

• Information systems are capital investments.
• When considering a capital investment, two issues
  must be addressed
• for any problem, there are likely to be several
  possible solutions
• after identifying alternative solutions, the
  systems analyst should evaluate each possible
  solution for feasibility, especially for
  cost-effectiveness.
• Cost-benefit analysis is an important skill to be
  mastered.

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Dont Be Afraid to Cancel or Revise Scope

• A significant advantage of the phased approach to
  systems development is that it provides several
  opportunities to reevaluate feasibility.
• In the long run, canceled projects are less
  costly than implemented disasters!
• Most analysts fail to adjust estimated costs and
  schedules as scope increases. As a result, the
  analyst frequently and needlessly accepts
  responsibility for cost and schedule overruns.

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Dont Be Afraid to Cancel or Revise Scope

• The creeping commitment approach
• Build multiple feasibility checkpoints.
• At each checkpoint, all costs are considered sunk
  (meaning irrecoverable) and irrelevant to the
  decision.
• reevaluate at each checkpoint to determine if the
  project is still feasible.
• At each checkpoint, the analyst should consider
• cancellation of the project if it is no longer
  feasible
• reevaluation of costs and schedule if project
  scope is to be increased
• reduction of scope if the project budget and
  schedule are frozen, but not sufficient to cover
  all project objectives.

36
Divide and Conquer

• All systems are part of larger systems (called
  super-systems).
• Virtually all systems contain smaller systems
  (called subsystems).
• We divide a system into its subsystems in order
  to more easily conquer the problem and build the
  larger system.
• By dividing a larger problem (system) into more
  easily managed pieces (subsystems), the analyst
  can simplify the problem-solving process.
• Know the bounds and scope of your system!

37
Design Systems for Growth and Change

• Many systems analysts have fallen into the trap
  of developing systems to meet only today's user
  requirements.
• When the cost of maintenance exceeds the costs of
  starting over the system has become obsolete.
• Systems designed to meet only current
  requirements are difficult to modify in response
  to new requirements.
• Flexibility and adaptability do not happen by
  accident they must be built into a system.