Transcript Document

Slide 07.1
Chapter 07 Managing Systems
Development
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.2
Learning outcomes
After reading this chapter, you will be able to:
• Identify the typical stages in an information
systems project;
• Identify the risks associated with typical
phases of a project;
• Understand approaches used by project
managers to control projects.
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.3
Management issues
Typical questions facing managers related to
this topic:
• How can we avoid the high reported failure
rates for IS implementations?
• Which specific risks are related to
management of information management
projects?
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.4
Project failure examples
Project
Application
Project issue
Inland-Revenue –
EDS IT
outsourcing
IT services
originally
provided by IT
department of
2,250 employees,
and an annual
budget of some
£250 million
Ten year outsourcing contract started in 1994. In 2000,
estimated that new work will account for about a quarter
of the forecast £2 billion revenue spend on the EDS
contract
New NHS
Number
Consistent access
to patient records
across the country
The NHS Executive originally set a target for all NHS
systems to use the New NHS Number from April 1995.
Still not in universal use 8 years later. £26 million budget
not fully spent. A £2.3 billion project including NHS
patients’ numbers was announced in 2003
National Air
Traffic Services
Ltd (NATS)
Air traffic control
centre, Swanwick
Originally due to open in late 1996, but eventually opened
only in January 2002, some £150 million over the £475m
budget
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.5
Public project ‘failures’ 2
Project
Application
Project issue
Passport agency
Computerised
passport
processing
system
Large backlogs of up to 50 days in issuing passports.
£12 million additional costs due to resolving
failures. (See Case study 7.2).
Libra
Infrastructure
and application
to support
magistrates
courts.
Initial contract was for £184 million over 10.5 years.
In 2001, the contract costs escalated to of the current
proposal
£557 million over 14.5 years.
Inland Revenue
Online tax
submission
service
Only 39,000 taxpayers used the service for 19992000, compared to a target of 315,000. Will not
reach 50% submission target by 2005.
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.6
Project success rates – applications development
Figure 7.1 Application project success rates from Standish Group CHAOS
research
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Source: Standish Group (2001)
Slide 07.7
Types of IS project
1. Operational applications. The ‘mission critical’ systems needed to support
the manufacture, sale and servicing of products. The ticketing system of
the Lo-cost Airline Company is an example of an operational application.
2. Information and knowledge management applications. Systems used to
capture, store and disseminate information within an organization. These
typically include decision support systems for tactical or strategic
decision making, but they could be operational. The employee intranet at
the Lo-cost Airline Company is an example of an information.
3. Infrastructure development. These are projects or elements of projects
where the technology supporting applications is developed. This could
include introducing new hardware, upgrading network communications or
deployment of a new office suite. If the Lo-cost Airline Company moved
to installing Linux on all its server machines with an open source version
of its office applications such as Word processing, this would be an
example of an infrastructure development.
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.8
Constraints on IS project management
Figure 7.2 Constraints on IS project management
Source: BIM
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.9
Success measures
A KPMG (2002) survey showed that the most
important measures of success were:
• Meeting business case requirements (46%)
• On-time delivery (21%)
• Within budget delivery (9%)
• Equal weighting to all three measures (24%)
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.10
FAST, GOOD, CHEAP
• According to product design gurus Richard Seymour
and Dick Powell, it is impossible to design a product
as clients require it i.e.
• You can’t have Fast, Good and Cheap – it’s
impossible – you have to start early
• You can have it –
– Fast and Cheap
– Good and Cheap
• It’s similar with projects – something or someone has
to give.
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.11
Different interpretations of requirements during a
systems development project
Figure 7.3 Different interpretations of requirements during a systems development
project
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Source: BIM
Slide 07.12
Requirements sub-tasks
• Sub-tasks such as those making up a requirements
gathering phase can be ‘nested’ or ‘rolled-up’ to
summarise the main high-level tasks in the project
such as analysis and design
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.13
System development options
1. Bespoke development. With a bespoke development, the
application is developed from scratch through programming of a
solution.
2. Off-the-shelf. In a packaged implementation a standard existing
system is purchased from a solution vendor and installed on
servers and clients located within an organization. Alternatively
free or low-cost open-source software (Chapter 2) may be used.
