IS Theories & Practices

System Development Process &

Project ManagementIS 655: Supplementary Note 2

CSUN Information Systems

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Process vs. Project Management

Process Management is an ongoing activity that documents, manages the use of, and improves an organization’s chosen methodology (the “process”) for system development. Process management is concerned with the activities, deliverables, and quality standards to be applied to all projects.

Project Management is the process of scoping, planning, staffing, organizing, directing, and controlling the development of an acceptable system at a minimum cost within a specified time frame.

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System Development Methodologies

Architected Rapid Application Development (Architected RAD)

Dynamic Systems Development Methodology (DSDM)

Joint Application Development (JAD)Information Engineering (IE)Rapid Application Development (RAD)Rational Unified Process (RUP)Structured Analysis and DesigneXtreme Programming (XP)

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System Building Blocks

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1. Scope Definition

• Purpose: define perceived problems, opportunities, and directives (POD); assess the risk of project; establish scope, preliminary requirements and constraints, participants, budget and schedule (preliminary study)

• Issues: Is the project worthwhile? (using PIECES framework) Define the scope of project

• Deliverable: Project charter/plan

•Feasibility check: Cancel project / Approve to continue / Reduce or expanse the scope with budget and schedule modification

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PIECES Framework for Systems Improvement

P the need to improve performance

I the need to improve information (and data)

E the need to improve economics, control costs, or

increase profits

C the need to improve control or security

E the need to improve efficiency of people and processes

S the need to improve service to customers, suppliers, partners, employees, etc.

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2. Problem Analysis

• Purpose: to study and analyze the existing system from the users’ perspectives as they see Data, Processes, and Interfaces

• Issue: Cost/benefits of building new system to solve these problems

• Deliverable: system improvement objectives (business criteria to evaluate the new system)

• Feasibility check: Cancel project / Approve to continue / Reduce or expanse the scope with budget and schedule modification

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3. Requirement Analysis

• Purpose: discover users’ needs or expectations out of the new system in terms of Data, Processes, and Interfaces

• Issue: Specify requirements for the new system (WHAT TO BE DONE) without prematurely expressing technical details (HOW)

• Errors and omissions in requirement analysis result in user dissatisfaction of final system and costly modifications

• Deliverable: business requirements statement

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4. Logical Design• Purpose: translating business user requirements into a system model that depicts only WHAT TO DO without specifying any possible technical design or implementation of those requirements (conceptual design). • Issue: using graphical model of a system to represent user requirements in terms of Data, Processes and Interfaces, and to facilitate improved communication between system stakeholders.•Caution: Analysis paralysis – excessive system modeling dramatically slows progress toward implementation of the intended system solution.•Deliverable: Logical Systems Models (DFD, ERD etc)

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5. Decision Analysis

• Purpose: identify all candidate solutions, analyze the feasibility of each candidate, recommend a candidate system as the target solution

• Issue: Feasibility analysis in terms of technical, operational, economic, schedule (TOES), and risk

•Deliverable: approved system proposal

•Feasibility check: Cancel project / Approve system proposal with budget and schedule modification / Reduce the scope of proposed solution with budget and schedule modification

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Decision Analysis

Candidate solutions evaluated in terms of TOES and Risks:– Technical feasibility – Is the solution technically practical? Does

our staff have the technical expertise to design and build this solution?

– Operational feasibility – Will the solution fulfill the users’ requirements? To what degree? How will the solution change the users’ work environment? How do users feel about such a solution?

– Economic feasibility – Is the solution cost-effective?

– Schedule feasibility – Can the solution be designed and implemented within an acceptable time?

– Risk feasibility – What is the probability of a successful implementation using the technology and approach? (Risk Management)

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6. Physical Design• Purpose: to transform business requirements into technical design specifications for construction

• Issue: HOW technology will be used to build the system in terms of Data, Processes, and Interfaces

• Design by Specifications vs. Design by Prototyping

• Deliverable: System design specifications (blueprints)

•Feasibility check: Continue/ Reduce or expanse the scope with budget and schedule modification

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7. Construction Phase

• Purpose: to build and test a system that fulfill business requirements and design specs; implement interfaces between new and existing systems

• Issue: Construct database, application programs, user/system interfaces, implement purchased or leased software

• Deliverable: proposed system within budget and schedule

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8. Implementation Phase

• Purpose: deliver the production system into operation

• Issue: Train users, write manuals, load files, populate database, final test

• Conversion plan: parallel systems, switch point

• Deliverable: system up and running

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Installation/Conversion Strategies

Abrupt cutover

Parallel conversion

Location (Pilot) conversion

Staged (Phased) conversion

New System

Old system

Old System New System

Old System New System

Old System New System

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Installation/Conversion Strategies …

Risk

Cost

AbruptCutover

LocationConversion

StagedConversion

ParallelConversion

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Operation and Support

• Ongoing system support would be provided until the system becomes obsolete and is replaced by a new one

• Issues: technical support for user, fixing bugs, recovering plan, adapt to emerging requirements

• When a system has reached entropy, new project for new system should be initiated

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Summary: Systems Development Process

Scope Definition Phase: What Business ProblemProblem Analysis Phase: What System Issues

(Info/Data, Processes, Communications/Interfaces)Requirement Analysis Phase: What User NeedsLogical Design: Conceptual Model – What to DoDecision Analysis Phase: What SolutionDesign Phase: Physical Model: How to DoConstruction Phase: Do ItImplementation Phase: Use It

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Classic Project Phases

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Model-Driven Development

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Model-Driven Development

Model-driven development – a system development strategy that emphasizes the drawing of system models to help visualize and analyze problems, define business requirements, and design information systems.

