Watch at least two of the following movies:
• Make a comprehensive reaction paper for the two movies in no less than 300 words each.
• Make a comparative analysis of the two movies you chosen.
My chosen Movies:
Wall e
9
One of the movie that I have watched is Wall-E .Wall E is a animated movie that talks about a robot that help people to realize that they the worth of earth and they should take all work in computerized way.
This movie makes me fascinated since it is a animated and the story is amazing. It is all about a robot named Wall-e, who is a designed to clean up a waste-covered Earth. The Earth for that days is just intend to be a trash can of all defective metals and wall-e is there to clean . Wall –e Found out a plant and bring it at home .As people found out that the earth produce plant ,they design Eve to examine ,where does it that planted. As Wall-e found out Eve in the earth, he had fallen in love right away. As Eve brings the plant to ships where people are living, wall-e follows her. In that he found out how people depend on a new technology. They don’t know how to stand, work and even eat using their hands.
With those memory that Eve has realizes humanity must return to restore their home. The captain wants the plant to die but Wall-e protected it. Since Wall-e is a defective robots, it is hard for him to do task for the best of the community. People that time doesn’t know how beautiful is the earth but then when eve and Wall-e put the plant into the holo-detector to activate the ship's hyper jump back to Earth. People realize how beautiful does the earth and how much the value of plant in living.
After that Wall-e’s is repair but memory had gone but then, Wall-e and Eve live happily and join people and robots in building up again the earth.
The next movie that Ive seen is Nine ,this movie is all a animated movie that talk about saving the earth, the movie entitled 9.
9 is a 2009 American computer-animated science fantasy film. It is about a 9 rug dolls that invented to restore the life in earth. These dolls were design to fight such Fabrication Machine which turned on mankind and used its machines to wipe out all organic life with toxic gas. One of these dolls is named as 9. He was awakening alone in a place but then he is found by the other 8 rug dolls. There story is evolve on war with fabrication machine that the earth is became lifeless. They had fought them and many lives of dolls were gone but then 9 found the way to destroy their enemies. He went back to the place where he awakens. In that place he found a video telling the tactics to destroy those machines. After that they bring out the life of earth.
Comparison:
The two movies are really a futuristic movie, really fascinating to watch since people made this movie is really good .They use a high tech equipment to produce the quality that the viewer be captivate. Both movies shown that how important of the earth. Because of that it can be live by the people and by the robots. It tells that people should not relay their future on robots only but instead, they should do it by their own.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Me as a future IT professional
As a future IT professional, what do you think will be your contributions for the development of technology based on what you learned from college? Define each and state its implications towards our IT society and industry.
Having a IT profession which learned from many years of studying in college and also experiences on its field , it implies contribution on one’s self and also on society. It has proven to in our country IT professionals are really contributed a lot not only in their company but they also build up our industry to level on other higher country.
Being an IT student, I have a task to prove on myself that I could also contribute for the development of technology .I may say that learning in college is not enough for me to learn much about this profession but soon when I gain much experience on my field I could say I am also a contributor for the development of technology on our society.
But then before we could say that lets define what may my contribution for the development of technology based on what I have learned from college.
Contribute analyzing skill which need by an organization – This skill is develop through out in our college life, which also our critical thinking skill. This skill may contribute a lot to a company that is in need to evaluate on adopting a technology fit for their organization. Such being a system analyst which comprehend the process of understanding in detail what a system should be accomplish or problem solver.
Cooperating in developing future IT projects- With cooperation within the group of people who develop a IT project may bring a success for their project. Even if , you doesn’t have a lot to contribute ,but a single work may help .
Contribute skill about Data Security within the Network- This skill is important to a organization specially in the privacy of a their data, the security of their network . Having this skill may be critical since it handles the working processes of the organization.
Managing Skills- this skills may contribute to help accomplish a work in time .Managing is one of the hard thing to do if individual doesn’t know how to manage , it may loss lots of his accomplish job.
See my blog: http://gleizelle.blogspot.com/
Having a IT profession which learned from many years of studying in college and also experiences on its field , it implies contribution on one’s self and also on society. It has proven to in our country IT professionals are really contributed a lot not only in their company but they also build up our industry to level on other higher country.
Being an IT student, I have a task to prove on myself that I could also contribute for the development of technology .I may say that learning in college is not enough for me to learn much about this profession but soon when I gain much experience on my field I could say I am also a contributor for the development of technology on our society.
But then before we could say that lets define what may my contribution for the development of technology based on what I have learned from college.
Contribute analyzing skill which need by an organization – This skill is develop through out in our college life, which also our critical thinking skill. This skill may contribute a lot to a company that is in need to evaluate on adopting a technology fit for their organization. Such being a system analyst which comprehend the process of understanding in detail what a system should be accomplish or problem solver.
Cooperating in developing future IT projects- With cooperation within the group of people who develop a IT project may bring a success for their project. Even if , you doesn’t have a lot to contribute ,but a single work may help .
Contribute skill about Data Security within the Network- This skill is important to a organization specially in the privacy of a their data, the security of their network . Having this skill may be critical since it handles the working processes of the organization.
Managing Skills- this skills may contribute to help accomplish a work in time .Managing is one of the hard thing to do if individual doesn’t know how to manage , it may loss lots of his accomplish job.
See my blog: http://gleizelle.blogspot.com/
Friday, December 24, 2010
Why Technology is on us
Enumerate reasons why we use technology today. What are some points that have influenced us? What are the factors involved in technology change?
It had been encountered and emphasize many times to us IT student about technology. It had been discussed well on our discussion on this subject about the evolution of technology .The past, present and also the future technology that may involved in our community. In this case study, we are to discuss the reasons and the points why this technology influence us and the factors for the fast changing of technology.
With all those learning about technology, I can now enumerate not much but few of my understanding about why this technology influence us much.
We all know for the past times, people are searching for the better of living .In such way, the can communicate to their love one’s which made it able by Alexander Graham Bell when he made the telephone. They can watch entertainment, hear radio and also have their computers. There are also the transportation such us airplanes etc. This is discussed to us on our meeting discussion.
Searching for the better of living is not only for the past times but also for today. People really doesn’t contented in what they have. People explore and investigate the possibilities that may give much better than those things develop in the past. That’s why technology changes. In such way, like now technology is actually in it state of fast changing. You can’t imagine the time span of develop technology of the past and the technology now. It is really short; today technology is so “high tech”.
Because of this, people easily adopt it. For the convenience, easy life, and for saying that they are “sossy” like people whom love gadgets. These are the factors that I can say about technology is in our lives. For me without it, we can say that education is useless in some reasons.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
summer assign1(SAD1)GOOD CHARACTERISTIC OF SYSTEM ANALYST
Based on your learnings of chapter 1, identify and discuss some characteristics you have as a good Systems Analyst. (at least 1000 words)
“Another chapter ,another batch of assignment , not in MIS but now in SAD1.”
“Another write up in formulating new ideas ,learnings”
In these summer instead of vacation ; summer class is the schedule we had. Another write ups is starting all over again but it’s okay ,we used to it already. These makes us trigger , so we should post on time or else papers and ballpens are waiting for us and start counting on the write number of words.
I had fascinating feeling our class on these summer, though we are use to discussion, reporting, writing a blog but these summer is special then the other class we had on semester. These is because we had a great time in our summer class.
Before I enjoy taking with these summer class we had ,I should discuss these assignments which is identify and discuss some characteristics you have as a good Systems Analyst.
Last Wednesday(April 21,2010) our discussion starts . The first discussion we had is all about the characteristic of a good System Analyst which reported by the first group composed by Ms.Charmaine Dayanan and Ms.Ida Duguran. They have discuss to us what is an System Analyst and what is it’s purpose on our subject SAD(System Analyst and Design ).they have also tackled the role of a system analyst and how big role that the system analyst should have.
For the pass time all I know that a system analyst is concerns only with the system, and analyzing the flow of system ,but then when they have discussed to us, I’ve enlighten that a System Analyst is dealing with the need of the organization ,which he/she should solve the desired system problem need by an organization. By these system analyst proposed a system and the boss of an organization will do the next , if he/she support the system analyst.
As I have remember Sir Gamboa stated that not only and IT or CS can be a system analyst but also those people who know to understand the problem of an organization but we are learning these, for us to equip knowledge in solving such problem. I have wrote there slides on what is system analysis so lets discuss it.
System Analysis -is a process of understanding in detail what a system should be accomplish or problem solver.
The System Analysis should be equip with the system analyst for him or her to understand the process of understanding of a system need by an organization. System analyst is a agent of change because they could serve for the change on the flow of na organization. To be a System Analyst , he or she must understand the organization,its culture mission and objective.
I have listed Knowledge and Skills Required of a System Analyst. These are the following:
---Technical knowledge and Technical |Skills
-The analyst should have much understanding in the fundamental knowledge in computers/peripheral device, file database, input and output components and alternative
-how could a system analyst solve the system’s problem if he/she doesn’t have enough knowledge and understanding with computers , and all about new technology for an organization.
*Analyst uses tools such
-software product package
- Visual modeling tools and code generating tools.
These are the tools should be used by an System Analyst in solving the need of an organization. These should be equip to a system analyst to understand by an organization what is his/her want to say with the flow of system since it more understandable if it is drawn that it is written. Using modeling tools is a tools to understand the system’s flow and the interaction of the user and the system as well .Coding is a tools to develop the system.
*Analyst understand techniques
-project planning should be a system analyst technique and the cost benefits of the system should its proposal for it may help in the success of the proposed system
--Business knowledge and Business Skills
- Analyst must understand the business function performed by an organization
-functional work process and organization structure
-How could be an system analyst become one of a kind analyst if he/she doesn’t care with the organization structure he belongs .What is a system analyst be its proposal if he/ she doesn’t have enough knowledge to the business function and functional work process of an organization. System analyst should know the business function performed by an organization.
---People Skills
-effective communication
-how people relate to one work
-People skills should be equipped on a System Analyst not only in SA but also to all people who work in an organization. These skills help a system analyst to gather information, to relate to one another. By his/her effective communication, system analyst will know easily the things that an organization need.
Ethics +Integrity=balance
Ethics-external system of rules and laws
Integrity-is an internal system of principle which guides our behavior
As I have learned from the report of Ms.Duguran, she elaborated that these two should be combined to have an equal manner that the System analyst should have. It is because system analyst is prone to the critical information of an organization. Having integrity and ethics to a person specially a system analyst for them to behave well Since System Analyst involved with the data business function of an organization , he/she should be trusted on the confidentiality of information of an organization.
To sum it up:
System Analyst is the one who solve for the organization need; if SA fails, organization also fails. These are why SA should have a manner of those two things the ethics and integrity.
System Analyst is the one who handle the system problem and proposed a solution to help the organization. Its concern is all about how he/she could understand the need and what should be the things to consider in proposing a system to help the organization he/she is into. The analyst must have an integrity and ethics to be trusted. For her/him gain much opportunity with his/her organization.
“Another chapter ,another batch of assignment , not in MIS but now in SAD1.”
“Another write up in formulating new ideas ,learnings”
In these summer instead of vacation ; summer class is the schedule we had. Another write ups is starting all over again but it’s okay ,we used to it already. These makes us trigger , so we should post on time or else papers and ballpens are waiting for us and start counting on the write number of words.
I had fascinating feeling our class on these summer, though we are use to discussion, reporting, writing a blog but these summer is special then the other class we had on semester. These is because we had a great time in our summer class.
Before I enjoy taking with these summer class we had ,I should discuss these assignments which is identify and discuss some characteristics you have as a good Systems Analyst.
Last Wednesday(April 21,2010) our discussion starts . The first discussion we had is all about the characteristic of a good System Analyst which reported by the first group composed by Ms.Charmaine Dayanan and Ms.Ida Duguran. They have discuss to us what is an System Analyst and what is it’s purpose on our subject SAD(System Analyst and Design ).they have also tackled the role of a system analyst and how big role that the system analyst should have.
For the pass time all I know that a system analyst is concerns only with the system, and analyzing the flow of system ,but then when they have discussed to us, I’ve enlighten that a System Analyst is dealing with the need of the organization ,which he/she should solve the desired system problem need by an organization. By these system analyst proposed a system and the boss of an organization will do the next , if he/she support the system analyst.
As I have remember Sir Gamboa stated that not only and IT or CS can be a system analyst but also those people who know to understand the problem of an organization but we are learning these, for us to equip knowledge in solving such problem. I have wrote there slides on what is system analysis so lets discuss it.
System Analysis -is a process of understanding in detail what a system should be accomplish or problem solver.
The System Analysis should be equip with the system analyst for him or her to understand the process of understanding of a system need by an organization. System analyst is a agent of change because they could serve for the change on the flow of na organization. To be a System Analyst , he or she must understand the organization,its culture mission and objective.
I have listed Knowledge and Skills Required of a System Analyst. These are the following:
---Technical knowledge and Technical |Skills
-The analyst should have much understanding in the fundamental knowledge in computers/peripheral device, file database, input and output components and alternative
-how could a system analyst solve the system’s problem if he/she doesn’t have enough knowledge and understanding with computers , and all about new technology for an organization.
*Analyst uses tools such
-software product package
- Visual modeling tools and code generating tools.
These are the tools should be used by an System Analyst in solving the need of an organization. These should be equip to a system analyst to understand by an organization what is his/her want to say with the flow of system since it more understandable if it is drawn that it is written. Using modeling tools is a tools to understand the system’s flow and the interaction of the user and the system as well .Coding is a tools to develop the system.
*Analyst understand techniques
-project planning should be a system analyst technique and the cost benefits of the system should its proposal for it may help in the success of the proposed system
--Business knowledge and Business Skills
- Analyst must understand the business function performed by an organization
-functional work process and organization structure
-How could be an system analyst become one of a kind analyst if he/she doesn’t care with the organization structure he belongs .What is a system analyst be its proposal if he/ she doesn’t have enough knowledge to the business function and functional work process of an organization. System analyst should know the business function performed by an organization.