An office application or a simple accounting package is an
example of an off-the-shelf packaged implementation.
3. Hosted solution (packaged). With a hosted solution, a standard
system is used, but it is not managed within the company, but
using a third party applications service provider or web services
approach (Chapter 2).
4. Tailored development. In a tailored development, an off-the-shelf
system or hosted solution is tailored according to an organization’s
needs. This form of project is often based on integrating
components from one or several vendors.
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.14
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Systems development options
The Standish Group (2001) survey showed the
following breakdown amongst participants in relatively
small projects of less than six months and around 6
people:
Developed from scratch using traditional languages and
methods (33%)
Purchased application and modified (15%)
Developed from scratch using an object model (13%)
Developed some components and purchased others
(13%)
Purchased application and modified extensively (12%)
Purchased components and assembled the application
(9%)
Purchased application and performed no modifications
(5%)
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.15
Key project management activities
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Estimation. What work is involved?
Resource allocation. Who will complete the work?
Schedule/plan. When will the work be completed? Following resource
allocation, the amount of time for each task can be determined
according to the availability and skills of the people assigned to the
tasks. There are two different concepts. Effort time is the total amount
of work that needs to occur to complete a task. Elapsed time indicates
how long in time (such as calendar days) the task will take and is
dependent on the number of people working on a task, and their skills.
Scheduling also involves identifying milestones, which mark the end
of significant stages in the project such as agreeing the requirements
specification or signoff of the complete project. Milestones usually have
clearly defined deliverables associated with them which are assessed
for suitability.
Budgeting. What is the project cost? Based on tasks and resource
allocation
Monitoring and control. How is the project progressing? – monitoring
involves assessing whether the project is going to plan once it has
started. Control is taking corrective action as the project deviates from
the plan.
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.16
Gantt chart view
Figure 7.4 A Gantt chart from Microsoft® project showing the task breakdown for a
simple project
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Source: Reprinted by permission from Microsoft Corporation
Slide 07.17
Network diagram view
Figure 7.5 A network diagram from Microsoft® Project
Source: Reprinted by permission from Microsoft Corporation
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.18
Resource view
Figure 7.6 Resource view from Microsoft® Project
Source: Reprinted by permission from Microsoft Corporation
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.19
The PRINCE2 methodology process model
Figure 7.7 The PRINCE2 methodology process model
Source: BIM
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.20
Soft systems methodology (SSM)
• Emphasises the human involvement in
systems and models their behaviour as part of
systems analysis in a way that is
understandable by non-technical experts.
• This technique is particularly useful for
identifying requirements from a system and
also anticipating reactions to change.
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.21
7 Stages in SSM
1. Determining the problem situation.
2. Defining the problem situation through Rich Pictures.
3. Defining the problem situation through root definitions. CATWOE refers to:
• Clients or Customers – the person(s) who benefit, or are affected by the outputs of the
system and its activities that are under consideration. The root definition also expresses the
purpose of the system for its customers.
• Actors – those who carry out the activities within the system.
• Transformation – the changes which take place either within or because of the system (this
lies at the heart of the root definition).
• Weltanschauung or Worldview – this refers to how the system is viewed from different
individuals’ viewpoint; sometimes this term is described as assumptions made about the
system.
• Owner – the person(s) to whom the system is answerable; the sponsor, controller or
someone who could cause the system to cease.
• Environment – that which surrounds and influences the operation of the system but which
has no control over it.
4. Build conceptual models.
5. Comparison of the conceptual models with the real world.
6. Identify feasible and desirable changes.
7. Recommendations for taking action to improve the problem situation are defined which
suggest how the changes from step 6 will be implemented.
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.22
The waterfall model of systems development
Figure 7.8 The traditional ‘waterfall model’ of information systems development
Source: BIM
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.23
Problems with the waterfall development approach
1. Limited flexibility for changed requirements.
2. Disconnect between development team and
users in the business.
