Project Management and System Development

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1. PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Project management is no longer about managing the sequence of steps required to complete the project on time. It is about systematically incorporating the voice of the customer, creating a discipline way of prioritising effort and resolving trade-offs, working concurrently on all aspects of the project in multi-functional teams, and much more. It involves much closer links between project teams and downstream activities.

There are huge opportunities for eliminating wasted time and effort in almost every project. Every project manager in the future has not only to manage their project but also to seek new ways of eliminating the waste in their systems so they can do more for less and more quickly next time.

A project can be defined as a "non-repetitive activity". This needs augmenting by other characteristics:

• It is goal oriented - it is being pursued with a particular end or goal in mind;
• It has a particular set of constraints - usually centred around time and resource;
• The output of the project is measurable
• Something has been changed through the project being carried out.

Project management includes:

• planning
• organising
• directing
• controlling

Activities to motivating what is usually the most expensive resource on the project - the people. Planning involves deciding what has to be done, when and by whom. The resources then need to be organised. The project can be viewed as a conversion or transformation of some form of input into an output.

There are three main criteria by which the success of a project may be judged. These are:

• timeliness
• cost and the quality (performance of the output)

Schedule (time), budget, and quality are not enough.

• people - what many project managers fail to realise is that their handling of people affects the outcome of their projects

2. System Development

System development is the activity of creating or modifying existing business systems. It refers to all aspects of the process – from identifying problems to be solved to opportunities to be exploited to the implementation and possible refinement of the chosen solution. At some point in your career you will likely to be involved in a system development project: as a user, a manager of the affected business area, as a
member of the IS department, as the project manager of the development project, as a member of the development team, or maybe as the chief executive officer.  Understanding and being able to apply a system development life cycle, tools, and techniques will help ensure the success of the development projects on which you participate.

2.1 The Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

The process of developing a system is called the System Development Life Cycle. A cycle, because the activities associated are on going and lasts until the end of the system's lifetime. The life cycle ends when the system becomes obsolete or discarded. There are four main phases in a SDLC:

• Initiation
• Development
• Implementation
• Operation and Maintenance

There are a number of system development alternatives: the traditional system development life cycle, prototyping, application software packages, end-user development, and outsourcing are some.

2.1.1 The Traditional Systems Development Lifecycle

The traditional SDLC is the oldest method for building Information Systems (IS). It describes a prescribed sequence of steps and deliverables which, will enable to move from a set of user requirements to an IS in operation.

• Initiation Phase
  • The process of defining the need for a system
  • Identifying the people who will use it or be affected by it
  • Describe in general terms what the system would do to meet the needs.

• Development Phase
  
  In this phase the system requirements are converted into hardware and software.

• Implementation Phase
  
  The process of putting a system into operation in an organisation. Begins with implementation planning:
  • training the users
  • converting to new business processes
  • formal acceptance by the users

• Operation and Maintenance
  
  Consists of two parts:
  • On-going operation and support
  • Maintenance

The traditional system life cycle is a tightly controlled approach designed to reduce the likelihood of mistakes or omissions. Having specific deliverables due at specific times makes it easier to monitor the work and take corrective actions early if the work starts to slip (Alter, 1999).

2.1.2 Prototyping

A prototype is a tentative system, a model based on the interaction between analysts and users, and built as a preliminary solution to a problem. The prototype often performs only basic functions using a small, representative database in order to provide information about the system's behaviour. A prototype is particularly helpful when end-users have difficulty, it specifying their information needs. Hands-on experience with a model leads to analysis of strengths and deficiencies of solution and to discussions of what the system should do and should not do. These discussions facilitate the formal specification of system requirements.

Not all systems are good candidates for prototyping. Prototyping works best for systems that are highly interactive (have significant human-machine dialogue), and ones that have a high-degree of on-line input/output. The typical ad-hoc DSS and ES meet these requirements.

Prototyping is also useful when problems to be solved are unstructured and when the need for the system is immediate. Because prototyping speeds up the system development process, it is also valuable when the proposed system have a short life span due to high rate of change in the working environment.

Generally prototyping is inadvisable for batch systems, or ones that produce standard hard copy reports using a large institutional database. It cannot be easily applied to massive, mainframe-base systems with complex processing instructions and calculations.

Compared with the traditional life cycle, prototyping calls for more intensive involvement of business specialists in the problem-solving process.

2.1.3 Developing Solutions with Software Packages

Application software packages are an alternative to writing software programs and developing custom systems within a firm. Instead, a firm can buy a software package in which all of the programs have already been written and tested. Software packages are more suitable when the information requirement (or the IS solution) is one required by many organisations and when software packages.

For firms that do not have a large staff of technical systems personnel, or whose staff lack the requisite technical skills for developing a particular application, packages offer a distinct advantage. Leading package vendors maintain their own technical support staff to provide customers with expert advice after the system has been installed. There is a related cost advantage too.

The disadvantage of software packages is that they often are unable to meet all of an organisation's requirements. Each organisation treats even a standard function like payroll a little differently from other organisations. Package vendors try to address this problem through customisation; for example: the package includes features that allow it to be modified without destroying the integrity of the software.

2.1.4 Outsourcing

Outsourcing involves using an external vendor to develop, or operate an organisation's IS. The organisation develops an application solution using the resources of the vendor instead of its own internal IS staff. This approach is useful when the organisation lacks the financial or technical resources to develop systems on its own.

Outsourcing firms provide a variety of services, including:

• Staffing and managing a company's computer centre
• Operating some or all of a company's computer systems at the outsourcing firm's
  computer centre
• Developing applications for an organisation
• Operating a company's telecommunications networks

Selecting the right outsourcing vendor needs skill.

Companies turn to outsourcing for a variety of reasons, the most common being economic. Outsourcing can often reduce cost by turning fixed costs into variable costs. For many transaction-driven systems, such as payroll, the vendor agrees to charge by the transaction, say an issued cheque, so that if the number of transactions drop, system costs also drop.

Organisations with a limited number IS professional often use outsourcing as a way to free up talented IS STAFF for critical projects. Analysts, for example: can offer more benefit to their companies by developing new production-related system than spending time maintaining a routine payroll system.

Outsourcing can be costly and harmful if potential functions for outsourcing are not evaluated carefully. It is risky for companies to outsource applications on which its competitiveness depends, for example, a reservation system in hotel chain.

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Reference(s)
	Book		Alter, S. (1999) Information Systems: A Management Perspective. 3rd Edition. Pearson Education - Addison-Wesley: United States of America (USA), Massachusetts (MA), Suffolk, Boston. [ISBN: 9780201521085]. [Available on: Amazon: https://amzn.to/3z9oO05].

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Reference (or cite) Article
	Kahlon, R. S. (2012) Project Management & System Development [Online]. dkode: United Kingdom, England, London. [Published on: 2012-06-07]. [Article ID: RSK666-0000045]. [Available on: dkode | Ravi - https://ravi.dkode.co/2012/06/project-management-and-system.html].

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