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Developing Business Systems - Coggle Diagram
Developing Business Systems
Planning for and Justifying IT Applications
Organizational strategic plan states the firm’s overall mission, the goals that follow from that mission, and the broad steps necessary to reach these goals.
IT architecture delineates the way an organization’s information resources should be used to accomplish its mission.
IT strategic plan is a set of long-range goals that describe the IT infrastructure and major IT initiatives needed to achieve the goals of the organization.
Elements operational plan
Mission – derived from IT strategy.
IT environment – summary of information needs of the functional areas and of the organization as a whole.
Objectives of the IT function – best current estimate of the goals.
Constraints of the IT function – technological, financial, personnel and other resource limitations.
Application portfolio – prioritized inventory of present applications and a detailed plan of projects to be developed or continued.
Resource allocation and project management – listing of who is going to do what, how and when
Evaluating & Justifying IT Investment:
Benefits, Costs & Issues
Assessing the costs
Fixed costs: are those costs that remain the same regardless of change in the activity level. For IT, fixed costs include infrastructure cost, cost of IT services, and IT management cost
Total cost of ownership (TCO): Formula for calculating cost of acquiring, operating and controlling an IT system.
Assessing the benefits (Values)
Intangible benefits: Benefits from IT that may be very desirable but difficult to place an accurate monetary value on.
The Net Present Value (NPV) method converts future values of benefits to their present-value equivalent by discounting them at the organization’s cost of funds.
Return on investment measures the effectiveness of management in generating profits with its available assets.
Breakeven analysis determines the point at which the cumulative dollar value of the benefits from a project equals the investment made in the project.
The business case approach: A business case is one or more specific applications or projects. Its major emphasis is the justification for a specific required investment, but it also provides the bridge between the initial plan and its execution.
Strategies for Acquiring IT Applications
Purchase a Prewritten Application
Customize a Prewritten Application
Lease the applications
Application Service Providers and Software-as-a-Service Vendors
Use Open-Source Software
Outsourcing is acquiring IT applications from external contractors or organizations.
Custom Development
The Systems Development Life Cycle – a multistep, iterative process to designing systems, very popular, 5 Phases:
Investigation,
Analysis,
Design,
Implementation,
Maintenance
Starting the Systems Development Process
Technical feasibility: Assessment of whether hardware, software and communications components can be developed and /or acquired to solve a business problem.
Economic feasibility: Assessment of whether a project is an acceptable financial risk and if the organization can afford the expense and time needed to complete it
Organizational feasibility: Organization’s ability to access the proposed project.
Behavioural feasibility: Assessment of the human issues involved in a proposed project, including resistance to change and skills and training needs.
Legal/Political Feasibility – what are the legal/political ramifications of the new system?
Systems Analysis
Organizational Analysis – you must have a thorough understanding of the organization to make the system work well
Analysis of the Present System – “those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it”, a complete understanding of the current system is critical
Logical Analysis – create logical models the current system, WHAT the system does without regard to HOW
Functional Requirements Analysis and Determination – what Information is required for each business activity and what Processing is required in the system
Systems Design
Prototyping – create working models of the proposed system
The Prototyping Process – prototypes are developed quickly for trial by users to obtain user feedback
User Interface Design – critical because the interface is the part of the systems closest to the user
System Specifications – listing of elements that formalize the design
Object Oriented Programming (OOP)
Inheritance – ability to inherit properties of a higher-order object
Modularity – a series of interlinked yet stand-alone modules
Polymorphism – different behavior based on conditions
Encapsulation – concealing all the properties inside the object