3. Protracted development times.
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.24
Prototyping is…
• Rapid – Prototyping is part of a systems development approach
known as RAD – Rapid Application Development
• Simple – Skeleton applications are produced as prototypes that do
not contain all the functions of a system but are a framework
which gives a good indication to users of the information available
and the look and feel of an application
• Iterative – Prototypes are produced often at a frequency of once
every few days or weeks so that the comments from the last
review can be fed into the evolving system
• Incremental – Each prototype incorporates the feedback from the
previous review, so each version of the application has a limited
number of new features
• User centred – users are involved at all stages of development, in
describing the existing system, reviewing the prototypes and
testing the system
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.25
Prototyping in an IS development
Figure 7.9 The role of prototyping within an information systems development
project
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Source: Chatley (2004)
Slide 07.26
DSDM
‘A fundamental assumption of the DSDM approach is
that nothing is built perfectly first time, but that 80% of
the solution can be produced in 20% of the time that
it would take to produce the total solution. A basic
problem with less agile approaches is the expectation
that potential system users can predict what all their
requirements will be at some distant point in time.
This problem is compounded by the fact that the
mere existence of a new system affects the users’
requirements because the methods of working have
changed.’
Source: www.dsdm.org
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.27
The DSDM framework for systems development
Figure 7.10 The DSDM Framework for systems development
Source: www.dsdm.org
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.28
DSDM principles
I. Active user involvement is imperative.
II.The team must be empowered to make decisions.
III. The focus is on frequent delivery of products.
IV. Fitness for business purpose is the essential
criterion for acceptance of deliverables.
V. Iterative and incremental development is necessary
to converge on an accurate business solution.
VI. All changes during development are reversible.
VII. Requirements are baselined at a high level.
VIII. Testing is integrated throughout the life-cycle.
IX. Collaboration and cooperation between all
stakeholders is essential.
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.29
Using MOSCOW for control
Must Haves – fundamental to the project’s success
(Priority 1)
O
Should Haves – important but the projects success
does not rely on these (Priority 2)
Could Haves – can easily be left out without impacting
on the project (Priority 3)
O
Won't Have this time round – can be left out this time
and done at a later date (Priority 4)
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.30
Phases and review controls within a DSDM Timebox
Figure 7.11 Phases and review controls within a DSDM Timebox
Source: BIM
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.31
Categories of project risk
Figure 7.12 Categories of project risk
Source: BIM
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.32a
Typical risks for IS projects and recommended
solutions
Figure 7.13 Typical risks for IS projects and recommended solutions
Source: UK Office of Government Commerce ‘Why projects fail guide’. www.ogc.gov.uk/sdtoolkit/reference/
ogc-library/bpbriefings/it-projects.pdf
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.32b
Typical risks for IS projects and recommended
solutions
Figure 7.13 Typical risks for IS projects and recommended solutions
Source: UK Office of Government Commerce ‘Why projects fail guide’. www.ogc.gov.uk/sdtoolkit/reference/
ogc-library/bpbriefings/it-projects.pdf
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.33
Example of risk management in practice
• Risk: Lack of co-operation and buy-in by clinicians and other
stakeholders to objectives of investment
• Solution: Ensure full involvement of interested parties. Also the
Department of Health will provide clear leadership
• Risk: Services are not affordable
• Solution: Scope the programme accordingly
• Risk: Individual organizations within the NHS act unilaterally
• Solution: Clear leadership and set targets through performance
management
• Risk: Shortage of required local skills
• Solution: Minimise by transferring risk to private sector partners,
identifying high-calibre staff within the NHS and ring-fence
required staff and skills
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.34
Factors in successful projects
Success factor
Ranking
Executive support
18
User involvement
16
Experienced project manager
14
Clear business objectives
12
Minimized scope
10
Standard software infrastructure
8
Firm basic requirements
6
Formal methodology
6
Reliable estimates
5
Other criteria
5
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.35
The initiation phase
• The initiation or startup phase is the first
phase in an information systems development
project.
• Its aims are to evaluate whether the project is
feasible and prepare a project plan.
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.36
Initiation – feasibility analysis
Feasibility type
Purpose
Issues considered
Economic
Costs of benefits of
different solutions
Cost-benefit analysis
Technical
Outline the best
technical solution
Make or buy decision
Produce shortlist of software,
suppliers and systems integrators.