---People Skills
-effective communication
-how people relate to one work
-People skills should be equipped on a System Analyst not only in SA but also to all people who work in an organization. These skills help a system analyst to gather information, to relate to one another. By his/her effective communication, system analyst will know easily the things that an organization need.
Ethics +Integrity=balance
Ethics-external system of rules and laws
Integrity-is an internal system of principle which guides our behavior
As I have learned from the report of Ms.Duguran, she elaborated that these two should be combined to have an equal manner that the System analyst should have. It is because system analyst is prone to the critical information of an organization. Having integrity and ethics to a person specially a system analyst for them to behave well Since System Analyst involved with the data business function of an organization , he/she should be trusted on the confidentiality of information of an organization.
To sum it up:
System Analyst is the one who solve for the organization need; if SA fails, organization also fails. These are why SA should have a manner of those two things the ethics and integrity.
System Analyst is the one who handle the system problem and proposed a solution to help the organization. Its concern is all about how he/she could understand the need and what should be the things to consider in proposing a system to help the organization he/she is into. The analyst must have an integrity and ethics to be trusted. For her/him gain much opportunity with his/her organization.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Assignment 9(MIS2)
The pace of change seems to increase relentlessly, especially changes involving information technology. Using your crystal ball, identify and discuss three changes likely to have substantial impact on your school services in the next three year
In these stage of evolution of the earth ,we can't deny that pace of change seems to increase relentlessly, especially changes involving information technology. IT is because many of us are using the new technology as the earth evolve new update with IT/IS were develop so if people doesn't adopt IT change it may behind you in the things going on in this world especially in businesses and firms. Such that our schooling we are aiming of high quality education ,in that we should adopt IT changes for substantial impact of our university.
Information technology (IT) changes rapidly, seriously challenging IT management. In response, many organizations create a formal group of IT professionals to evaluate emerging IT so they can better cope with its change. A survey based on structured interviews was mailed to a nationwide sample of 1,000 IT organizations. Two hundred forty-six respondents provided data to identify categories of coping mechanisms to handle changing IT. Five categories emerged: Education and Training, Internal Procedures, Vendor Support, Consultant Support, and Endurance. Organizations apply Education and Training more extensively than the others. Thus the research contributes to understanding the means by which organizations cope with rapid IT change. The research also found that organizations with a group dedicated to investigating emerging IT cope more extensively, but not more successfully, than do those without one. Thus the research contributes not only by providing an understanding of how organizations cope with rapid IT change, but also by suggesting the need to achieve more from the group charged with emerging IT.
the industries that supply the electronic technology are among the most competitive in the world, striving day and night to launch faster and more powerful systems. Technology strengthens competition, while competition boosts technology. Here is a self-feeding spiral that promotes not merely rapid change, but ever-accelerating change.
Here are my Aspiring Information Technology change :
It is all about system may implement for the school services.
e-Information technology services- IT change in learning process
As I have read information and the some site about Information Technology service in online form and it is implemented to its university of the other country .I found myself to be interested that it could be apply to our university .Well ,as I have already notice higher years has a project that is the same as this e services .These project could be implemented that likely have substantial impact to our university. It is because not only in Institute of computing could use it but also other colleges ,faculties eventually the university itself and may use by the other university.
This E-information technology is a online services of learning information or knowledge. IT contains support documentation and instructions for University and supported software packages. It search capabilities allow you to search for key words related to the information you are interested in finding
This may develop for the easy way of getting university’s IT services that everyone could access
System for the university clinic
Having a system concerning our clinic has a good impact to our university .This would help managing the services of university clinic. We already know that clinic has important role concerning people in the university and we found out that they are use manual way of managing medicines and its services and they can’t entertain student much . The new system would help to manage student, faculties to find time to check up even one semester for knowing our health and avail their services .It would help monitoring the medicines and health equipment.
E voting system
This would help student council in counting of vote and for the student in voting of nominees in our university .It would also help our university in adopting IT change . It may a proud for a university that we, could also avail of e voting services .IT has a big and substantial impact in our university.As I know this system is a project of our classmate in SE .It is a idea concerning our university.
References:
http://www.jmis-web.org/articles/v17_n4_p183/index.html
visit my blog :
http://gleizelle@blogger.com
In these stage of evolution of the earth ,we can't deny that pace of change seems to increase relentlessly, especially changes involving information technology. IT is because many of us are using the new technology as the earth evolve new update with IT/IS were develop so if people doesn't adopt IT change it may behind you in the things going on in this world especially in businesses and firms. Such that our schooling we are aiming of high quality education ,in that we should adopt IT changes for substantial impact of our university.
Information technology (IT) changes rapidly, seriously challenging IT management. In response, many organizations create a formal group of IT professionals to evaluate emerging IT so they can better cope with its change. A survey based on structured interviews was mailed to a nationwide sample of 1,000 IT organizations. Two hundred forty-six respondents provided data to identify categories of coping mechanisms to handle changing IT. Five categories emerged: Education and Training, Internal Procedures, Vendor Support, Consultant Support, and Endurance. Organizations apply Education and Training more extensively than the others. Thus the research contributes to understanding the means by which organizations cope with rapid IT change. The research also found that organizations with a group dedicated to investigating emerging IT cope more extensively, but not more successfully, than do those without one. Thus the research contributes not only by providing an understanding of how organizations cope with rapid IT change, but also by suggesting the need to achieve more from the group charged with emerging IT.
the industries that supply the electronic technology are among the most competitive in the world, striving day and night to launch faster and more powerful systems. Technology strengthens competition, while competition boosts technology. Here is a self-feeding spiral that promotes not merely rapid change, but ever-accelerating change.
Here are my Aspiring Information Technology change :
It is all about system may implement for the school services.
e-Information technology services- IT change in learning process
As I have read information and the some site about Information Technology service in online form and it is implemented to its university of the other country .I found myself to be interested that it could be apply to our university .Well ,as I have already notice higher years has a project that is the same as this e services .These project could be implemented that likely have substantial impact to our university. It is because not only in Institute of computing could use it but also other colleges ,faculties eventually the university itself and may use by the other university.
This E-information technology is a online services of learning information or knowledge. IT contains support documentation and instructions for University and supported software packages. It search capabilities allow you to search for key words related to the information you are interested in finding
This may develop for the easy way of getting university’s IT services that everyone could access
System for the university clinic
Having a system concerning our clinic has a good impact to our university .This would help managing the services of university clinic. We already know that clinic has important role concerning people in the university and we found out that they are use manual way of managing medicines and its services and they can’t entertain student much . The new system would help to manage student, faculties to find time to check up even one semester for knowing our health and avail their services .It would help monitoring the medicines and health equipment.
E voting system
This would help student council in counting of vote and for the student in voting of nominees in our university .It would also help our university in adopting IT change . It may a proud for a university that we, could also avail of e voting services .IT has a big and substantial impact in our university.As I know this system is a project of our classmate in SE .It is a idea concerning our university.
References:
http://www.jmis-web.org/articles/v17_n4_p183/index.html
visit my blog :
http://gleizelle@blogger.com
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Assignment 8( MIS2)
fast forward ..., you were hired and have been tasked to develop a strategic information systems plan for a company.
The company officers have extended an invitation for you to meet with them to discuss the direction of the company. Before this meeting, they have asked that you provide a list of questions with some explanation about the
\"why\" of the question so they can be prepared, thus maximizing the output from this meeting.
The company officers have extended an invitation for you to meet with them to discuss the direction of the company. Before this meeting, they have asked that you provide a list of questions with some explanation about the
\"why\" of the question so they can be prepared, thus maximizing the output from this meeting.
I
In this assignment, we are asked that if we are hired and have been tasked to develop a strategic information systems plan for a company .That company asked us to discuss the direction of the company and provide a list of question with some explanation about the why for maximizing the output from the meeting.So do, I imagine that if one day Iwill be hired to do tasks for developing strategic information system of one’s company I would
think first what is the company’s business involved then think about the plans of the company for the next year .I would prepare question for them to answer and for me the analyze the situation and the things the that the company’plan for their businesses .But before I formulate some question ,we should understand more about the Strategic Information Systems Planning (SISP).
Strategic Information Systems Planning (SISP) is a continuous planning activity that ensures Information and Communication Technology (ICT) implementation in an organization is aligned with business strategies, improves organizational process effectiveness, creates business opportunities and contributes to organizational competitiveness An SISP methodology is especially useful for the inexperienced SISP developerbecause it provides a systematic guideline to carry out the IS strategy formulation process. It is generally a guideline for solving a problem, with specific components such as phases, tasks, methods, techniques and tools [Methodology benefits managers by providing information to plan, review and control projects. Generally methodologies arecomprised of the following four elements: providing an opinion of what needs to be solved.
These are are things to consider in making (SISP)StrategicInformation Systems Planning Situation Analysis-Description of where we are today, internal and external , business and IS
Strategy Formulation-Description of where we (the company)want to be ,business and IS
Strategy Implementation- Planshow we (the company)are going to get there from IS stand outpoint.
In these information we can understand the things should be consider in SISP of the company.It can help also to formulate question to formulate a questions to understand more about the company and here are my questions for the company:
·
What is company’s plan for the future?
-for me to analyze the things the company want to do for the future and why the need SISP for planning for their company for me to initiate the impact of my SISP for the company.It would be useful for thecompany
Is Stategic Information Systems Plan useful for the
company?Why?
-To understand why company need SISP ,Is this the key for their success? And understand company’s
plans.
· What is the vision objective ,goals and priorities of the company?
-To understand well the interest of the
company.
·
What is the current IS environment company?
-To know the capacity of the company in implementing the SISP.
·
What is the competitive advantage of the company and disadvantage ?
-To know the valuable effect of the plans if it would make the company be
more competitive or it would not.
·
What are the threats and opportunities facing the company?
-To grab ideas in what to do with the company .
Is the company willing to provide risk involving budget?
-To know if in what way the company use money for implementing project.This would identify if the company is worthy in hiring to develop their Strategic
information system plan .Having a good budget SISP would be more success.
·
How they handle changes?
-With this changes we could identify the risk of company in taking the risk .So we should understand to plan strategy in handling IS changes
in the company
Sunday, January 31, 2010
assignment 7All about GOOGLE
Google is a highly successful Internet business. Recently they have broadened their scope with a multitude of new tools. Research Google’s business model and answer the following questions below. You may add additional information not included in these questions
As we have seen and notice right now internet is expanding all over the world and we can’t deny that almost a hundred percent of the people rely in the internet for sustaining their everyday work of living. These proves how internet business spescially Google Inc. is a highly successful Internet business because everyone used it for displaying ads for their businesses , in search services . Its shows how big success does the google had gone in world of internet business . Before we tackle much about Google Inc., we should define it
Google Inc.is a search engine technology, the paid search services (AdWords, AdSense, Partnerships), online display ads, offlince channels, mobile ads and other products, the online advertising market trends and forces. Google Inc., starting from just a smart algorithm, has developed a totally new business model, has become in a few years the world leading search engine, has developed winning applications as Google Earth, Google Video, Google Maps, Gmail, and is enjoying a huge success. Google, starting from scratch, has won the challenge against a giant like Microsoft and against the previous search engine market leaders Yahoo, Lycos, Altavista, Excite.
As I have read the writngs of Keith H. Hammonds in How Google Grows...and Grows...and Grows he said that performance is the envy of executives and engineers around the world ... For techno-evangelists, Google is a marvel of Web brilliance ... For Wall Street, it may be the IPO that changes everything (again) ... But Google is also a case study in savvy management -- a company filled with cutting-edge ideas, rigorous accountability, and relentless attention to detail.It shows that even though it started only in 1995 and in 1998 its named as a top engine and as time gone by Google launches many services for the best services of their client and now we by avail Google services through our phone See how amazing , What more in the next year?
Who are their competitors?
Yahoo Inc.- s an American computer services company with a mission to "be the most essential global Internet service for consumers and businesses". It operates an Internet portal, the Yahoo! Directory and a host of other services including the popular Yahoo! Mail.
Microsoft Corporation- Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software, each of which has achieved near ubiquity in the desktop computer market. Microsoft also involves in different fields like online search engine market(www.msn.com), instant messaging(MSN messenger), gaming industry(X-Box) and TV network(MSNBC) etc, its core business is still focused on software manufacture. Its dominance of operating system and office software contributes most to its huge profit.
America Online, or AOL for short, is a U.S.-based online service provider, Internet service provider, and media company operated by Time Warner. Based in Dulles, Virginia, a community in Loudoun County, Virginia, with regional branches around the world, it is by far the most successful proprietary online service, with more than 32 million subscribers at one point in the US, Canada, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Latin America (declared bankrupt in 2004), Japan and formerly Russia.
DIRECT COMPETITOR COMPARISON
How have they used information technology to their advantage?
Google was an innovator of the Business Model. Google delivered all these great new products basically for free, enticing and luring million of users worldwide, with the result of building the Brand in an outstanding, quite unbelievable way - and did it so fast.
Google has had success with other products abroad, most notably its Orkut social network which has bombed domestically to its MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn brethren, yet has taken off in huge countries such as India and Brazil soit be careful in delivering their services.
Google should be sensitive to cultural sensitivities and will face different regulatory environments abroad, but the truth is that Google has been remarkably successful internationally in large part due to the international word-of-mouth generated by their product and feature set.
How competitive are they in the market?
Google is a competetive in the market because of the services it offers, .How it helps the other business in promoting it world wide.Google corresponds a structure that has a good objective for their client.Providing them a reliable sources of information.
What new services do they offer?
NEXUS ONE
You understand that the Device will only work on GSM networks and that 3G network availability may depend on your mobile carrier. Please contact your mobile carrier to confirm that it offers a GSM network and that the Device’s technical specifications are compatible with 3G coverage in your area.
Google Flu Trends-
How does this work?
We've found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity. Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate current flu activity around the world in near real-time
Google Maps Navigation on your mobile phone
Want a new phone with Google Maps Navigation pre-installed? ... These services are free from Google, but carrier charges may apply. ©2009 Google - Mobile ...
Google Fast Flip
Week in review: All about Apple's iPad, how a tweet revived service. ... BBC News - Eye 'gouging' at Kent rugby match probed by police .... 2009 Google –
Google Voice
Use Google Voice with your existing number new! A
What makes them so unique?
