Lesson-12-Outline Spring 2020 PDF

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Lesson 12 - Week 14...

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Systems & Information Concepts in Organizations (SICO)

Lesson 12 – April 20, 2020 Hi! Welcome to Class! 1. A few announcements 

I hope you were able to download and at least get started on Case Study #3. Case Study #3 is due by noon on Monday, May 11, 2020.

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Final Exam week is May 11th - May 15th. I plan to post your final exam a few days earlier, on Saturday, May 9th, 2020 at 6:00AM. The format will be the same as your midterm exam.

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We have only one remaining discussion forum for the class. I decided to assign that discussion forum next Monday, April 27, 2020 with a due date of Monday, May 4, 2020. You can use this week to continue your work on Case Study #3. You will find the updated Syllabus in iLearn.

2. Plan for today’s class Context: In this week’s lesson, we will cover IS related project management in Chapter 11. In Chapter 11, you will learn what a project is and how information technology projects are managed. Chapter 11 also cover methodologies such as the systems development life cycle, prototyping, Agile development, RAD, JAD, user centered design, object-oriented development, and open sourcing. All of these approaches are used to develop and manage information systems products and projects. Most business projects today involve building, using, altering, or locating an information system. The goal is to help you understand how to be knowledgeable participants and leaders of projects. A project is as a planned undertaking of a series of related activities to reach an objective that has a beginning and an end. Projects are, by definition, the work done as a "temporary endeavor". This is distinguished from operations, where work is ongoing, and tasks are frequently repeated. All projects have stakeholders, people or organizations that are impacted by the project in some way. A project manager is responsible for the organization of the project, as well as the ongoing activities necessary to make sure the project is successful. A project manager is responsible for initiating, planning, scheduling, executing, managing, controlling, and closing down a project. Project management, therefore, is the "application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities." There are a number of tradeoffs that must be made by the project manager and the "owners" of the project itself including scope and time, cost, and quality, needs and expectations, and conflicting needs of different stakeholders. A successful balance of these elements yields a high-quality project.

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Systems & Information Concepts in Organizations (SICO)

(Dilbert on Project Management) The Project Management Office (PMO) is a department responsible for improving the outcomes of projects through efficiency, allocating expertise, and improving project delivery. Actual responsibilities will vary depending on the needs and availability of staff for the organization. Four project elements are essential: project management, a project team, a project cycle plan, and a common project vocabulary. Project management requires the following skills: requirements identification, organizing, project team management, planning, risk and opportunity management, project control, visibility, status, corrective action, and leadership. The project team works together to accomplish the common goals. A project cycle plan begins with a breakdown of the project into workable tasks, allocation of resources, and estimated duration of task completion. Project managers often use software applications to assist with project monitoring (e.g. PERT, Gantt charts, and critical path method). I included some additional slides on PERT and CPM in the lecture notes. Common project vocabulary helps the team to build consensus and understanding, along with commitment to shared goals. If one IT team member talks about “customers” as internal users (managers or other employees at a company), while another defines “customers” as those outsiders who buy the firm’s products, there will be confusion, errors, and delays. Most projects today are IT projects, involving some use of information systems. There is little difference from a pure project management perspective. However, IT projects tend to follow one of a very few numbers of processes. One common IT process is the Systems Development Life Cycle, or SDLC. There are 7 phases to a typical SDLC: initiation and feasibility, requirements definition, functional design, technical design and construction, verification, implementation, and maintenance and review. Due to some significant problems with SDLC, agile development methodologies are being adopted. The attraction for companies is the speed and responsiveness of the procedures. A common feature is that these methods are iterative in nature – “code a little, test a little.” Using short deadlines and small sub-projects, projects make rapid progress. These methodologies are dynamic and tend to be more people-oriented than project-oriented. Prototyping, or evolutionary development, is the method of building systems where a version of the system is quickly built and shared with users. RAD is a more structured process for developing systems quickly, and is similar to prototyping in some ways, where the user interface is quickly developed using specialized tools, reusable code, code generation systems, etc. RAD often refers to the process; prototyping often refers simply to the part of the process where a version of the system is shared with the users. JAD is a version of RAD or prototyping which is built around the involvement of a group of end-users. The object-oriented approach is also introduced, which is the encapsulation of objects and methods. The purpose is to make project development more efficient and faster by reusing objects stored in a repository. Open sourcing 2

Systems & Information Concepts in Organizations (SICO) makes use of distributed “team” of programmers working together on the source code to create software applications. Some key issues in this decision are preservation of intellectual property, updating and maintaining open source code, competitive advantage, tech support, and maintaining standards. Pearlson, Saunders and Galletta provide a good and detailed description of project risk. The project's complexity, clarity and size determine the level of risk in the project. The level of risk determines how formal the project management system and planning detail should be. Managing the complexity aspects of project risk can include leveraging the technical skills of the team, relying on consultants and vendors, and integrating within the organization. Organizational factors must be managed such as managing project stakeholders, sustaining commitment to projects, and managing cultural, structural, and systemic influences. These organizational factors help improve the clarity of the project. In some projects the risk is too great, or the payoffs are too little. The plug needs to be pulled on these projects. An important question for any project manager is how to determine if the project is a success. There are four dimensions of success: resource constraints, impact on customers, business success, and preparation for the future. 

Reading: - Textbook (Pearlson, Saunders, Galletta, 6th Ed), Chapter 11 (pp. 228-254) - Lesson 12 Lecture Notes - Doshi, L. M. G. N. (2018, October 1). Why Agile Goes Awry - and How to Fix It. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2018/10/why-agile-goes-awry-and-how-to-fix-it. - Laufer, A., Hoffman, E. J., Russell, J. S., & Cameron, W. S. (2015). What successful project managers do. IEEE Engineering Management Review, 43(2), 77-84. doi:10.1109/emr.2015.7123232

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Additional Material: (optional): - www.pmi.org : the website for the project management institute. This is a great resource for this topic. The website is for general projects, but they have the latest research, publications, communities of practice, etc. on project management. You can also get the Project Management Body of Knowledge book at this site, and it used to be a free .pdf file (or you can buy the book from them or Amazon.com). - https://guidelines.usability.gov/: Usability.gov is the leading resource for user experience (UX) best practices and guidelines, serving practitioners and students in the government and private sectors. The site provides overviews of the user-centered design process and various UX disciplines. It also covers the related information on methodology and tools for making digital content more usable and useful. 3

Systems & Information Concepts in Organizations (SICO) - How it Works: Design Thinking (video) - Agile Mindset (video) - Secrets of Successful Teamwork: Insights from Google (video) - HOW TO BE A LEADER – Motivational Speech by Simon Sinek (video) - Daniel Goldman Introduces Emotional Intelligence – Big Think (video) 

Discussion Topics: (no new discussion topic this week)

3. Closing Remarks 

Stay safe and healthy! Have a good week!

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