ISD VL1

Initially:
-Start a project or not?
-Overall framework: budget, resource allocation, staffing, time limits etc.

Later:
-Allocate more resources?
-Continue with the project, redefine it, or cancel it?

Industry Surveys:
≈ 32 % of ISD projects are successful
≈ 24 % are failures
≈ 44 % are challenged

Project Managers:
– Project planning
– Allocating and assigning personnel
– Scheduling project activities using appropriate techniques
(e.g. network planning, Gantt charts)
– Controlling costs and time

Creating the Idea
• Marketing: company is reacting too slowly to changing customer demands.
• A business process in the organization is not flowing smoothly.
• New strategic opportunities open up with the emergence of new
technologies.
• Target groups demand new product or service features.
• Business software vendors create, or jump onto a new trend.
• Industry associations propose new approaches, solutions or information systems.
New technologies may also trigger new IS!

• Project proposal: objectives, expected benefits, costs, risks, and time frame of the project
• Evaluating the proposal against business goals (business strategy, critical success factors etc.)

• Methods:
»Business systems planning (BSP) – an approach to specify the enterprise's information systems landscape
»Information strategy planning (ISP) – a part of information engineering developed by James Martin; covers top management goals, critical success factors, and how technology can be used to create new opportunities or
competitive advantages
• "Make or buy" decision

Project Portfolio Identifying, assessing, selecting and managing a collection of projects

A scoring model allows the decision makers to allocate importance to a criteria list by assigning weights to the criteria.

Purpose
Provide senior management with a comprehensive evaluation of the project.

Questions
– What needs to be done?
– Why, when, and how it should be done?
– Who is responsible and who is going to do the work?
– How much will it cost?
– What are the benefits?
– What are alternatives?
– What are the risks?

• Needs statement – a concise overview of the needs addressed with the project

• Goals and objectives – business goals and critical success factors to be supported by the new IS, specific goals of the project, tangible outcomes

• Approach and timetable – proposal / evaluation regarding "make or buy"; milestone plan

• Cost-benefit analysis – costs; short-term, long-term, quantitative, qualitative benefits

• Project budget – project personnel, software costs, additional hardware requirements and other equipment, travelling, meetings, training future users, overhead costs etc.

• Project risks – risks originating from the task, project management, project team, IT infrastructure, implementation process, senior management etc.

• Project controlling and evaluation – how will the progress be measured and the evaluation be done?

• Future costs – financial and human resources needed in the operation of the IS

- "Requirements document", "(software) requirements specification (SRS)"
- Result of the analysis stage (requirements engineering)
- Serves as a reference for:
» Requests for quotations, evaluation of quotations received
» Agreement with an external contractor
» Inhouse system-development group
» Validation testing
» Support and maintenance personnel

-->"IEEE recommended practice for software requirements specifications" (IEEE standard 830-1998)

Distinct points in a project where a project activity or a work package ends.

• Intermediate or final project results that are handed over to the customer or the management

• Typical deliverables: documents produced at the end of a project stage or work package; a system prototype; a test report etc.

• Milestones and deliverables are related but not identical.

1. Developing inhouse
2. Developing with external partners
>>domestic
>> global (offshoring)
3. Ordering an individual turnkey solution
4. Buying, customizing and extending standard software
5. Employing an application service provider (ASP)

Application Service Provider (ASP)

- Makes computer-based services available for other companies

- Services are wide ranging:
>> Specialized functions (e.g. invoicing, tax calculations)
>> All-in-one IS coverage of an industry or profession (e.g. lawyers)
>> Large-scale IS for SMEs (e.g. financial management, ERP, CRM)

- Marketplace: ASPstreet.com (web portal) lists 4,100 ASPs

- IBM, SAP, Microsoft etc. act as ASPs
- Salesforce.com: customer relationship management

-Some industries would not exist without information systems

-Most industries would not be able to operate effectively and efficiently without their information systems

ERP: most important one within the organization; process transactional data, every business event is within ERP sysem; achievement if it is constructed properly: it provides consistent data model--> make it possible to synchronize all business activities/processes

CRM and SCM supportive

Technical IS, manufacturing automation and control: usually for certain industries (e.g. automotive industry); for industry and engineering processes

Typical Scenario
• Information systems are accessed by many users at the same time.
• Processing is distributed to various computers connected by a network.
• IS functionality must be available on a network.

Application Server
• A server providing access to information systems functionality
• Examples: IBM WebSphere Application Server, Borland AppServer, BEA WebLogic
• Open-source application servers: Apache Geronimo and JBoss

--> IS development today means developing around the core systems and under a given IT infrastructure

Aim: Lean management; JIT production--> aim: closer relationship to supplier (because close relation to own production): need to supply goods in a diffrent way; disturbacnce-free flow of goods

-just includes the logistic part even though of customer (rest in CRM)

SC Planning: SCM systems
SC Control: ERP systems

CRM supports relationship to the cutomer in a diffreent level--> marketing and magt level
--> need of building long-term relationships to the customer

RDBMS Vendors
Oracle (Oracle Database)
IBM (DB2)
Microsoft (SQL Server)
Sybase (Adaptive Server Enterprise)
Open source (MySQL, PostgreSQL)
Microsoft (Access)

Interfacing with a DBMS
ODBC (open database connectivity)
JDBC (Java database connectivity)
Java EE/EJB (Java enterprise edition/enterprise Java beans)
XML (eXtensible markup language) enabling

Web technology is different from conventional IS technology!

• Web-based information systems
     - Web-based front-ends for core back-office systems
• Redundancy between ERP, CRM etc. and e-commerce systems
• Data are increasingly transferred and stored in XML format
• Enterprise portals
• E-commerce/e-business information systems need a web server
• Functionalities of web and application servers overlap
• Mobile commerce, mobile business, heterogeneous end devices
• ...

major challenge: integration of all systems into one IT infratsructure

• The "nothing is there" hypothesis ...
• "Everything is there"?
Large-scale standard software and individual software are still being developed!
Missing parts in standard software packages need to be filled

Software organizations – organizations whose core business IS software
• Professional software firms (software vendors)
• IT departments, software development groups and subsidiaries of large organizations that produce and maintain software for their parent organizations

User organizations – organizations whose core business IS NOT software
• Manufacturing, retail, financial, service companies etc.
• Administrations, public agencies etc.

• Licencing, customizing and extending standard software
• Building new/additional solutions "around" the standard software
• Restrictions and requirements are set by the organization's existing systems, technology, and IS architecture
• "Bridge programming"

• (Almost) everybody has a PCs and Office programs
• Development by end-users through visual tools and easy-to-use
IDEs (e.g. Excel, Access, VBA; Visual Studio)
• Example: end-user systems for data analysis (e.g. an Excel-based information system to analyze back-office data and create charts)