I’ve read a blog and its said that “One thing that has become evident to me is that Google grows in an organic fashion, unlike any other company I know of. Google develops tools that are internally useful and then releases them to the world. Google does not develop products to sell to the world. Google does not have external contracts, at least in the traditional sense, ” “Google is obviously best known for search and for ads associated with search. This is in essence Google’s one true product. It is the one feature Google developed for the outside world. When Google developed search it was no different from a small company. It is what Google has done since then that makes Google different.” “Google doesn’t answer to any external power. They don’t have anyone they have to deliver a product to. There is no contract with a deadline. Due to not having any external dependencies, Google can continuously iterate over a product until it reaches a state of near perfection. It can stay in internal testing as long as Google wants and no one is going to care. See Gmail, Google Maps, etc. This then allows Google to use the perfect form of the agile process. Continuous iterations and testing and development, continues improvement. Then as Google sees fit, release the products. As they get better and better, more people use them and more money from ads come in. It’s beautiful.”
It is so true statement of a writer and I agree with that ,Infact google services expand more every year google has just a simple .Google Inc. is a complex one, and involves more factors. It's a mix of smart decisions, excellent marketing strategy, great advisors, highly innovative and risky business model, and great products.
How competitive are they in the international market?
Obviously, Google has had success in the international environment, including greater market share than in the domestic market, that every Internet company would covet. This analysis delves deeper into Google's international efforts.They are competetive in the international market by giving much effort in their services, and give provide client a good services and a reliable sources of information .
Google should continue to grow their in-country teams significantly in order to best overcome cultural and sales hurdles and take advantage of unique opportunities and the gigantic world market that is growing at a quicker pace than the U.S. market. Recent stats point to European e-commerce in a position to surge past U.S. e-commerce.
References:
http://www.glgroup.com/News/Google-International--Greater-Market-Share-Now-Distancing-from-the-Pack-to-Come-18168.html
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/69/google.html
http://www.vertygoteam.com/google_marketing_strategy.php
http://www.programmersparadox.com/2008/03/17/googles-unique-advantage/
http://www.googlelabs.com/?q=google new services as of 2009&apps=Search Labs
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/co?s=GOOG
As we have seen and notice right now internet is expanding all over the world and we can’t deny that almost a hundred percent of the people rely in the internet for sustaining their everyday work of living. These proves how internet business spescially Google Inc. is a highly successful Internet business because everyone used it for displaying ads for their businesses , in search services . Its shows how big success does the google had gone in world of internet business . Before we tackle much about Google Inc., we should define itGoogle Inc.is a search engine technology, the paid search services (AdWords, AdSense, Partnerships), online display ads, offlince channels, mobile ads and other products, the online advertising market trends and forces. Google Inc., starting from just a smart algorithm, has developed a totally new business model, has become in a few years the world leading search engine, has developed winning applications as Google Earth, Google Video, Google Maps, Gmail, and is enjoying a huge success. Google, starting from scratch, has won the challenge against a giant like Microsoft and against the previous search engine market leaders Yahoo, Lycos, Altavista, Excite.
As I have read the writngs of Keith H. Hammonds in How Google Grows...and Grows...and Grows he said that performance is the envy of executives and engineers around the world ... For techno-evangelists, Google is a marvel of Web brilliance ... For Wall Street, it may be the IPO that changes everything (again) ... But Google is also a case study in savvy management -- a company filled with cutting-edge ideas, rigorous accountability, and relentless attention to detail.It shows that even though it started only in 1995 and in 1998 its named as a top engine and as time gone by Google launches many services for the best services of their client and now we by avail Google services through our phone See how amazing , What more in the next year?Who are their competitors?
Yahoo Inc.- s an American computer services company with a mission to "be the most essential global Internet service for consumers and businesses". It operates an Internet portal, the Yahoo! Directory and a host of other services including the popular Yahoo! Mail. Microsoft Corporation- Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software, each of which has achieved near ubiquity in the desktop computer market. Microsoft also involves in different fields like online search engine market(www.msn.com), instant messaging(MSN messenger), gaming industry(X-Box) and TV network(MSNBC) etc, its core business is still focused on software manufacture. Its dominance of operating system and office software contributes most to its huge profit. America Online, or AOL for short, is a U.S.-based online service provider, Internet service provider, and media company operated by Time Warner. Based in Dulles, Virginia, a community in Loudoun County, Virginia, with regional branches around the world, it is by far the most successful proprietary online service, with more than 32 million subscribers at one point in the US, Canada, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Latin America (declared bankrupt in 2004), Japan and formerly Russia.DIRECT COMPETITOR COMPARISON
How have they used information technology to their advantage?
Google was an innovator of the Business Model. Google delivered all these great new products basically for free, enticing and luring million of users worldwide, with the result of building the Brand in an outstanding, quite unbelievable way - and did it so fast.
Google has had success with other products abroad, most notably its Orkut social network which has bombed domestically to its MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn brethren, yet has taken off in huge countries such as India and Brazil soit be careful in delivering their services.
Google should be sensitive to cultural sensitivities and will face different regulatory environments abroad, but the truth is that Google has been remarkably successful internationally in large part due to the international word-of-mouth generated by their product and feature set.
How competitive are they in the market?
Google is a competetive in the market because of the services it offers, .How it helps the other business in promoting it world wide.Google corresponds a structure that has a good objective for their client.Providing them a reliable sources of information.
What new services do they offer?
NEXUS ONE
You understand that the Device will only work on GSM networks and that 3G network availability may depend on your mobile carrier. Please contact your mobile carrier to confirm that it offers a GSM network and that the Device’s technical specifications are compatible with 3G coverage in your area.
Google Flu Trends-
How does this work?
We've found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity. Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate current flu activity around the world in near real-time
Google Maps Navigation on your mobile phone
Want a new phone with Google Maps Navigation pre-installed? ... These services are free from Google, but carrier charges may apply. ©2009 Google - Mobile ...
Google Fast Flip
Week in review: All about Apple's iPad, how a tweet revived service. ... BBC News - Eye 'gouging' at Kent rugby match probed by police .... 2009 Google –
Google Voice
Use Google Voice with your existing number new! A
What makes them so unique?
I’ve read a blog and its said that “One thing that has become evident to me is that Google grows in an organic fashion, unlike any other company I know of. Google develops tools that are internally useful and then releases them to the world. Google does not develop products to sell to the world. Google does not have external contracts, at least in the traditional sense, ” “Google is obviously best known for search and for ads associated with search. This is in essence Google’s one true product. It is the one feature Google developed for the outside world. When Google developed search it was no different from a small company. It is what Google has done since then that makes Google different.” “Google doesn’t answer to any external power. They don’t have anyone they have to deliver a product to. There is no contract with a deadline. Due to not having any external dependencies, Google can continuously iterate over a product until it reaches a state of near perfection. It can stay in internal testing as long as Google wants and no one is going to care. See Gmail, Google Maps, etc. This then allows Google to use the perfect form of the agile process. Continuous iterations and testing and development, continues improvement. Then as Google sees fit, release the products. As they get better and better, more people use them and more money from ads come in. It’s beautiful.”
It is so true statement of a writer and I agree with that ,Infact google services expand more every year google has just a simple .Google Inc. is a complex one, and involves more factors. It's a mix of smart decisions, excellent marketing strategy, great advisors, highly innovative and risky business model, and great products.
How competitive are they in the international market?
Obviously, Google has had success in the international environment, including greater market share than in the domestic market, that every Internet company would covet. This analysis delves deeper into Google's international efforts.They are competetive in the international market by giving much effort in their services, and give provide client a good services and a reliable sources of information .
Google should continue to grow their in-country teams significantly in order to best overcome cultural and sales hurdles and take advantage of unique opportunities and the gigantic world market that is growing at a quicker pace than the U.S. market. Recent stats point to European e-commerce in a position to surge past U.S. e-commerce.
References:
http://www.glgroup.com/News/Google-International--Greater-Market-Share-Now-Distancing-from-the-Pack-to-Come-18168.html
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/69/google.html
http://www.vertygoteam.com/google_marketing_strategy.php
http://www.programmersparadox.com/2008/03/17/googles-unique-advantage/
http://www.googlelabs.com/?q=google new services as of 2009&apps=Search Labs
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/co?s=GOOG
Monday, January 4, 2010
MIS2(assignment6)
Identify and discuss the steps for "critical success factors" approach?
What is a Critical Success Factor?
Critical Success Factors (CSF’s) are the critical factors or activities required for ensuring the success your business. The term was initially used in the world of data analysis, and business analysis.
Most smaller and more pragmatic businesses can still use CSF’s but we need to take a different, more pragmatic approach.
Critical Success Factors have been used significantly to present or identify a few key factors that organizations should focus on to be successful.
As a definition, critical success factors refer to "the limited number of areas in which satisfactory results will ensure successful competitive performance for the individual, department, or organization”
Critical Success Factors are the areas of your business or project that are absolutely essential to its success. By identifying and communicating these CSFs, you can help ensure your business or project is well-focused and avoid wasting effort and resources on less important areas. By making CSFs explicit, and communicating them with everyone involved, you can help keep the business and project on track towards common aims and goals.
A slight distinction must be made when considering CSFs as a strategic driver at the organ-izational or enterprise level (as is done in this report). In this context, CSFs are more than just guiding principles; instead, they are considered to be an important component of a strate-gic plan that must be achieved in addition to the organization’s goals and objectives. While this distinction is subtle, it is intended to point out that an organization’s CSFs are not just to be “kept in mind”; their successful execution must drive the organization toward accomplish-ing its mission.
Many definitions of a CSF at the strategic planning level have already been provided in this report. In his seminal work on CSFs, Rockhart provides a useful summary of similar but dis-tinct definitions [
• key areas of activity in which favorable results are absolutely necessary to reach goals
9 This section relies heavily on the description of CSFs as documented in the original primer by John Rockhart and Christine Bullen [Rockhart 81]. Their work is still widely recognized as the initial definition of CSFs and the CSF approach. CMU/SEI-2004-TR-010 11
• key areas where things must go right for the business to flourish
• “factors” that are “critical” to the “success” of the organization
• key areas of activities that should receive constant and careful attention from manage-ment
• a relatively small number of truly important matters on which a manager should focus attention
4 Types of Critical Success Factor
1. Industry CSF's resulting from specific industry characteristics;
2. Strategy CSF's resulting from the chosen competitive strategy of the business;
3. Environmental CSF's resulting from economic or technological changes; and
4. Temporal CSF's resulting from internal organizational needs and changes.
Industry CSFs:
Every organization inherits a particular set of operating conditions and challenges that are inherent to the industry (or segment of the industry) in which it chose to do business. This results in a unique set of CSFs that organizations in a particular industry must achieve to maintain or increase their competitive positions, achieve their goals, and accomplish their missions. For example, consider an organization in the airline industry. As a member of this industry, the organization inherits CSFs such as “deliver on-time service” or “move away from the hub-and-spoke system.” Failure to achieve these CSFs may render the organization unable to stay competitive in its industry and may ultimately result in its exit.
Strategic CSFs:
these factors result from the specific competitive strategy chosen by the organization. The way in which the company chooses to position themselves, market themselves, whether they are high volume low cost or low volume high cost producers, etc.
Environmental CSFs:
To be successful, an organization must be mindful of the macro environment in which it op-erates. A closed organization—one that does not fully interact with its external environ-ment—cannot survive in the long term. As a result, an organization must acknowledge the18 CMU/SEI-2004-TR-010environmental factors that can affect its ability to accomplish its mission. Environmental CSFs reflect the environmental factors over which the organization has very little control or ability to actively manage. By making these factors explicit, the organization can at least be mindful of them and actively monitor their performance relative to them.Environmental CSFs describe such conditions as current socio-political issues, the industry’s regulatory environment, and factors such as seasonality. For example, the airline industry has been dramatically affected by terrorist activities, which have forced changes in airport opera-tions and scheduling and have brought about new regulations with which airlines must com-ply. Unfortunately, airlines have very little control over this problem
Temporal CSFs
CSFs are tied to the long-term planning horizon of an organization. Over the strategic plan-ning period the organization’s CSFs may remain fairly constant, adjusted only when the or-ganization makes major changes, such as changing its mission or the industry in which it competes. However, at one time or another, every organization encounters temporary condi-tions or situations that must be managed for a specific period of time, while continuing to maintain its performance in all other areas. These temporary conditions or situations can re-sult in temporal CSFs—areas in which the organization must temporarily perform satisfacto-
CMU/SEI-2004-TR-010 19
rily in order to ensure that its ability to accomplish its mission is not impeded.
Things that are measured get done more often than things that are not measured.
Each CSF should be measurable and associated with a target goal. You don't need exact measures to manage. Primary measures that should be listed include critical success levels (such as number of transactions per month) or, in cases where specific measurements are more difficult, general goals should be specified (such as moving up in an industry customer service survey.
Sample Success Factors
• Understanding of Market
• Marketing Variables
• Decision making
A Critical Success Factor Method
Start with a vision:
• Mission statement
• Develop 5-6 high level goals
• Develop hierarchy of goals and their success factors
• Lists of requirements, problems, and assumptions
• Leads to concrete requirements at the lowest level of decomposition (a single, implementable idea) Along the way, identify the problems being solved and the assumptions being made Cross-reference usage scenarios and problems with requirements
• Analysis matrices
• Problems vs. Requirements matrix
• Usage scenarios vs. Requirements matrix
• Solid usage scenarios
• Relationship to Usage Scenarios
• Usage scenarios or "use cases"; provide a means of determining:
o Are the requirements aligned and self-consistent?
o Are the needs of the user being met as well as those of the enterprise?
o Are the requirements complete
• Results of the Analysis
In an attempt to write good CSF's, a number of principles could help to guide writers. These principles are:
• Ensure a good understanding of the environment, the industry and the company – It has been shown that CSF's have five primary sources, and it is important to have a good understanding of the environment, the industry and the company in order to be able to write them well. These factors are customized for companies and individuals and the customization results from the uniqueness of the organization.