– Process Modeling – a process-centered technique popularized by the structured analysis and design methodology used models of business process requirements to derive effective software designs for a system.

– Data Modeling – a data-centered technique to model business data requirements and design appropriate database systems.

– Object Modeling – a technique to merge the data and process concerns into singular constructs called objects. Object models are diagrams that document a system in terms of its objects and their interactions.

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Model-Driven Development …

Advantages:

– Planning ahead

– Extensive modeling current system and requirement analysis

– Analyze many alternative technical solutions

– Suitable for well understood systems

Disadvantages:

– Long duration

– Passive participation of user as they don’t see the product

– Requirements in each phase should be fully addressed: impractical and/or inflexible

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Rapid Application Development

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Rapid Application Development

Rapid application development (RAD) techniques emphasize extensive user involvement in the rapid and evolutionary construction of working prototypes of a system to accelerate the system development process.

RAD is based on building prototypes that evolve into finished systems (often using time boxing)

– A prototype is a smaller-scale, representative or working model of the users’ requirements or a proposed design for an information system.

– A time box is a non-extendable period of time, usually 60-120 days, by which a candidate system must be placed into operation. Improvements will be released in later versions

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Rapid Application Development …

Advantages:

– Handle uncertain or imprecise user requirements

– Active user participation in building physical product: increase enthusiasm, support

– Early detection of errors and omissions: with testing and modifying prototype

– Reduce risk with iterative prototyping

Disadvantages:

– Increase lifetime costs to operate, support, and maintain the system (constantly doing and fixing)

– Short problem analysis may result in solving wrong problems

– Discourage an analyst from considering other technical alternatives than the one being used in prototyping

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Hybrid Strategies

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Hybrid: Multiple Implementation

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Hybrid: Staged Implementation

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Measures of Project Success

– The resulting information system is acceptable to the customer.

– The system was delivered “on time.”

– The system was delivered “within budget.”– The system development process had a

minimal impact on ongoing business operations.

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Poor Expectations Management

Scope Creep – the unexpected and gradual growth of requirements during an information systems project.

Feature Creep– the uncontrolled addition of technical features to a system.

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Causes of Project FailureFailure to establish upper-management commitment to the projectLack of organization’s commitment to the system development

methodologyTaking shortcuts through or around the system development

methodologyPoor expectations managementPremature commitment to a fixed budget and schedulePoor estimating techniquesOveroptimismThe mythical man-month (Brooks, 1975)Inadequate people management skillsFailure to adapt to business changeInsufficient resourcesFailure to “manage to the plan”

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Inter-task Dependencies

Finish-to-start (FS)—The finish of one task triggers the start of another task.

Start-to-start (SS)—The start of one task triggers the start of another task.

Finish-to-finish (FF)—Two tasks must finish at the same time.

Start-to-finish (SF)—The start of one task signifies the finish of another task.

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Task Splitting & DelayingCritical Path – the sequence of dependent tasks that

determines the earliest possible completion date of the project.

– Tasks that are on the critical path cannot be delayed without delaying the entire project schedule. To achieve resource leveling, critical tasks can only be split.

Slack Time – the amount of delay that can be tolerated between the starting time and completion time of a task without causing a delay in the completion date of the entire project.

– Tasks that have slack time can be delayed to achieve resource leveling

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PERT Chart

5-3-2001 5-12-2001

5-3-2001 5-11-2001

Preliminary Investigation

5-12-2001 6-12-2001

5-12-2001 6-14-2001

Problem Analysis

5-28-2001 7-15-2001

5-30-2001 7-18-2001

Requirements Analysis

6-13-2001 7-30-2001

6-13-2001 8-3-2001

Decision Analysis

9-10-2001 12-14-2001

TBD TBD

Implementation

7-19-2001 11-13-2001

7-20-2001 In Progress

Construction

7-3-2001 9-25-2001

7-5-2001 10-9-2001

Design

5-3-2001 N/A

5-3-2001 N/A

Project Initiation

ScheduledStart

ScheduledFinish

Actual Start ActualFinish

Task

ScheduledStart

ScheduledFinish

Actual Start ActualFinish

Task

intertaskdependency

Legend

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Microsoft Project PERT Chart

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Critical Path

The critical path is highlighted in red

TASK C

Fri 2/9/01 2 days

Fri 2/9/01 0 days

TASK D

Tue 2/20/01 7 days

Tue 2/20/01 0 days

TASK I

Tue 2/27/01 5 days

Tue 2/27/01 0 days

TASK E

Mon 2/19/01 6 days

Tue 2/20/01 1 day

TASK B

Wed 2/7/01 2 days

Wed 2/7/01 0 days

TASK A

Mon 2/5/01 3 days

Mon 2/5/01 0 days

TASK H

Thu 2/15/01 1 day

Tue 2/20/01 3 days

TASK F

Wed 2/14/01 3 days

Fri 2/16/01 2 days

TASK G

Fri 2/16/01 2 days

Tue 2/20/01 2 days

Duration

Slack Time

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Gantt Chart

Incomplete Task

Complete Task

Legend

ID

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Preliminary investigation

Problem analysis

Requirements analysis

Decision analysis

Design

Construction

Implementation

May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

2001Task Name

Today

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Microsoft Project Gantt Chart

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Scheduling Strategies

Forward Scheduling – a project scheduling approach that establishes a project start date and then schedules forward from that date.

Reverse Scheduling – a project scheduling strategy that establishes a project deadline and then schedules backward from that date.