Integration with existing systems
Operational
Determine impact on
business processes
Assess how well processes are
supported by new system. Identify
outline requirements.
organizational
Assess fit with
organizational structure
and culture
Outline approach for introducing
new system into organization.
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.37
Typical problems of the initiation phase
A common problem with the initiation phase is that
insufficient time is devoted to it since team members
are keen to proceed with the work; they are swept up
with enthusiasm for the project. Goals for the project
and plans to achieve them are likely to be unrealistic.
This may mean that the costs of the project may
exceed its budget. If insufficient gathering of
requirements occurs, then this means the activities
and so budget and timescale are under-estimated.
organizational, operational and technical risks may
also not be identified which will all cause problems at
later stages in the project.
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.38
Systems analysis phase
• Systems analysis determines the business and user
requirements of an information system. Fact-finding
techniques are used to ascertain the user’s needs
and these are summarised using a range of
documentation and diagramming methods
• Systems analysis
Determination of information system requirements
• Defines - ‘What the system should do’
• Output – Requirements specification
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.39
Systems analysis – key activities
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Focus groups
Document review
Surveys
Observation
Interviews
Prototyping
Producing the requirements specification
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.40
Systems analysis – typical problems
• Assuming requirements for a new system
without conducting sufficient analysis is a
common problem, particularly for small-scale
systems.
• It is important to use the full range of
techniques described above and involve a
representative range of people to ensure this
phase produces realistic estimates.
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.41
Systems design phase
• The design phase defines how the system will function. A ‘divide
and conquer’ approach to design is used. Design is broken down
into two phases.
• The first is a systems design which defines the overall structure
of the system – which modules will be created to deliver the
system requirements. System design involves breaking down the
whole information system into sub-systems and how they will
interact with other subsystem. The second phase is the module
design which specifies how each sub-system will work and how it
in turn will be divided into further sub-systems or objects.
• Systems Design phase
Defines how the completed system will operate
• Output – Design specification
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.42
Systems design activities
• Software architecture – defines how different modules will work at
the level of program code. System modules or objects will be
broken down further into individual program functions or methods.
• Hardware architecture – defines the need for different hardware
components or infrastructure of the system.
• Information architecture – this specifies the data inputs and
information outputs of the system and defines the most efficient
methods for capturing, storing and modifying the data. Database
design is part of the information architecture.
• Security design – defines how the information will be protected.
This relates to information architecture in that certain data items
will usually have access to different classes of users.
• User interface design – Defines the different screens that users
will interact with including menu options, data entry forms and
other navigation elements.
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.43
Typical problems of system design
• Although the design phase is based on the requirements
specification document, there is a lot of overlap between analysis
and design phases.
• Designers may find that the requirements specification does not
prescribe in enough detail what is needed from the system, or they
will make additional suggestions for improvements. At this point, it
will be necessary to consult the users of the system for
clarification.
• This may cause major delays if the channels of communication
between the designers, the analysts and the users are not
established. One of the benefits of prototyping and methods such
as DSDM is that they recognise and enable the need for continued
consulting with the users.
• As with many of the phases of the system development lifecycle,
insufficient time may be spent on the design phase. This may
require more re-work at a later stage.
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.44
Systems development phase
• At the systems development phase the physical
system is created by technical staff
• Systems development involves creation of the
system through programming, database
management and configuration
• Systems development phase
Creation of the system through programming,
database management and configuration
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.45
Systems development activities
1. Programming individual system modules and fixing
errors or ‘bugs’ in the system.
2. Creating the database structures and data
manipulation functions such as database triggers and
stored procedures.
3. Creating the user interface for access through web
browsers.
4. Testing the database, programmes and interface.
5. Writing system documentation for the users and
future developers.
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.46
Systems development problems
• The main difficulty with the development
phase is the introduction of bugs or errors into
the system by developers. The problem is that
developing a major system requires tens or
hundreds or millions of lines of code. Each line
represents an opportunity to include an error
which can potentially ‘bring the system down’.
Even experienced programmers may produce
around 10 defects per thousand lines of code.
• Changes to specification is also a major issue.