• Build knowledge of competitors in the industry – While this principle can be encompassed in the previous one, it is worth highlighting separately as it is critical to have a good understanding of competitors as well in identifying an organization's CSF's Knowing where competitors are positioned, what their resources and capabilities are, and what strategies they will pursue can have an impact on an organization's strategy and also resulting CSF's
• Develop CSF's which result in observable differences – A key impetus for the development of CSF's was the notion that factors which get measured are more likely to be achieved versus factors which are not measured. Thus, it is important to write CSF's which are observable or possibly measurable in certain respects such that it would be easier to focus on these factors. These don't have to be factors that are measured quantitatively as this would mimic key performance indicators; however, writing CSF's in observable terms would be helpful.
• Develop CSF's that have a large impact on an organization's performance – By definition, CSF's are the "most critical" factors for organizations or individuals. However, due care should be exercised in identifying them due to the largely qualitative approach to identification, leaving many possible options for the factors and potentially results in discussions and debate. In order to truly have the impact as envisioned when CSF's were developed, it is important to thus identify the actual CSF's, i.e. the ones which would have the largest impact on an organization's (or individual's) performance.
Here are the ideas that, used iteratively, will help you identify the CSFs for your business or project:
Establish
your business's or project's mission and strategic goals (click here for help doing this.)
Think
of business or project activity is essential to achieve this goal?"
Evaluate
the list of candidate CSFs to find the absolute essential elements for achieving success - these are your Criticial Success Factors.As you identify and evaluate candidate CSFs, you may uncover some new strategic objectives or more detailed objectives. So you may need to define your mission, objectives and CSFs iteratively.
Identify
how you will monitor and measure each of the CSFs.
Communicate
your CSFs along with the other important elements of your business or project's strategy.
Keep monitoring and reevaluating your CSFs to ensure you keep moving towards your aims. Indeed, whilst CSFs are sometimes less tangible than measurable goals, it is useful to identify as specifically as possible how you can measure or monitor each one.
References:
http://rapidbi.com/created/criticalsuccessfactors.htm[flash][/flash]l
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/reports/04tr010.pdf
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_80.htm
What is a Critical Success Factor?
Critical Success Factors (CSF’s) are the critical factors or activities required for ensuring the success your business. The term was initially used in the world of data analysis, and business analysis.
Most smaller and more pragmatic businesses can still use CSF’s but we need to take a different, more pragmatic approach.
Critical Success Factors have been used significantly to present or identify a few key factors that organizations should focus on to be successful.
As a definition, critical success factors refer to "the limited number of areas in which satisfactory results will ensure successful competitive performance for the individual, department, or organization”
Critical Success Factors are the areas of your business or project that are absolutely essential to its success. By identifying and communicating these CSFs, you can help ensure your business or project is well-focused and avoid wasting effort and resources on less important areas. By making CSFs explicit, and communicating them with everyone involved, you can help keep the business and project on track towards common aims and goals.
A slight distinction must be made when considering CSFs as a strategic driver at the organ-izational or enterprise level (as is done in this report). In this context, CSFs are more than just guiding principles; instead, they are considered to be an important component of a strate-gic plan that must be achieved in addition to the organization’s goals and objectives. While this distinction is subtle, it is intended to point out that an organization’s CSFs are not just to be “kept in mind”; their successful execution must drive the organization toward accomplish-ing its mission.
Many definitions of a CSF at the strategic planning level have already been provided in this report. In his seminal work on CSFs, Rockhart provides a useful summary of similar but dis-tinct definitions [
• key areas of activity in which favorable results are absolutely necessary to reach goals
9 This section relies heavily on the description of CSFs as documented in the original primer by John Rockhart and Christine Bullen [Rockhart 81]. Their work is still widely recognized as the initial definition of CSFs and the CSF approach. CMU/SEI-2004-TR-010 11
• key areas where things must go right for the business to flourish
• “factors” that are “critical” to the “success” of the organization
• key areas of activities that should receive constant and careful attention from manage-ment
• a relatively small number of truly important matters on which a manager should focus attention
4 Types of Critical Success Factor
1. Industry CSF's resulting from specific industry characteristics;
2. Strategy CSF's resulting from the chosen competitive strategy of the business;
3. Environmental CSF's resulting from economic or technological changes; and
4. Temporal CSF's resulting from internal organizational needs and changes.
Industry CSFs:
Every organization inherits a particular set of operating conditions and challenges that are inherent to the industry (or segment of the industry) in which it chose to do business. This results in a unique set of CSFs that organizations in a particular industry must achieve to maintain or increase their competitive positions, achieve their goals, and accomplish their missions. For example, consider an organization in the airline industry. As a member of this industry, the organization inherits CSFs such as “deliver on-time service” or “move away from the hub-and-spoke system.” Failure to achieve these CSFs may render the organization unable to stay competitive in its industry and may ultimately result in its exit.
Strategic CSFs:
these factors result from the specific competitive strategy chosen by the organization. The way in which the company chooses to position themselves, market themselves, whether they are high volume low cost or low volume high cost producers, etc.
Environmental CSFs:
To be successful, an organization must be mindful of the macro environment in which it op-erates. A closed organization—one that does not fully interact with its external environ-ment—cannot survive in the long term. As a result, an organization must acknowledge the18 CMU/SEI-2004-TR-010environmental factors that can affect its ability to accomplish its mission. Environmental CSFs reflect the environmental factors over which the organization has very little control or ability to actively manage. By making these factors explicit, the organization can at least be mindful of them and actively monitor their performance relative to them.Environmental CSFs describe such conditions as current socio-political issues, the industry’s regulatory environment, and factors such as seasonality. For example, the airline industry has been dramatically affected by terrorist activities, which have forced changes in airport opera-tions and scheduling and have brought about new regulations with which airlines must com-ply. Unfortunately, airlines have very little control over this problem
Temporal CSFs
CSFs are tied to the long-term planning horizon of an organization. Over the strategic plan-ning period the organization’s CSFs may remain fairly constant, adjusted only when the or-ganization makes major changes, such as changing its mission or the industry in which it competes. However, at one time or another, every organization encounters temporary condi-tions or situations that must be managed for a specific period of time, while continuing to maintain its performance in all other areas. These temporary conditions or situations can re-sult in temporal CSFs—areas in which the organization must temporarily perform satisfacto-
CMU/SEI-2004-TR-010 19
rily in order to ensure that its ability to accomplish its mission is not impeded.
Things that are measured get done more often than things that are not measured.
Each CSF should be measurable and associated with a target goal. You don't need exact measures to manage. Primary measures that should be listed include critical success levels (such as number of transactions per month) or, in cases where specific measurements are more difficult, general goals should be specified (such as moving up in an industry customer service survey.
Sample Success Factors
• Understanding of Market
• Marketing Variables
• Decision making
A Critical Success Factor Method
Start with a vision:
• Mission statement
• Develop 5-6 high level goals
• Develop hierarchy of goals and their success factors
• Lists of requirements, problems, and assumptions
• Leads to concrete requirements at the lowest level of decomposition (a single, implementable idea) Along the way, identify the problems being solved and the assumptions being made Cross-reference usage scenarios and problems with requirements
• Analysis matrices
• Problems vs. Requirements matrix
• Usage scenarios vs. Requirements matrix
• Solid usage scenarios
• Relationship to Usage Scenarios
• Usage scenarios or "use cases"; provide a means of determining:
o Are the requirements aligned and self-consistent?
o Are the needs of the user being met as well as those of the enterprise?
o Are the requirements complete
• Results of the Analysis
In an attempt to write good CSF's, a number of principles could help to guide writers. These principles are:
• Ensure a good understanding of the environment, the industry and the company – It has been shown that CSF's have five primary sources, and it is important to have a good understanding of the environment, the industry and the company in order to be able to write them well. These factors are customized for companies and individuals and the customization results from the uniqueness of the organization.
• Build knowledge of competitors in the industry – While this principle can be encompassed in the previous one, it is worth highlighting separately as it is critical to have a good understanding of competitors as well in identifying an organization's CSF's Knowing where competitors are positioned, what their resources and capabilities are, and what strategies they will pursue can have an impact on an organization's strategy and also resulting CSF's
• Develop CSF's which result in observable differences – A key impetus for the development of CSF's was the notion that factors which get measured are more likely to be achieved versus factors which are not measured. Thus, it is important to write CSF's which are observable or possibly measurable in certain respects such that it would be easier to focus on these factors. These don't have to be factors that are measured quantitatively as this would mimic key performance indicators; however, writing CSF's in observable terms would be helpful.
• Develop CSF's that have a large impact on an organization's performance – By definition, CSF's are the "most critical" factors for organizations or individuals. However, due care should be exercised in identifying them due to the largely qualitative approach to identification, leaving many possible options for the factors and potentially results in discussions and debate. In order to truly have the impact as envisioned when CSF's were developed, it is important to thus identify the actual CSF's, i.e. the ones which would have the largest impact on an organization's (or individual's) performance.
Here are the ideas that, used iteratively, will help you identify the CSFs for your business or project:
Establish
your business's or project's mission and strategic goals (click here for help doing this.)
Think
of business or project activity is essential to achieve this goal?"
Evaluate
the list of candidate CSFs to find the absolute essential elements for achieving success - these are your Criticial Success Factors.As you identify and evaluate candidate CSFs, you may uncover some new strategic objectives or more detailed objectives. So you may need to define your mission, objectives and CSFs iteratively.
Identify
how you will monitor and measure each of the CSFs.
Communicate
your CSFs along with the other important elements of your business or project's strategy.
Keep monitoring and reevaluating your CSFs to ensure you keep moving towards your aims. Indeed, whilst CSFs are sometimes less tangible than measurable goals, it is useful to identify as specifically as possible how you can measure or monitor each one.
References:
http://rapidbi.com/created/criticalsuccessfactors.htm[flash][/flash]l
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/reports/04tr010.pdf
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_80.htm
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
MIS2 assignment4
You were invited by the university president to prepare an IS plan for the university, discuss what are the steps in order to expedite the implementation of the IS Plan.
In creating IS plan for the university there are many things to tackled and talked about .Some of these are we should analyze positive and negative effect of the plan , understand the role of ISP , know the risk management of the plan ,how to implement those plan .
Planning for information systems, as for any other system, begins with the identification of needs. In order to be effective, development of any type of computer-based system should be a response to need--whether at the transaction processing level or at the more complex information and support systems levels. Such planning for information systems is much like strategic planning in management. Objectives, priorities, and authorization for information systems projects need to be formalized. The systems development plan should identify specific projects slated for the future, priorities for each project and for resources, general procedures, and constraints for each application area. The plan must be specific enough to enable understanding of each application and to know where it stands in the order of development. Also the plan should be flexible so that priorities can be adjusted if necessary. King (King, 1995) in his recent article has argued that a strategic capability architecture - a flexible and continuously improving infrastructure of organizational capabilities – is the primary basis for a company's sustainable competitive advantage. He has emphasized the need for continuously updating and improving the strategic capabilities architecture. SISP is the analysis of a corporation’s information and processes using business information models together with the evaluation of risk, current needs and requirements. The result is an action plan showing the desired course of events necessary to align information use and needs with the strategic direction of the company (Battaglia, 1991). The same article emphasizes the need to note that SISP is a management function and not a technical one. This is consistent with the earlier distinction between the older data processing views and the modern strategic importance view of Information Systems. SISP thus is used to identify the best targets for purchasing and installing new management information systems and help an organization maximize the return on its information technology investment. A portfolio of computer-based applications is identified that will assist an organization in executing its business plans and realize its business goals. There is a growing realization that the application of information technology (IT) to a firm’s strategic activities has been one of the most common and effective ways to improve business performance.
This paper reviews the existing methodologies for SISP in an attempt to answer the critical question: how to move ahead and further improve the effectiveness of strategic planning for information-based enterprises? In particular, we examine their capacity for driving the development of corporate information systems ensuing the planning, and their potential to support economic evaluations of information systems investments.
The Perspective of Strategic Information Systems Planning
In order to put the planning for strategic information systems in perspective, the evolution of information systems according to the three-era model of John Ward, et al.(1990) is pertinent.According to this model there are three distinct, albeit overlapping, eras of information systems, dating back to the 60’s. The relationship over time of the three eras of information systems isshown in table 1:
business strategy, enable the business -business driven.
Strategic Information Systems Planning Methodologies
The task of strategic information systems planning is difficult and often time organizations do not know how to do it. Strategic information systems planning is a major change for organizations, from planning for information systems based on users’ demands to those based on business strategy. Also strategic information systems planning changes the planning characteristics in major ways. For example, the time horizon for planning changes from 1 year to 3 years or more and development plans are driven by current and future business needs rather than incremental user needs. Increase in the time horizon is a factor which results in poor response from the top management to the strategic information systems planning process as it is difficult to hold their attention for such a long period. Other questions associated with strategic information systems planning are related to the scope of the planning study, the focus of the planning exercise – corporate organization vs. strategic business unit, number of studies and their sequence, choosing a strategic information systems planning methodology or developing one if none is suitable, targets of planning process and deliverables. Because of the complexity of the strategic information systems planning process and uniqueness of each organization, there is no one best way to tackle it. Vitale, et al. (1986) classify SISP methodologies into two categories: impact and alignment. Impact methodologies help create and justify new uses of IT, while the methodologies in the “alignment”
Characteristics of a Quality ISP
A quality ISP must exhibit five distinct characteristics before it is useful. These five are presented in the table that follows.
Characteristic
Description
Timely
The ISP must be timely. An ISP that is created long after it is needed is useless. In almost all cases, it makes no sense to take longer to plan work than to perform the work planned.
Useable
The ISP must be useable. It must be so for all the projects as well as for each project. The ISP should exist in sections that once adopted can be parceled out to project managers and immediately started.
Maintainable
The ISP must be maintainable. New business opportunities, new computers, business mergers, etc. all affect the ISP. The ISP must support quick changes to the estimates, technologies employed, and possibly even to the fundamental project sequences. Once these changes are accomplished, the new ISP should be just a few computer program executions away.
