Systems Development and Project Management
Information technology is an important part of a company’s future success. In order for companies to move into the future compressively they must continue to enhance their Information technology. The systems development process and the management of it are important aspects of strategically enhancing a company’s information technology system in place or better it for the future. Systems development can be simply be described as the process you go through to develop the product or products that meet your organizations needs. This type of development process is described as the waterfall process.
There are a couple of development processes, but the one mainly talked about is the Waterfall process. The other type of development process is the Iterative process. This type of process is used mostly by commercial developers for a customer who is not quite sure what they want developed for them. Each one of the processes has a model that describes a vast amount of tasks or activities that occur as you utilize either of the processes. To name a few models you have, the Waterfall model, the Spiral, the prototype and the Evolutionary model. To explain one model, an example would be the Waterfall. The model is pretty much the same as the Waterfall process. This particular model shows progression of your project. You start with your input being received, processed and sent to the next activity as in input and the process continues until you have your final product as your output. Each process and module has it positives and negatives depending on what type of product or system you are developing.
According to Travis Bakersville in his article, “The Impact of Computer Supported Technologies on Information Systems Development”, there are five types of system development methodologies. The types are the structured approach, the prototyping/iterative approach, rapid application development, object oriented, and other types. Based on the above types 76.5% of organizations utilize the Structured approach. Of those different methodologies, a survey of done to see how companies were acquiring their methodology. According to the Judy Wynekoop, 35% or organizations purchased their methodology and 65% developed their own in-house.
There are numerous surveys and comments from various IT managers that believe that each and every project development needs to use a methodology. However, a consensus is that not one particular methodology is appropriate for every project development process and each IS manager reports modifying methodologies depending on the project.
In today's business it is in the best interest of companies to have project managers. Common sense isn't always easily accomplished. Anyone who's ever worked on a project in a technical setting knows this. Indeed, much of working with others consists of solving unexpected problems and learning from mistakes along the way. Knowing this and having the proper tools a project manager will be able to manage and complete the most intense project out there.
The Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) consists of phases used in developing a piece of software. It is the plan of how to develop and maintain software, and when necessary, replace that software. In 2007 during my hospital’s transition to a new software system, I was fortunate enough to be included in the process. I did not get involved until the implementation phase, but from then on, until now, I remain very active in the process. I decided to highlight the Waterfall Model of SDLC. The Waterfall Model is a “sequential development process” with each phase continuing in a line (McGonigle and Mastrian, 2012, p. 205).
A software development methodology is a standard proven process which helps programmers, architects, system analysts and others to make a well controlled and an efficient progress in the high quality software development.
The projects in today’s world are given a lot of importance and it will continue to grow in the coming years. There are a lot of companies which do not have production, but all of them do have projects. There are a lot of books which have been published on which related to planning and managing the projects. The one of the most important one was published by the author Eli Goldratt in his book ‘Critical chain’. This book basically talks and shows how the application of theory of constraints in the field of project management. The novel is basically based on one of the MBA classes in America where a number of ideas are developed in discussions among the students and the lecturers. The lecturer is basically fighting for a tenure with the president of the university who expects a downturn in the executive MBA. The lecturer who teaches project management has a word with one the senior colleagues and project management was the right topic to teach. There were three students who were placed in the project management team of their company which manufactures electronic products. The students are enrolled in this MBA class along with other students, here they discover a new approach to project management which is known as the
In the case of Ferris Healthcare Inc. it was not a big issue as the three models they created were similar. Creating a single methodology for a company is a complex process that must be developed according to the culture of the organization, their project management maturity, and following specific steps: organizing, planning, and managing (Kerzner, 2010. Pages 154-156). For Ferris, it was actually mandatory to develop a single methodology showing guidelines to proceed as they needed an easy to follow procedures to adapt in their new project management implementation, considering their inexperienced executives, line manager, project managers, and line
The system development life cycle, also know as the SDLC, is the process of designing and developing a system or software to meet certain requirements. (“System development life,”). This cycle involves many different phases, in which the system is planned, analyzed, designed, implemented, and tested. There are five major phases in the system development life cycle: systems planning, systems analysis, systems design, systems implementation, and systems security and support. Each of these phases has a particular responsibility and certain tasks are perfumed in each phase.
Most of the software development projects change just during the development is in process. This is the reason that agile methodology is best for these projects. There is a room for change in them. Software developers follow these methods and this is the reason that they have further modified these methods according to the different types of projects they confront in their development time.
During this research only three methodologies wiz Rational Unified Process (RUP), Rapid Application Development (RAD) and Extreme Programming (XP) are considered. The paper is divided into 6 sections. Section 2 & section 3 describe about the basics software development methodologies (RUP, XP, RAD) and Fuzzy Logic respectively. In section 4, our proposed approach is discussed while section 5 concludes the
The topic of my group (group 4) was “How to totally float through your project for free” and the presentation was held by Roger Goodman who works for PMI NZ and Ernst & Young supply chain management with many years of working experience in many different countries such as Saudi Arabia and China.
Information systems (IS) projects are vulnerable to resource cutbacks and the increasing complexity of systems and advances in information technology make finding the right personnel difficult and the associated development costs high. Good project management is essential for success. Some alignment methodologies include IBM's business systems planning (BSP), Robert Holland's strategic systems planning, James Martin's (1989) information engineering and method/1 from Anderson Consulting.
Through a series of processes or steps as prescribed by the SDLC methodology, a firm can find the answers to a business situation and thereby improve operations and hopefully attain a competitive advantage. This paper will address the importance of the Systems Development Life Cycle Methodology to organizations. SDLC and Benefits The SDLC is a problem-solving process which, through a series of steps, helps produce a new computer information system. Each step from system planning, system analysis, system design, system implementation and system maintenance conducted in sequence should provide the answers to a problem or opportunity (Farah, 2006). An example may be a user who employs an order system may sense a problem with that system because customers may complain that orders are late or being lost.
("Project Management Methodologies for Beginners - Workfront," n.d.) A project management methodology is tailored to the company on how things should be done. While a project manager can be successful in project management, every single company is distinct for everyone. Because of this organic nature of each company and project management methodology is useful, it looks to the needs of each team and adjusts to fitting the style needed and how each team should
My interest in Information System Development is increased, when I excelled in requirements analysis on Information Systems Development. I gained database technique in the courses ‘Database for Business’ and ‘Database Architecture and Administration’ and researched theoretical basis for Information System Development Methodolo...
The system development process is more commonly known as the system development life cycle. The system development process is a term used in the development of systems where a set of methodical processes or activities are used to develop and implement a software system.