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.47
Systems implementation
• Systems implementation involves introducing the
system into the business. This starts with providing
test versions of the system and then once test results
are satisfactory rolling out the system to business
users and managing the changeover from the old
system to the new system.
• Migration or changeover from a previous information
system to a new system is particularly important for
mission-critical e-business systems where errors in
management of changeover will result in a negative
customer experience or disruption to the supply
chain.
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.48
Systems implemention activities
1. Changeover
2. Data migration
3. Testing
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.49
Systems changeover options
Option
Main advantages
Main disadvantages
1. Immediate cutover. Straight
from old system to new system
on a single date
Rapid, lowest cost
High risk. Major disruption if
serious errors with system
2. Parallel running. Old
system and new system run
side-by-side for a period
Lower risk than immediate
cutover
Slower and higher cost than
immediate cutover
3. Phased implementation.
Good compromise between
Different modules of the system methods 1 and 2
are introduced sequentially
Difficult to achieve technically
due to interdependencies
between modules
4. Pilot system. Trial
implementation occurs before
widespread deployment
Has to be used in combination
with the other methods
Essential for multinational or
national rollouts
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.50
Systems implementation problems
• There are many cases of systems failing at
the changeover phase (see for example, Case
study 7.2).
• Failure at this stage may be due to
unexpected problems when the system goes
live which were not tested in the test
environment. For example, the load on a live
system could be higher than that in the test
environment. A further problem is that there is
a reluctance to delay the live date despite the
system not being fully tested.
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.51
Systems maintenance
• Systems maintenance involves managing
the system once it is live. Problems with the
system must be fixed. Since there is also time
to reflect on the project overall, some
organizations will look to learn from their
experiences on the project through a project
closedown review.
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.52
Systems maintenance - activities
• A key activity is responding to errors as they are
found. If serious, the problems will have to be solved
immediately through issuing a ‘patch’ release to the
system; otherwise they will be recorded for a later
release. A system is required for promptly reporting
and reviewing errors.
• A formal review may occur after the end of projects,
this is the post-implementation review. This assesses
the success of the systems development project and
lessons are recorded for future projects.
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.53
Systems maintenance problems
• Problems with the maintenance phase tend to be a
consequence of maintenance not being part of the
overall project, so processes for reporting, reviewing,
fixing and notifying problems may not be in place.
• A project closedown review is often omitted in
organizations that do not have a project quality
management system in place since it all too easy to
move on to the next project and put problems with
the project ‘under the carpet’.
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.54
Specific issues of Internet-content projects 1
• Initiation – Education to explain the purpose of the intranet and the
importance of updating it is particularly important. Care must taken
in calculating the return on investment with information-based
projects.
• Analysis and design – Specialist methods of mapping the
information requirements are used as described in Chapter 9 on
information architectures.
• Development – the design phase is relatively limited compared to
most bespoke applications since a content management system,
existing CRM application or e-commerce server will be used to
setup structures for data storage. Development of the web-based
user interface needs specific skills which differ somewhat from non
web-based applications. These issues are also covered in Chapter
9.
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.55
Specific issues of Internet-content projects 2
• Implementation – A lot of work will be required to populate the
system with information. Since much of the information will already
be available, methods of integrating with other systems such as
exporting the information from other systems and then importing
this information may be necessary.
• Maintenance – The maintenance phase is particularly important in
these types of projects since content needs to be kept up-to-date.
Responsibilities and update mechanisms for this are required. The
usage of different information types in web-based systems can be
readily tracked and evaluated to check the relevance of
information. Controls need to be in place to maintain the quality of
information and these controls are referred to in Chapter 10 which
is devoted to managing information quality.
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.56
Tracking Gantt chart for the
Passport Office project showing the original
baseline plan against the actual timing
Figure 7.14 Tracking Gantt chart for the Passport Office project showing the
original baseline plan against the actual timing
Source: National Audit Office (www.nao.gov.uk/publications/nao_reports/9899812.pdf)
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005
Slide 07.57
Changeover for Passport Office Project
Figure 7.15 Changeover for Passport Office Project
Source: National Audit Office (www.nao.gov.uk/publications/nao_reports/9899812.pdf)
Chaffey and Wood Business Information Management © Pearson Education Limited 2005