Quality
While the ISP must be a quality product, no ISP is ever perfect on the first try. As the ISP is executed, the metrics employed to derive the individual project estimates become refined as a consequence of new hardware technologies, code generators, techniques, or faster working staff. As these changes occur, their effects should be installable into the data that supports ISP computation. In short, the ISP is a living document. It should be updated with every technology event, and certainly no less often than quarterly.
Reproducible
The ISP must be reproducible. That is, when its development activities are performed by any other staff, the ISP produced should essentially be the same. The ISP should not significantly vary by staff assigned.
Whenever a proposal for the development of an ISP is created it must be assessed against these five characteristics. If any fail or not addressed in an optimum way, the entire set of funds for the development of an ISP is risked.
Risk management
Risk management can therefore be considered the identification, assessment, and prioritization of risks followed by coordinated and economical application of resources to minimize, monitor, and control the probability and/or impact of unfortunate events[1] or to maximize the realization of opportunities. Risks can come from uncertainty in financial markets, project failures, legal liabilities, credit risk, accidents, natural causes and disasters as well as deliberate attacks from an adversary. Several risk management standards have been developed including the Project Management Institute, the National Institute of Science and Technology, actuarial societies, and ISO standards.[2][3] Methods, definitions and goals vary widely according to whether the risk management method is in the context of project management, security, engineering, industrial processes, financial portfolios, actuarial assessments, or public health and safety.
The strategies to manage risk include transferring the risk to another party, avoiding the risk, reducing the negative effect of the risk, and accepting some or all of the consequences of a particular risk.
Certain aspects of many of the risk management standards have come under criticism for having no measurable improvement on risk even though the confidence in estimates and decisions increase.
Create a risk-management plan
Select appropriate controls or countermeasures to measure each risk. Risk mitigation needs to be approved by the appropriate level of management. For example, a risk concerning the image of the organization should have top management decision behind it whereas IT management would have the authority to decide on computer virus risks.
The risk management plan should propose applicable and effective security controls for managing the risks. For example, an observed high risk of computer viruses could be mitigated by acquiring and implementing antivirus software. A good risk management plan should contain a schedule for control implementation and responsible persons for those actions.
According to ISO/IEC 27001, the stage immediately after completion of the Risk Assessment phase consists of preparing a Risk Treatment Plan, which should document the decisions about how each of the identified risks should be handled. Mitigation of risks often means selection of security controls, which should be documented in a Statement of Applicability, which identifies which particular control objectives and controls from the standard have been selected, and why.
Method
For the most part, these methods consist of the following elements, performed, more or less, in the following order.
identify, characterize, and assess threats
assess the vulnerability of critical assets to specific threats
determine the risk (i.e. the expected consequences of specific types of attacks on specific assets)
identify ways to reduce those risks
prioritize risk reduction measures based on a strategy
Principles of risk management
The International Organization for Standardization identifies the following principles of risk management:[4]
Risk management should...
create value.
be an integral part of organizational processes.
be part of decision making.
explicitly address uncertainty.
be systematic and structured.
be based on the best available information.
be tailored.
take into account human factors.
be transparent and inclusive.
be dynamic, iterative and responsive to change.
be capable of continual improvement and enhancement
Risk management and business continuity
Risk management is simply a practice of systematically selecting cost effective approaches for minimising the effect of threat realization to the organization. All risks can never be fully avoided or mitigated simply because of financial and practical limitations. Therefore all organizations have to accept some level of residual risks.
Whereas risk management tends to be preemptive, business continuity planning (BCP) was invented to deal with the consequences of realised residual risks. The necessity to have BCP in place arises because even very unlikely events will occur if given enough time. Risk management and BCP are often mistakenly seen as rivals or overlapping practices. In fact these processes are so tightly tied together that such separation seems artificial. For example, the risk management process creates important inputs for the BCP (assets, impact assessments, cost estimates etc). Risk management also proposes applicable controls for the observed risks. Therefore, risk management covers several areas that are vital for the BCP process. However, the BCP process goes beyond risk management's preemptive approach and moves on from the assumption that the disaster will realize at some point.
What are the phases and steps in information system development?
· Planning,
· Analysis
· Design
· Development
· Testing
· Deployment
· Maintenance
Planning
Planning is a process for accomplishing purpose. It is blue print of business growth and a road map of development. It helps in deciding objectives both in quantitative and qualitative terms. It is setting of goals on the basis of objectives and keeping in view the resources.
What should a plan be?
A plan should be a realistic view of the expectations. Depending upon the activities, a plan can be long range, intermediate range or short range. It is the framework within which it must operate. For management seeking external support, the plan is the most important document and key to growth. Preparation of a comprehensive plan will not guarantee success, but lack of a sound plan will almost certainly ensure failure.
Purpose of Plan
Just as no two organizations are alike, so also their plans. It is therefore important to prepare a plan keeping in view the necessities of the enterprise. A plan is an important aspect of business. It serves the following three critical functions:
Helps management to clarify, focus, and research their business's or project's development and prospects.
Provides a considered and logical framework within which a business can develop and pursue business strategies over the next three to five years.
Offers a benchmark against which actual performance can be measured and reviewed.
Importance of the planning Process
A plan can play a vital role in helping to avoid mistakes or recognize hidden opportunities. Preparing a satisfactory plan of the organization is essential. The planning process enables management to understand more clearly what they want to achieve, and how and when they can do it.
A well-prepared business plan demonstrates that the managers know the business and that they have thought through its development in terms of products, management, finances, and most importantly, markets and competition.
Planning helps in forecasting the future, makes the future visible to some extent. It bridges between where we are and where we want to go. Planning is looking ahead.
Analysis
Business analysis as a discipline has a heavy overlap with requirements analysis sometimes also called requirements engineering, but focuses on identifying the changes to an organization that are required for it to achieve strategic goals. These changes include changes to strategies, structures, policies, processes, and information systems.
Examples of business analysis include:
Enterprise analysis or company analysis
focuses on understanding the needs of the business as a whole, its strategic direction, and identifying initiatives that will allow a business to meet those strategic goals.
Requirements planning and management
involves planning the requirements development process, determining which requirements are the highest priority for implementation, and managing change.
Requirements elicitation
describes techniques for collecting requirements from stakeholders in a project.
Requirements analysis
describes how to develop and specify requirements in enough detail to allow them to be successfully implemented by a project team.
Requirements communication
describes techniques for ensuring that stakeholders have a shared understanding of the requirements and how they will be implemented.
Solution assessment and validation
describes how the business analyst can verify the correctness of a proposed solution, how to support the implementation of a solution, and how to assess possible shortcomings in the implementation.
Design
The design concepts provide the software designer with a foundation from which more sophisticated methods can be applied. A set of fundamental design concepts has evolved. They are:
1.Abstraction - Abstraction is the process or result of generalization by reducing the information content of a concept or an observable phenomenon, typically in order to retain only information which is relevant for a particular purpose.
2.Refinement - It is the process of elaboration. A hierarchy is developed by decomposing a macroscopic statement of function in a stepwise fashion until programming language statements are reached. In each step, one or several instructions of a given program are decomposed into more detailed instructions. Abstraction and Refinement are complementary concepts.
3.Modularity - Software architecture is divided into components called modules.
4.Software Architecture - It refers to the overall structure of the software and the ways in which that structure provides conceptual integrity for a system. A software architecture is the development work product that gives the highest return on investment with respect to quality, schedule and cost.
5.Control Hierarchy - A program structure that represent the organization of a program components and implies a hierarchy of control.
6.Structural Partitioning - The program structure can be divided both horizontally and vertically. Horizontal partitions define separate branches of modular hierarchy for each major program function. Vertical partitioning suggests that control and work should be distributed top down in the program structure.
7.Data Structure - It is a representation of the logical relationship among individual elements of data.
8.Software Procedure - It focuses on the processing of each modules individually
9.Information Hiding - Modules should be specified and designed so that information contained within a module is inaccessible to other modules that have no need for such information.
Design considerations
There are many aspects to consider in the design of a piece of software. The importance of each should reflect the goals the software is trying to achieve. Some of these aspects are:
Compatibility - The software is able to operate with other products that are designed for interoperability with another product. For example, a piece of software may be backward-compatible with an older version of itself.
Extensibility - New capabilities can be added to the software without major changes to the underlying architecture.
Fault-tolerance - The software is resistant to and able to recover from component failure.
Maintainability - The software can be restored to a specified condition within a specified period of time. For example, antivirus software may include the ability to periodically receive virus definition updates in order to maintain the software's effectiveness.
Modularity - the resulting software comprises well defined, independent components. That leads to better maintainability. The components could be then implemented and tested in isolation before being integrated to form a desired software system. This allows division of work in a software development project.
Packaging - Printed material such as the box and manuals should match the style designated for the target market and should enhance usability. All compatibility information should be visible on the outside of the package. All components required for use should be included in the package or specified as a requirement on the outside of the package.
Reliability - The software is able to perform a required function under stated conditions for a specified period of time.
Reusability - the modular components designed should capture the essence of the functionality expected out of them and no more or less. This single-minded purpose renders the components reusable wherever there are similar needs in other designs.
Robustness - The software is able to operate under stress or tolerate unpredictable or invalid input. For example, it can be designed with a resilience to low memory conditions.
Security - The software is able to withstand hostile acts and influences.
Usability - The software user interface must be intuitive (and often aesthetically pleasing) to its target user/audience. Default values for the parameters must be chosen so that they are a good choice for the majority of the users. In many cases,
online help should be included and also carefully designed.
Development
Software development is the set of activities that results in software products. Software development may include research, new development, modification, reuse, re-engineering, maintenance, or any other activities that result in software products.[1] Especially the first phase in the software development process may involve many departments, including marketing, engineering, research and development and general management.[2]
The term software development may also refer to computer programming, the process of writing and maintaining the source code.
Testing
Software Testing can also be stated as the process of validating and verifying that a software program/application/product:
meets the business and technical requirements that guided its design and development;
works as expected; and
can be implemented with the same characteristics.
Software Testing, depending on the testing method employed, can be implemented at any time in the development process. However, most of the test effort occurs after the requirements have been defined and the coding process has been completed. As such, the methodology of the test is governed by the Software Development methodology adopted.
Testing can never completely identify all the defects within software. Instead, it furnishes a criticism or comparison that compares the state and behavior of the product against oracles—principles or mechanisms by which someone might recognize a problem. These oracles may include (but are not limited to) specifications, contracts[2], comparable products, past versions of the same product, inferences about intended or expected purpose, user or customer expectations, relevant standards, applicable laws, or other criteria.
Every software product has a target audience. For example, the audience for video game software is completely different from banking software. Therefore, when an organization develops or otherwise invests in a software product, it can assess whether the software product will be acceptable to its end users, its target audience, its purchasers, and other stakeholders. Software testing is the process of attempting to make this assessment.
A study conducted by NIST in 2002 reports that software bugs cost the U.S. economy $59.5 billion annually. More than a third of this cost could be avoided if better software testing was performed.
Deployment activities
Release
The release activity follows from the completed development process. It includes all the operations to prepare a system for assembly and transfer to the customer site. Therefore, it must determine the resources required to operate at the customer site and collect information for carrying out subsequent activities of deployment process.
Install and activate
Activation is the activity of starting up the executable component of software. For simple system, it involves establishing some form of command for execution. For complex systems, it should make all the supporting systems ready to use.
In larger software deployments, the working copy of the software might be installed on a production server in a production environment. Other versions of the deployed software may be installed in a test environment, development environment and disaster recovery environment.
Deactivate
Deactivation is the inverse of activation, and refers to shutting down any executing components of a system. Deactivation is often required to perform other deployment activities, e.g., a software system may need to be deactivated before an update can be performed. The practice of removing infrequently used or obsolete systems from service is often referred to as application retirement or application decommissioning.
Adapt
The adaptation activity is also a process to modify a software system that has been previously installed. It differs from updating in that adaptations are initiated by local events such as changing the environment of customer site, while updating is mostly started from remote software producer.
Update
The update process replaces an earlier version of all or part of a software system with a newer release.
Built-In
Mechanisms for installing updates are built into some software systems. Automation of these update processes ranges from fully automatic to user initiated and controlled. Norton Internet Security is an example of a system with a semi-automatic method for retrieving and installing updates to both the antivirus definitions and other components of the system. Other software products provide query mechanisms for determining when updates are available.
Version tracking
Version tracking systems help the user find and install updates to software systems installed on PCs and local networks.
· Web based version tracking systems notify the user when updates are available for software systems installed on a local system. For example: VersionTracker Pro checks software versions on a user's computer and then queries its database to see if any updates are available.
· Local version tracking system notifies the user when updates are available for software systems installed on a local system. For example: Software Catalog stores version and other information for each software package installed on a local system. One click of a button launches a browser window to the upgrade web page for the application, including auto-filling of the user name and password for sites that require a login.
· Browser based version tracking systems notify the user when updates are available for software packages installed on a local system. For example: wfx-Versions is a Firefox extension which helps the user find the current version number of any program listed on the web.
Uninstall
Uninstallation is the inverse of installation. It is a remove of a system that is no longer required. It also involves some reconfiguration of other software systems in order to remove the uninstalled system’s files and dependencies. This is not to be confused with the term "deinstall" which is not actually a word.
Retire
Ultimately, a software system is marked as obsolete and support by the producers is withdrawn. It is the end of the life cycle of a software product.
Maintenance
This international standard[1] describes the 6 software maintenance processes as:
The implementation processes contains software preparation and transition activities, such as the conception and creation of the maintenance plan, the preparation for handling problems identified during development, and the follow-up on product configuration management.
The problem and modification analysis process, which is executed once the application has become the responsibility of the maintenance group. The maintenance programmer must analyze each request, confirm it (by reproducing the situation) and check its validity, investigate it and propose a solution, document the request and the solution proposal, and, finally, obtain all the required authorizations to apply the modifications.
The process considering the implementation of the modification itself.
The process acceptance of the modification, by checking it with the individual who submitted the request in order to make sure the modification provided a solution.
