IT Systems Project Development and Management

Introduction

Most IT projects are developed without good project planning. This applies to all IT related projects such as database management and website design. The preparation of a detailed plan should be the first step in any project. In addition the plan should consider the life cycle of the system including the human and economic resources needed to sustain the system.

Project Team

Our experience shows that in almost all IT related projects, we have been involved with over the last 20 years, they have been handed to IT staff to complete. Generally these projects, both large and small, have been handed to a single IT staff member with little input from management, users and other stakeholders. Consequently we have seen spectacular failures of large IT projects such as the Canadian Pheonix pay system. Pheonix pay system  The same applies to smaller projects by other organizations.

The project team needs to include not just the key IT staff involved but representatives from management, users and any other relevant stakeholders. For most IT projects this would include the programmers who will code the project; the team lead who would be a senior representative; the users of the system; and those that will operate and maintain the system. 

The project team needs to be inclusive so that good input into project planning could be considered for the development and implementation of the system. Once operational the system should work smoothly for all the stakeholders during its life cycle.

Application System Life Cycle

Once a project team has been assigned then its main task is to establish the project plan for the application system life cycle. The application system life cycle can be broken down into three main steps or phases.


1. Situation Analysis

The first is situation analysis. It has two tasks.

System Planning

We are using system as the generic term for the specific IT project you are planning. It could be a relational database management system (RDBMS) or a content management system (CMS) or a corporate website. The team needs to review the mission, goals and objectives of the system. 

System Requirements

The project team needs to assemble and collect the information and data that is needed for the project. If it is a CMS then the products need to be collected. This would include anything that the team feels is needed for the system. This is the point where hardcopy reports or data is collected and scanned into digital data for the system. All relevant information and data is collected and analysed to determine if it is or is not part of the system.

2. System Design or Development

If we were designing a RDBMS this phase would include the conceptual, logical and physical design of the database system. At the end of this phase you will have a working prototype. Unfortunately too many programmers just start designing and programming without spending time planning or creating the conceptual and logical data models. Consequently many database systems work poorly when they are implemented. 

If you are designing a website or CMS system the conceptual and logical tasks are where you would carefully consider the architecture of the website. You would re-examine your content and determine how you would manage it. Your content and users are your database and you need to design how they interact with the system accordingly.

3. Administration

Implementation

Implementation is the first of four tasks under the administration phase. For a CMS system this is when you host your site online and it is ready to operate. If there is an existing legacy system the new system should be implemented in parallel and complete the testing task before going live.

Data Loading & Conversion

Data loading could follow implementation. If a test system was created then data loading could have been undertaken prior to implementation. Conversion of any remaining data could also be undertaken at this time.

Testing

The new system should be thoroughly tested with a small team of users before go-live. Testing does require 'new' users who have not been involved with the design life cycle to date. This would allow the team to catch any unknown bugs or processes prior to go-live.

Operations and Maintenance (O&M)

Once the new system has gone live then it will need to be maintained and sustained under day-to-day operations. At this point in the Administration phase there should be two trained teams. The IT team who would maintain the system in the cloud (hosted site) and the Operations team who will manage the content including editing of existing content and the addition of new content. The operations team should be from the administrative staff pool. Often this is also a task left to the IT team and it should not be.

Life cycle Approach    

The application system life cycle approach means that the system does not just cycle around Administration phase. In order to have a sustainable system the organization needs to re-evaluate the Situation Analysis phase to check if any requirements have changed and if additional data needs to be collected and added to the system.

Similarly the second phase regading the System Design also needs to be re-assesed and modified if necessary. This will lead into the third Administration phase. If changes are minor this could be implemented on-the-fly. However if changes are significant then a new parallel system should be implemented and tested prior to go-live.

Additional considerations in the life cycle approach is committment by the executive to provide sufficient financial and human resources to sustain the system.

The life cycle approach should provide a much more effective and sustainable system for the organization.





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