The migration process (platform migration, for example) is exceptional, and is not part of daily maintenance tasks. If the software must be ported to another platform without any change in functionality, this process will be used and a maintenance project team is likely to be assigned to this task.
Finally, the last maintenance process, also an event which does not occur on a daily basis, is the retirement of a piece of software.
There are a number of processes, activities and practices that are unique to maintainers, for example:
Transition: a controlled and coordinated sequence of activities during which a system is transferred progressively from the developer to the maintainer;
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and specialized (domain-specific) maintenance contracts negotiated by maintainers;
Modification Request and Problem Report Help Desk: a problem-handling process used by maintainers to prioritize, documents and route the requests they receive;
Modification Request acceptance/rejection: modification request work over a certain size/effort/complexity may be rejected by maintainers and rerouted to a developer.
Some steps in successful implementing IS
Step 1. Define what should be IS be implemented, what it should accomplish, and how to accomplish this goal, including an explanation of the terms” and “functional status.”
Step 2. Evaluate the IS and their limitations.
Step 3. Identify the communications operating issues.
Step 4. Define data requirements.
Step 5. Identify promising emerging technologies.
Step 6. Decide what data should be shared, with whom, and when.
Step 7. Decide who should operate, use, and maintain the system.
Steps 8. Identify potential participants involved
Step 9. Consider cost and funding issues.
This would help to expedite the implementation of the IS Plan. It shows the analazation the effect of implamented plan .What is its function,limitation,requirement and the people who handle the plan implamented.
References :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_maintenance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_deployment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_planning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_analysis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_testing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_debvelopment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_management
My blog:
http://gleizelle.blogspot.com/
In creating IS plan for the university there are many things to tackled and talked about .Some of these are we should analyze positive and negative effect of the plan , understand the role of ISP , know the risk management of the plan ,how to implement those plan .
Planning for information systems, as for any other system, begins with the identification of needs. In order to be effective, development of any type of computer-based system should be a response to need--whether at the transaction processing level or at the more complex information and support systems levels. Such planning for information systems is much like strategic planning in management. Objectives, priorities, and authorization for information systems projects need to be formalized. The systems development plan should identify specific projects slated for the future, priorities for each project and for resources, general procedures, and constraints for each application area. The plan must be specific enough to enable understanding of each application and to know where it stands in the order of development. Also the plan should be flexible so that priorities can be adjusted if necessary. King (King, 1995) in his recent article has argued that a strategic capability architecture - a flexible and continuously improving infrastructure of organizational capabilities – is the primary basis for a company's sustainable competitive advantage. He has emphasized the need for continuously updating and improving the strategic capabilities architecture. SISP is the analysis of a corporation’s information and processes using business information models together with the evaluation of risk, current needs and requirements. The result is an action plan showing the desired course of events necessary to align information use and needs with the strategic direction of the company (Battaglia, 1991). The same article emphasizes the need to note that SISP is a management function and not a technical one. This is consistent with the earlier distinction between the older data processing views and the modern strategic importance view of Information Systems. SISP thus is used to identify the best targets for purchasing and installing new management information systems and help an organization maximize the return on its information technology investment. A portfolio of computer-based applications is identified that will assist an organization in executing its business plans and realize its business goals. There is a growing realization that the application of information technology (IT) to a firm’s strategic activities has been one of the most common and effective ways to improve business performance.
This paper reviews the existing methodologies for SISP in an attempt to answer the critical question: how to move ahead and further improve the effectiveness of strategic planning for information-based enterprises? In particular, we examine their capacity for driving the development of corporate information systems ensuing the planning, and their potential to support economic evaluations of information systems investments.
The Perspective of Strategic Information Systems Planning
In order to put the planning for strategic information systems in perspective, the evolution of information systems according to the three-era model of John Ward, et al.(1990) is pertinent.According to this model there are three distinct, albeit overlapping, eras of information systems, dating back to the 60’s. The relationship over time of the three eras of information systems isshown in table 1:
business strategy, enable the business -business driven.
Strategic Information Systems Planning Methodologies
The task of strategic information systems planning is difficult and often time organizations do not know how to do it. Strategic information systems planning is a major change for organizations, from planning for information systems based on users’ demands to those based on business strategy. Also strategic information systems planning changes the planning characteristics in major ways. For example, the time horizon for planning changes from 1 year to 3 years or more and development plans are driven by current and future business needs rather than incremental user needs. Increase in the time horizon is a factor which results in poor response from the top management to the strategic information systems planning process as it is difficult to hold their attention for such a long period. Other questions associated with strategic information systems planning are related to the scope of the planning study, the focus of the planning exercise – corporate organization vs. strategic business unit, number of studies and their sequence, choosing a strategic information systems planning methodology or developing one if none is suitable, targets of planning process and deliverables. Because of the complexity of the strategic information systems planning process and uniqueness of each organization, there is no one best way to tackle it. Vitale, et al. (1986) classify SISP methodologies into two categories: impact and alignment. Impact methodologies help create and justify new uses of IT, while the methodologies in the “alignment”
Characteristics of a Quality ISP
A quality ISP must exhibit five distinct characteristics before it is useful. These five are presented in the table that follows.
Characteristic
Description
Timely
The ISP must be timely. An ISP that is created long after it is needed is useless. In almost all cases, it makes no sense to take longer to plan work than to perform the work planned.
Useable
The ISP must be useable. It must be so for all the projects as well as for each project. The ISP should exist in sections that once adopted can be parceled out to project managers and immediately started.
Maintainable
The ISP must be maintainable. New business opportunities, new computers, business mergers, etc. all affect the ISP. The ISP must support quick changes to the estimates, technologies employed, and possibly even to the fundamental project sequences. Once these changes are accomplished, the new ISP should be just a few computer program executions away.
Quality
While the ISP must be a quality product, no ISP is ever perfect on the first try. As the ISP is executed, the metrics employed to derive the individual project estimates become refined as a consequence of new hardware technologies, code generators, techniques, or faster working staff. As these changes occur, their effects should be installable into the data that supports ISP computation. In short, the ISP is a living document. It should be updated with every technology event, and certainly no less often than quarterly.
Reproducible
The ISP must be reproducible. That is, when its development activities are performed by any other staff, the ISP produced should essentially be the same. The ISP should not significantly vary by staff assigned.
Whenever a proposal for the development of an ISP is created it must be assessed against these five characteristics. If any fail or not addressed in an optimum way, the entire set of funds for the development of an ISP is risked.
Risk management
Risk management can therefore be considered the identification, assessment, and prioritization of risks followed by coordinated and economical application of resources to minimize, monitor, and control the probability and/or impact of unfortunate events[1] or to maximize the realization of opportunities. Risks can come from uncertainty in financial markets, project failures, legal liabilities, credit risk, accidents, natural causes and disasters as well as deliberate attacks from an adversary. Several risk management standards have been developed including the Project Management Institute, the National Institute of Science and Technology, actuarial societies, and ISO standards.[2][3] Methods, definitions and goals vary widely according to whether the risk management method is in the context of project management, security, engineering, industrial processes, financial portfolios, actuarial assessments, or public health and safety.
The strategies to manage risk include transferring the risk to another party, avoiding the risk, reducing the negative effect of the risk, and accepting some or all of the consequences of a particular risk.
Certain aspects of many of the risk management standards have come under criticism for having no measurable improvement on risk even though the confidence in estimates and decisions increase.
Create a risk-management plan
Select appropriate controls or countermeasures to measure each risk. Risk mitigation needs to be approved by the appropriate level of management. For example, a risk concerning the image of the organization should have top management decision behind it whereas IT management would have the authority to decide on computer virus risks.
The risk management plan should propose applicable and effective security controls for managing the risks. For example, an observed high risk of computer viruses could be mitigated by acquiring and implementing antivirus software. A good risk management plan should contain a schedule for control implementation and responsible persons for those actions.
According to ISO/IEC 27001, the stage immediately after completion of the Risk Assessment phase consists of preparing a Risk Treatment Plan, which should document the decisions about how each of the identified risks should be handled. Mitigation of risks often means selection of security controls, which should be documented in a Statement of Applicability, which identifies which particular control objectives and controls from the standard have been selected, and why.
Method
For the most part, these methods consist of the following elements, performed, more or less, in the following order.
identify, characterize, and assess threats
assess the vulnerability of critical assets to specific threats
determine the risk (i.e. the expected consequences of specific types of attacks on specific assets)
identify ways to reduce those risks
prioritize risk reduction measures based on a strategy
Principles of risk management
The International Organization for Standardization identifies the following principles of risk management:[4]
Risk management should...
create value.
be an integral part of organizational processes.
be part of decision making.
explicitly address uncertainty.
be systematic and structured.
be based on the best available information.
be tailored.
take into account human factors.
be transparent and inclusive.
be dynamic, iterative and responsive to change.
be capable of continual improvement and enhancement
Risk management and business continuity
Risk management is simply a practice of systematically selecting cost effective approaches for minimising the effect of threat realization to the organization. All risks can never be fully avoided or mitigated simply because of financial and practical limitations. Therefore all organizations have to accept some level of residual risks.
Whereas risk management tends to be preemptive, business continuity planning (BCP) was invented to deal with the consequences of realised residual risks. The necessity to have BCP in place arises because even very unlikely events will occur if given enough time. Risk management and BCP are often mistakenly seen as rivals or overlapping practices. In fact these processes are so tightly tied together that such separation seems artificial. For example, the risk management process creates important inputs for the BCP (assets, impact assessments, cost estimates etc). Risk management also proposes applicable controls for the observed risks. Therefore, risk management covers several areas that are vital for the BCP process. However, the BCP process goes beyond risk management's preemptive approach and moves on from the assumption that the disaster will realize at some point.
What are the phases and steps in information system development?
· Planning,
· Analysis
· Design
· Development
· Testing
· Deployment
· Maintenance
Planning
Planning is a process for accomplishing purpose. It is blue print of business growth and a road map of development. It helps in deciding objectives both in quantitative and qualitative terms. It is setting of goals on the basis of objectives and keeping in view the resources.
What should a plan be?
A plan should be a realistic view of the expectations. Depending upon the activities, a plan can be long range, intermediate range or short range. It is the framework within which it must operate. For management seeking external support, the plan is the most important document and key to growth. Preparation of a comprehensive plan will not guarantee success, but lack of a sound plan will almost certainly ensure failure.
Purpose of Plan
Just as no two organizations are alike, so also their plans. It is therefore important to prepare a plan keeping in view the necessities of the enterprise. A plan is an important aspect of business. It serves the following three critical functions:
Helps management to clarify, focus, and research their business's or project's development and prospects.
Provides a considered and logical framework within which a business can develop and pursue business strategies over the next three to five years.
Offers a benchmark against which actual performance can be measured and reviewed.
Importance of the planning Process
A plan can play a vital role in helping to avoid mistakes or recognize hidden opportunities. Preparing a satisfactory plan of the organization is essential. The planning process enables management to understand more clearly what they want to achieve, and how and when they can do it.
A well-prepared business plan demonstrates that the managers know the business and that they have thought through its development in terms of products, management, finances, and most importantly, markets and competition.
Planning helps in forecasting the future, makes the future visible to some extent. It bridges between where we are and where we want to go. Planning is looking ahead.
Analysis
Business analysis as a discipline has a heavy overlap with requirements analysis sometimes also called requirements engineering, but focuses on identifying the changes to an organization that are required for it to achieve strategic goals. These changes include changes to strategies, structures, policies, processes, and information systems.
Examples of business analysis include:
Enterprise analysis or company analysis
focuses on understanding the needs of the business as a whole, its strategic direction, and identifying initiatives that will allow a business to meet those strategic goals.
Requirements planning and management
involves planning the requirements development process, determining which requirements are the highest priority for implementation, and managing change.
Requirements elicitation
describes techniques for collecting requirements from stakeholders in a project.
Requirements analysis
describes how to develop and specify requirements in enough detail to allow them to be successfully implemented by a project team.
Requirements communication
describes techniques for ensuring that stakeholders have a shared understanding of the requirements and how they will be implemented.
Solution assessment and validation
describes how the business analyst can verify the correctness of a proposed solution, how to support the implementation of a solution, and how to assess possible shortcomings in the implementation.
Design
The design concepts provide the software designer with a foundation from which more sophisticated methods can be applied. A set of fundamental design concepts has evolved. They are:
1.Abstraction - Abstraction is the process or result of generalization by reducing the information content of a concept or an observable phenomenon, typically in order to retain only information which is relevant for a particular purpose.
2.Refinement - It is the process of elaboration. A hierarchy is developed by decomposing a macroscopic statement of function in a stepwise fashion until programming language statements are reached. In each step, one or several instructions of a given program are decomposed into more detailed instructions. Abstraction and Refinement are complementary concepts.
3.Modularity - Software architecture is divided into components called modules.
4.Software Architecture - It refers to the overall structure of the software and the ways in which that structure provides conceptual integrity for a system. A software architecture is the development work product that gives the highest return on investment with respect to quality, schedule and cost.
5.Control Hierarchy - A program structure that represent the organization of a program components and implies a hierarchy of control.
6.Structural Partitioning - The program structure can be divided both horizontally and vertically. Horizontal partitions define separate branches of modular hierarchy for each major program function. Vertical partitioning suggests that control and work should be distributed top down in the program structure.
7.Data Structure - It is a representation of the logical relationship among individual elements of data.
8.Software Procedure - It focuses on the processing of each modules individually
9.Information Hiding - Modules should be specified and designed so that information contained within a module is inaccessible to other modules that have no need for such information.
Design considerations
There are many aspects to consider in the design of a piece of software. The importance of each should reflect the goals the software is trying to achieve. Some of these aspects are:
Compatibility - The software is able to operate with other products that are designed for interoperability with another product. For example, a piece of software may be backward-compatible with an older version of itself.
Extensibility - New capabilities can be added to the software without major changes to the underlying architecture.
Fault-tolerance - The software is resistant to and able to recover from component failure.
Maintainability - The software can be restored to a specified condition within a specified period of time. For example, antivirus software may include the ability to periodically receive virus definition updates in order to maintain the software's effectiveness.
Modularity - the resulting software comprises well defined, independent components. That leads to better maintainability. The components could be then implemented and tested in isolation before being integrated to form a desired software system. This allows division of work in a software development project.
Packaging - Printed material such as the box and manuals should match the style designated for the target market and should enhance usability. All compatibility information should be visible on the outside of the package. All components required for use should be included in the package or specified as a requirement on the outside of the package.
Reliability - The software is able to perform a required function under stated conditions for a specified period of time.
Reusability - the modular components designed should capture the essence of the functionality expected out of them and no more or less. This single-minded purpose renders the components reusable wherever there are similar needs in other designs.
Robustness - The software is able to operate under stress or tolerate unpredictable or invalid input. For example, it can be designed with a resilience to low memory conditions.
Security - The software is able to withstand hostile acts and influences.
Usability - The software user interface must be intuitive (and often aesthetically pleasing) to its target user/audience. Default values for the parameters must be chosen so that they are a good choice for the majority of the users. In many cases,
online help should be included and also carefully designed.
Development
Software development is the set of activities that results in software products. Software development may include research, new development, modification, reuse, re-engineering, maintenance, or any other activities that result in software products.[1] Especially the first phase in the software development process may involve many departments, including marketing, engineering, research and development and general management.[2]
The term software development may also refer to computer programming, the process of writing and maintaining the source code.
Testing
Software Testing can also be stated as the process of validating and verifying that a software program/application/product:
meets the business and technical requirements that guided its design and development;
works as expected; and
can be implemented with the same characteristics.
Software Testing, depending on the testing method employed, can be implemented at any time in the development process. However, most of the test effort occurs after the requirements have been defined and the coding process has been completed. As such, the methodology of the test is governed by the Software Development methodology adopted.
Testing can never completely identify all the defects within software. Instead, it furnishes a criticism or comparison that compares the state and behavior of the product against oracles—principles or mechanisms by which someone might recognize a problem. These oracles may include (but are not limited to) specifications, contracts[2], comparable products, past versions of the same product, inferences about intended or expected purpose, user or customer expectations, relevant standards, applicable laws, or other criteria.
Every software product has a target audience. For example, the audience for video game software is completely different from banking software. Therefore, when an organization develops or otherwise invests in a software product, it can assess whether the software product will be acceptable to its end users, its target audience, its purchasers, and other stakeholders. Software testing is the process of attempting to make this assessment.
A study conducted by NIST in 2002 reports that software bugs cost the U.S. economy $59.5 billion annually. More than a third of this cost could be avoided if better software testing was performed.
Deployment activities
Release
The release activity follows from the completed development process. It includes all the operations to prepare a system for assembly and transfer to the customer site. Therefore, it must determine the resources required to operate at the customer site and collect information for carrying out subsequent activities of deployment process.
Install and activate
Activation is the activity of starting up the executable component of software. For simple system, it involves establishing some form of command for execution. For complex systems, it should make all the supporting systems ready to use.
In larger software deployments, the working copy of the software might be installed on a production server in a production environment. Other versions of the deployed software may be installed in a test environment, development environment and disaster recovery environment.
Deactivate
Deactivation is the inverse of activation, and refers to shutting down any executing components of a system. Deactivation is often required to perform other deployment activities, e.g., a software system may need to be deactivated before an update can be performed. The practice of removing infrequently used or obsolete systems from service is often referred to as application retirement or application decommissioning.
Adapt
The adaptation activity is also a process to modify a software system that has been previously installed. It differs from updating in that adaptations are initiated by local events such as changing the environment of customer site, while updating is mostly started from remote software producer.
Update
The update process replaces an earlier version of all or part of a software system with a newer release.
Built-In
Mechanisms for installing updates are built into some software systems. Automation of these update processes ranges from fully automatic to user initiated and controlled. Norton Internet Security is an example of a system with a semi-automatic method for retrieving and installing updates to both the antivirus definitions and other components of the system. Other software products provide query mechanisms for determining when updates are available.
Version tracking
Version tracking systems help the user find and install updates to software systems installed on PCs and local networks.
· Web based version tracking systems notify the user when updates are available for software systems installed on a local system. For example: VersionTracker Pro checks software versions on a user's computer and then queries its database to see if any updates are available.
· Local version tracking system notifies the user when updates are available for software systems installed on a local system. For example: Software Catalog stores version and other information for each software package installed on a local system. One click of a button launches a browser window to the upgrade web page for the application, including auto-filling of the user name and password for sites that require a login.
· Browser based version tracking systems notify the user when updates are available for software packages installed on a local system. For example: wfx-Versions is a Firefox extension which helps the user find the current version number of any program listed on the web.
Uninstall
Uninstallation is the inverse of installation. It is a remove of a system that is no longer required. It also involves some reconfiguration of other software systems in order to remove the uninstalled system’s files and dependencies. This is not to be confused with the term "deinstall" which is not actually a word.
Retire
Ultimately, a software system is marked as obsolete and support by the producers is withdrawn. It is the end of the life cycle of a software product.
Maintenance
This international standard[1] describes the 6 software maintenance processes as:
The implementation processes contains software preparation and transition activities, such as the conception and creation of the maintenance plan, the preparation for handling problems identified during development, and the follow-up on product configuration management.
The problem and modification analysis process, which is executed once the application has become the responsibility of the maintenance group. The maintenance programmer must analyze each request, confirm it (by reproducing the situation) and check its validity, investigate it and propose a solution, document the request and the solution proposal, and, finally, obtain all the required authorizations to apply the modifications.
The process considering the implementation of the modification itself.
The process acceptance of the modification, by checking it with the individual who submitted the request in order to make sure the modification provided a solution.
The migration process (platform migration, for example) is exceptional, and is not part of daily maintenance tasks. If the software must be ported to another platform without any change in functionality, this process will be used and a maintenance project team is likely to be assigned to this task.
Finally, the last maintenance process, also an event which does not occur on a daily basis, is the retirement of a piece of software.
There are a number of processes, activities and practices that are unique to maintainers, for example:
Transition: a controlled and coordinated sequence of activities during which a system is transferred progressively from the developer to the maintainer;
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and specialized (domain-specific) maintenance contracts negotiated by maintainers;
Modification Request and Problem Report Help Desk: a problem-handling process used by maintainers to prioritize, documents and route the requests they receive;
Modification Request acceptance/rejection: modification request work over a certain size/effort/complexity may be rejected by maintainers and rerouted to a developer.
Some steps in successful implementing IS
Step 1. Define what should be IS be implemented, what it should accomplish, and how to accomplish this goal, including an explanation of the terms” and “functional status.”
Step 2. Evaluate the IS and their limitations.
Step 3. Identify the communications operating issues.
Step 4. Define data requirements.
Step 5. Identify promising emerging technologies.
Step 6. Decide what data should be shared, with whom, and when.
Step 7. Decide who should operate, use, and maintain the system.
Steps 8. Identify potential participants involved
Step 9. Consider cost and funding issues.
This would help to expedite the implementation of the IS Plan. It shows the analazation the effect of implamented plan .What is its function,limitation,requirement and the people who handle the plan implamented.
References :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_maintenance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_deployment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_planning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_analysis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_testing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_debvelopment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_management
My blog:
http://gleizelle.blogspot.com/
MIS2(assugnment 5)
In the spectrum of organizational change, which is the most radical type of change: automation, rationalization of procedures, business reengineering, or paradigm shifts?
In the world of organization, firms, businesses nowadays organizational change is not new for them because of the fast changing environment they tend to plan for the future in the survival and development of their organization . But because of rapid change in environment this it is hard for them to manipulate plan There are hundred of strategies but it is hard for them to choice the right strategic plan to equip for the survival of their organization.
Leaders and managers continually make efforts to accomplish successful and significant change -- it's inherent in their jobs. Some are very good at this effort (probably more than we realize), while others continually struggle and fail. That's often the difference between people who thrive in their roles and those that get shuttled around from job to job, ultimately settling into a role where they're frustrated and ineffective. There are many schools with educational programs about organizations, business, leadership and management. Unfortunately, there still are not enough schools with programs about how to analyze organizations, identify critically important priorities to address (such as systemic problems or exciting visions for change) and then undertake successful and significant change to address those priorities. This Library topic aims to improve that situation.
Managing Organizational Change
It is important to have a change in the organization. In addition, such change should be successful and must contribute towards the success of the organization. The main objective of this paper is to characterize the prevalence of the change process in organizations and understand what occurs during organizational change...
Managing Organizational Change
Organizational change is an ongoing process in order to bring the organizational systems and processes in line with the factors prevailing in the external and internal environment of the organization. The forces of organizational change include internal and external forces. Organization Development OD refers to the framework consisting of planned-change...
The major decisions
Instead of grasping for the latest technique, I suggest instead that organizations should go through a formal decision-making process that has four major components:
Levels, goals and strategies
Measurement system
Sequence of steps
Implementation and organizational change
The levels of organizational change
Perhaps the most difficult decision to make is at what "level" to start. There are four levels of organizational change:
shaping and anticipating the future (level 1)
defining what business(es) to be in and their "core competencies” (level 2)
reengineering processes (level 3)
incrementally improving processes (level 4)
First let's describe these levels, and then under what circumstances a business should use them.
Level 1-[b] shaping and anticipating the future[/b]
At this level, organizations start out with few assumptions about the business itself, what it is "good" at, and what the future will be like.
Management generates alternate "scenarios" of the future, defines opportunities based on these possible futures, assesses its strengths and weaknesses in these scenarios changes its mission, measurement system etc. More information on this is in the next article, "Moving from the Future to your Strategy."
Level 2[b] - defining what business(es) to be in and their "Core Competencies[/b]
Many attempts at strategic planning start at this level, either assuming that 1) the future will be like the past or at least predictable; 2) the future is embodied in the CEO's "vision for the future"; or 3) management doesn't know where else to start; 4) management is too afraid to start at level 1 because of the changes needed to really meet future requirements; or 5) the only mandate they have is to refine what mission already exists.
After a mission has been defined and a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis is completed, an organization can then define its measures, goals, strategies, etc. More information on this is in the next article, "Moving from the Future to your Strategy."
Level 3[b] - Reengineering (Structurally Changing) Your Processes[/b]
Either as an aftermath or consequence of level one or two work or as an independent action, level three work focuses on fundamentally changing how work is accomplished. Rather than focus on modest improvements, reengineering focuses on making major structural changes to everyday with the goal of substantially improving productivity, efficiency, quality or customer satisfaction. To read more about level 3 organizational changes, please see "A Tale of Three Villages."
Level 4- Incrementally Changing your Processes
Level 4 organizational changes are focusing in making many small changes to existing work processes. Oftentimes organizations put in considerable effort into getting every employee focused on making these small changes, often with considerable effect. Unfortunately, making improvements on how a buggy whip for horse-drawn carriages is made will rarely come up with the idea that buggy whips are no longer necessary because cars have been invented. To read more about level 4 organizational changes and how it compares to level 3, please see "A Tale of Three Villages.
The Measurement System
Without measures of success, the organization does not know if it has succeeded in its efforts. Someone once said, “What gets measured gets improved.” Someone else said, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”
For more information on measurement systems and their place in organizational change, please see the "Balanced Scorecard" article, along with a number of articles where employee surveys are used.
Implementation and Organizational Change
The success of any organizational change effort can be summed into an equation:
Success = Measurement X Method X Control X Focused Persistence X Consensus
Like any equation with multiplication, a high value of one variable can compensate for lower levels on other variables. Also like any equation with multiplication, if one variable equals 0, the result is zero.
But in this assignment we are asked that in the spectrum of organizational change which is the radical type or the root of this changes ,is it automation ,rationalization of procedures, business reengineering, or paradigm. Before we could answer that question we should define these words:
Automation
Automation refers to the use of computers and other automated machinery for the execution of business-related tasks. Automated machinery may range from simple sensing devices to robots and other sophisticated equipment. Automation of operations may encompass the automation of a single operation or the automation of an entire factory.
There are many different reasons to automate. Increased productivity is normally the major reason for many companies desiring a competitive advantage. Automation also offers low operational variability. Variability is directly related to quality and productivity. Other reasons to automate include the presence of a hazardous working environment and the high cost of human labor. Some businesses automate processes in order to reduce production time, increase manufacturing flexibility, reduce costs, eliminate human error, or make up for a labor shortage. Decisions associated with automation are usually concerned with some or all of these economic and social considerations.
For small business owners, weighing the pros and cons of automation can be a daunting task. But consultants contend that it is an issue that should not be put off. "We are creating a new ball game," wrote Perry Pascarella in Industry Week. "Failure to take a strategic look at where the organization wants to go and then capitalizing on the new technologies available will hand death-dealing advantages to competitors—traditional and unexpected ones."
Types of Automation
Although automation can play a major role in increasing productivity and reducing costs in service industries—as in the example of a retail store that installs bar code scanners in its checkout lanes—automation is most prevalent in manufacturing industries. In recent years, the manufacturing field has witnessed the development of major automation alternatives. Some of these types of automation include:
Information technology (IT)
Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM)
Numerically controlled (NC) equipment
Robots
Flexible manufacturing systems (FMS)
Computer integrated manufacturing (CIM)
Rationalization of procedures
Rationalization of procedures causes the organization to examine its standard operating procedures, eliminate those no longer needed, and make the organization more efficient. It's a good thing, as Martha Stewart would say!
Both types of change cause some disruption, but it's usually manageable and relatively accepted by the people.
Business process reengineering
Business process reengineering (BPR) is, in computer science and management, an approach aiming at improvements by means of elevating efficiency and effectiveness of the business process that exist within and across organizations. The key to BPR is for organizations to look at their business processes from a "clean slate" perspective and determine how they can best construct these processes to improve how they conduct business.
Business process reengineering (BPR) began as a private sector technique to help organizations fundamentally rethink how they do their work in order to dramatically improve customer service, cut operational costs, and become world-class competitors. A key stimulus for reengineering has been the continuing development and deployment of sophisticated information systems and networks. Leading organizations are becoming bolder in using this technology to support innovative business processes, rather than refining current ways of doing work.
Reengineering guidance and relationship of Mission and Work Processes to Information Technology.
Business process reengineering is one approach for redesigning the way work is done to better support the organization's mission and reduce costs. Reengineering starts with a high-level assessment of the organization's mission, strategic goals, and customer needs. Basic questions are asked, such as "Does our mission need to be redefined? Are our strategic goals aligned with our mission? Who are our customers?" An organization may find that it is operating on questionable assumptions, particularly in terms of the wants and needs of its customers. Only after the organization rethinks what it should be doing, does it go on to decide how best to do it.[1]
Within the framework of this basic assessment of mission and goals, reengineering focuses on the organization's business processes--the steps and procedures that govern how resources are used to create products and services that meet the needs of particular customers or markets. As a structured ordering of work steps across time and place, a business process can be decomposed into specific activities, measured, modeled, and improved. It can also be completely redesigned or eliminated altogether. Reengineering identifies, analyzes, and redesigns an organization's core business processes with the aim of achieving dramatic improvements in critical performance measures, such as cost, quality, service, and speed.[1]
Reengineering recognizes that an organization's business processes are usually fragmented into subprocesses and tasks that are carried out by several specialized functional areas within the organization. Often, no one is responsible for the overall performance of the entire process. Reengineering maintains that optimizing the performance of subprocesses can result in some benefits, but cannot yield dramatic improvements if the process itself is fundamentally inefficient and outmoded. For that reason, reengineering focuses on redesigning the process as a whole in order to achieve the greatest possible benefits to the organization and their customers. This drive for realizing dramatic improvements by fundamentally rethinking how the organization's work should be done distinguishes reengineering from process improvement efforts that focus on functional or incremental improvement.[1]
Paradigm Shift
paradigm shift, as a change in a fundamental model of events, has since become widely applied to many other realms of human experience as well, even though Kuhn himself restricted the use of the term to the hard sciences. According to Kuhn, "A paradigm is what members of a scientific community, and they alone, share." (The Essential Tension, 1977). Unlike a normal scientist, Kuhn held, "a student in the humanities has constantly before him a number of competing and incommensurable solutions to these problems, solutions that he must ultimately examine for himself." (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Once a paradigm shift is complete, a scientist cannot, for example, posit the possibility that miasma causes disease or that ether carries light. In contrast, a critic in the Humanities can choose to adopt a 19th-century theory of poetics, for instance
In conclusion, for millions of years we have been evolving and will continue to do so. Change is difficult. Human Beings resist change; however, the process has been set in motion long ago and we will continue to co-create our own experience. Kuhn states that "awareness is prerequisite to all acceptable changes of theory" (p. 67). It all begins in the mind of the person. What we perceive, whether normal or metanormal, conscious or unconscious, are subject to the limitations and distortions produced by our inherited and socially conditional nature. However, we are not restricted by this for we can change. We are moving at an accelerated rate of speed and our state of consciousness is transforming and transcending. Many are awakening as our conscious awareness expands.
. For example, the introduction of the personal computer and the internet have impacted both personal and business environments, and is a catalyst for a Paradigm Shift. We are shifting from a mechanistic, manufacturing, industrial society to an organic, service based, information centered society, and increases in technology will continue to impact globally. Change is inevitable. It's the only true constant.
With all those type of change for me the redical type or the root of theis changes is the paradigm shift because paradigm shift is define as evolutionary changes of life . Change is inevitable .Continue discovering new change for the satisfactory of self because people has no contentment . That’s why other changes had discover for helping the fast changing environment.
http://www.taketheleap.com/define.html
http://www.santarosa.edu/~ssarkar/cs66fl06/ch14notes.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_reengineering
http://managementhelp.org/org_chng/org_chng.htm#anchor515854
Visit my blog:
http://gleizelle.blogspot.com/
In the world of organization, firms, businesses nowadays organizational change is not new for them because of the fast changing environment they tend to plan for the future in the survival and development of their organization . But because of rapid change in environment this it is hard for them to manipulate plan There are hundred of strategies but it is hard for them to choice the right strategic plan to equip for the survival of their organization.
Leaders and managers continually make efforts to accomplish successful and significant change -- it's inherent in their jobs. Some are very good at this effort (probably more than we realize), while others continually struggle and fail. That's often the difference between people who thrive in their roles and those that get shuttled around from job to job, ultimately settling into a role where they're frustrated and ineffective. There are many schools with educational programs about organizations, business, leadership and management. Unfortunately, there still are not enough schools with programs about how to analyze organizations, identify critically important priorities to address (such as systemic problems or exciting visions for change) and then undertake successful and significant change to address those priorities. This Library topic aims to improve that situation.
Managing Organizational Change
It is important to have a change in the organization. In addition, such change should be successful and must contribute towards the success of the organization. The main objective of this paper is to characterize the prevalence of the change process in organizations and understand what occurs during organizational change...
Managing Organizational Change
Organizational change is an ongoing process in order to bring the organizational systems and processes in line with the factors prevailing in the external and internal environment of the organization. The forces of organizational change include internal and external forces. Organization Development OD refers to the framework consisting of planned-change...
The major decisions
Instead of grasping for the latest technique, I suggest instead that organizations should go through a formal decision-making process that has four major components:
Levels, goals and strategies
Measurement system
Sequence of steps
Implementation and organizational change
The levels of organizational change
Perhaps the most difficult decision to make is at what "level" to start. There are four levels of organizational change:
shaping and anticipating the future (level 1)
defining what business(es) to be in and their "core competencies” (level 2)
reengineering processes (level 3)
incrementally improving processes (level 4)
First let's describe these levels, and then under what circumstances a business should use them.
Level 1-[b] shaping and anticipating the future[/b]
At this level, organizations start out with few assumptions about the business itself, what it is "good" at, and what the future will be like.
Management generates alternate "scenarios" of the future, defines opportunities based on these possible futures, assesses its strengths and weaknesses in these scenarios changes its mission, measurement system etc. More information on this is in the next article, "Moving from the Future to your Strategy."
Level 2[b] - defining what business(es) to be in and their "Core Competencies[/b]
Many attempts at strategic planning start at this level, either assuming that 1) the future will be like the past or at least predictable; 2) the future is embodied in the CEO's "vision for the future"; or 3) management doesn't know where else to start; 4) management is too afraid to start at level 1 because of the changes needed to really meet future requirements; or 5) the only mandate they have is to refine what mission already exists.
After a mission has been defined and a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis is completed, an organization can then define its measures, goals, strategies, etc. More information on this is in the next article, "Moving from the Future to your Strategy."
Level 3[b] - Reengineering (Structurally Changing) Your Processes[/b]
Either as an aftermath or consequence of level one or two work or as an independent action, level three work focuses on fundamentally changing how work is accomplished. Rather than focus on modest improvements, reengineering focuses on making major structural changes to everyday with the goal of substantially improving productivity, efficiency, quality or customer satisfaction. To read more about level 3 organizational changes, please see "A Tale of Three Villages."
Level 4- Incrementally Changing your Processes
Level 4 organizational changes are focusing in making many small changes to existing work processes. Oftentimes organizations put in considerable effort into getting every employee focused on making these small changes, often with considerable effect. Unfortunately, making improvements on how a buggy whip for horse-drawn carriages is made will rarely come up with the idea that buggy whips are no longer necessary because cars have been invented. To read more about level 4 organizational changes and how it compares to level 3, please see "A Tale of Three Villages.
The Measurement System
Without measures of success, the organization does not know if it has succeeded in its efforts. Someone once said, “What gets measured gets improved.” Someone else said, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”
For more information on measurement systems and their place in organizational change, please see the "Balanced Scorecard" article, along with a number of articles where employee surveys are used.
Implementation and Organizational Change
The success of any organizational change effort can be summed into an equation:
Success = Measurement X Method X Control X Focused Persistence X Consensus
Like any equation with multiplication, a high value of one variable can compensate for lower levels on other variables. Also like any equation with multiplication, if one variable equals 0, the result is zero.
But in this assignment we are asked that in the spectrum of organizational change which is the radical type or the root of this changes ,is it automation ,rationalization of procedures, business reengineering, or paradigm. Before we could answer that question we should define these words:
Automation
Automation refers to the use of computers and other automated machinery for the execution of business-related tasks. Automated machinery may range from simple sensing devices to robots and other sophisticated equipment. Automation of operations may encompass the automation of a single operation or the automation of an entire factory.
There are many different reasons to automate. Increased productivity is normally the major reason for many companies desiring a competitive advantage. Automation also offers low operational variability. Variability is directly related to quality and productivity. Other reasons to automate include the presence of a hazardous working environment and the high cost of human labor. Some businesses automate processes in order to reduce production time, increase manufacturing flexibility, reduce costs, eliminate human error, or make up for a labor shortage. Decisions associated with automation are usually concerned with some or all of these economic and social considerations.
For small business owners, weighing the pros and cons of automation can be a daunting task. But consultants contend that it is an issue that should not be put off. "We are creating a new ball game," wrote Perry Pascarella in Industry Week. "Failure to take a strategic look at where the organization wants to go and then capitalizing on the new technologies available will hand death-dealing advantages to competitors—traditional and unexpected ones."
Types of Automation
Although automation can play a major role in increasing productivity and reducing costs in service industries—as in the example of a retail store that installs bar code scanners in its checkout lanes—automation is most prevalent in manufacturing industries. In recent years, the manufacturing field has witnessed the development of major automation alternatives. Some of these types of automation include:
Information technology (IT)
Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM)
Numerically controlled (NC) equipment
Robots
Flexible manufacturing systems (FMS)
Computer integrated manufacturing (CIM)
Rationalization of procedures
Rationalization of procedures causes the organization to examine its standard operating procedures, eliminate those no longer needed, and make the organization more efficient. It's a good thing, as Martha Stewart would say!
Both types of change cause some disruption, but it's usually manageable and relatively accepted by the people.
Business process reengineering
Business process reengineering (BPR) is, in computer science and management, an approach aiming at improvements by means of elevating efficiency and effectiveness of the business process that exist within and across organizations. The key to BPR is for organizations to look at their business processes from a "clean slate" perspective and determine how they can best construct these processes to improve how they conduct business.
Business process reengineering (BPR) began as a private sector technique to help organizations fundamentally rethink how they do their work in order to dramatically improve customer service, cut operational costs, and become world-class competitors. A key stimulus for reengineering has been the continuing development and deployment of sophisticated information systems and networks. Leading organizations are becoming bolder in using this technology to support innovative business processes, rather than refining current ways of doing work.
Reengineering guidance and relationship of Mission and Work Processes to Information Technology.
Business process reengineering is one approach for redesigning the way work is done to better support the organization's mission and reduce costs. Reengineering starts with a high-level assessment of the organization's mission, strategic goals, and customer needs. Basic questions are asked, such as "Does our mission need to be redefined? Are our strategic goals aligned with our mission? Who are our customers?" An organization may find that it is operating on questionable assumptions, particularly in terms of the wants and needs of its customers. Only after the organization rethinks what it should be doing, does it go on to decide how best to do it.[1]
Within the framework of this basic assessment of mission and goals, reengineering focuses on the organization's business processes--the steps and procedures that govern how resources are used to create products and services that meet the needs of particular customers or markets. As a structured ordering of work steps across time and place, a business process can be decomposed into specific activities, measured, modeled, and improved. It can also be completely redesigned or eliminated altogether. Reengineering identifies, analyzes, and redesigns an organization's core business processes with the aim of achieving dramatic improvements in critical performance measures, such as cost, quality, service, and speed.[1]
Reengineering recognizes that an organization's business processes are usually fragmented into subprocesses and tasks that are carried out by several specialized functional areas within the organization. Often, no one is responsible for the overall performance of the entire process. Reengineering maintains that optimizing the performance of subprocesses can result in some benefits, but cannot yield dramatic improvements if the process itself is fundamentally inefficient and outmoded. For that reason, reengineering focuses on redesigning the process as a whole in order to achieve the greatest possible benefits to the organization and their customers. This drive for realizing dramatic improvements by fundamentally rethinking how the organization's work should be done distinguishes reengineering from process improvement efforts that focus on functional or incremental improvement.[1]
Paradigm Shift
paradigm shift, as a change in a fundamental model of events, has since become widely applied to many other realms of human experience as well, even though Kuhn himself restricted the use of the term to the hard sciences. According to Kuhn, "A paradigm is what members of a scientific community, and they alone, share." (The Essential Tension, 1977). Unlike a normal scientist, Kuhn held, "a student in the humanities has constantly before him a number of competing and incommensurable solutions to these problems, solutions that he must ultimately examine for himself." (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Once a paradigm shift is complete, a scientist cannot, for example, posit the possibility that miasma causes disease or that ether carries light. In contrast, a critic in the Humanities can choose to adopt a 19th-century theory of poetics, for instance
In conclusion, for millions of years we have been evolving and will continue to do so. Change is difficult. Human Beings resist change; however, the process has been set in motion long ago and we will continue to co-create our own experience. Kuhn states that "awareness is prerequisite to all acceptable changes of theory" (p. 67). It all begins in the mind of the person. What we perceive, whether normal or metanormal, conscious or unconscious, are subject to the limitations and distortions produced by our inherited and socially conditional nature. However, we are not restricted by this for we can change. We are moving at an accelerated rate of speed and our state of consciousness is transforming and transcending. Many are awakening as our conscious awareness expands.
. For example, the introduction of the personal computer and the internet have impacted both personal and business environments, and is a catalyst for a Paradigm Shift. We are shifting from a mechanistic, manufacturing, industrial society to an organic, service based, information centered society, and increases in technology will continue to impact globally. Change is inevitable. It's the only true constant.
With all those type of change for me the redical type or the root of theis changes is the paradigm shift because paradigm shift is define as evolutionary changes of life . Change is inevitable .Continue discovering new change for the satisfactory of self because people has no contentment . That’s why other changes had discover for helping the fast changing environment.
http://www.taketheleap.com/define.html
http://www.santarosa.edu/~ssarkar/cs66fl06/ch14notes.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_reengineering
http://managementhelp.org/org_chng/org_chng.htm#anchor515854
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