Information Systems in the U.S. Army - Essay Example

This paper aims to the role of IT project management in the Information System of an online web design studio. Information Systems Name of University Abstract In this paper, we will describe a "Problematic" situation in an online Web Design Studio. We will build a model of the problem based on the Information Technology Project Management Principles. Also, we will discuss the process of exploring the model, arriving at recommended actions and implementing these actions within the Information System of the studio. Describing the problematic Information System situation Before we start describing the problematic situation, we have better have an overview of "Danesh Web Design Studio"1 web services and introduce the structure of the organization in brief. We will then identify the problematic situation in the company. Introducing "Danesh Web Design Studio" Danesh Web Design Studio offers a complete package of affordable website design and development. From the initial process of taking inputs from clients, planning on the basis of such inputs to final implementation and testing - all are done using latest web site designing technique and skills. They allow their customers to provide all kind of inputs. They develop the website, giving top priority to the intended audience/market and overall user experience. They constantly keep the customers informed and take their feedback during the job process. Some of the services they provide for their customers are "Website Management and Maintenance", "E-Commerce Solutions", "Search Engine Optimization", "Design and Implementation of Web Based Applications" and "Website Re-Design". Identifying the "Problematic Situation" Danesh Web Design Studio in structure consists of ten software engineers, three project managers, ten graphic designers and 15 web programmer and web designer. They have to work full time in order to accomplish more that fifteen web design orders each worth of $3000 to $15000 in a month depending on the project complexity and partial /complete future maintenance support. The company had three managers, just three weeks before the problem starts. One of the project managers left the company to join a software production team in Canada and the only other changes as the owner of the company remembers is that two of twenty nine computers were temporarily out of order for about a week because of the hard disk failure and some bugs in the systems, seven computers were infected with a Trojan and as there was a risk of infection for the rest of computers in the LAN (Local Area Network), they were un-plugged and this made a lot of problems for the operators to have the access to other systems for file sharing and Internet access for about a week and reduced their performance and functionality. The resulted problem was the failure in project delivery to customers in the appointee time. Each project was delivered to the customers with seven to twenty days delay. This caused the studios to cancel some of the newly received projects in order to accomplish the old orders in shortest possible time and this caused the company loose seven orders totally worth of $47500 in June 2006. In next section, we will have an overview to some of IT Project Management Principles. We will then use these principles to resolve the issue with. IT Project Management "Project Management is the discipline of organizing and managing resources (i.e. people) in such a way that the project is completed within defined scope, quality, time and cost constraints. A project is a temporary and one-time effort undertaken to create a unique product or service, which brings about beneficial change or added value. This property of being a temporary and one-time undertaking contrasts with processes, or operations, which are permanent or semi-permanent ongoing functional work to create the same product or service over and over again. The management of these two systems is often very different and requires varying technical skills and philosophy, hence requiring the development of project management. The first challenge of project management is to ensure that a project is delivered within defined constraints. The second, more ambitious challenge is the optimized allocation and integration of inputs needed to meet pre-defined objectives. A project is a carefully defined set of activities that use resources (money, people, materials, energy, space, provisions, communication, quality, risk, etc.) to meet the pre-defined objectives."2 Project management is a good method that can solve a great part of our problem since we have less management power than before because one of the managers has left the studio and some of the project are being done under no control of a manager or the remained managers can not have the control of them very much. Good project management can ensure that any project that is in progress, will be accomplished on time. Building a Project Management model of the problem Every project in order to be done in time and with best quality, needs to follow the "Project Management Lifecycle" completely no matter if it is a small project or a big one. There are rules that must be followed. In this section we will have an over view of this lifecycle, and then we will try to find the problems that has caused some previous projects to be delivered to the customer with delay regarding the mentioned lifecycle. For example, we will analyse the "Organisational chart" of the company/studio and we will analyse the GANTT chart for a project named "news digest web site" that should have been accomplished in one month but the group spent 3 more weeks on the problem. Describing Project Management Lifecycle "There are two different lifecycles that work in conjunction with one another throughout the course of every project. The project lifecycle describes the tasks that must be completed to produce a product or service. Different project lifecycles exist for specific products and services. (For example, the lifecycle followed to build a house is very different from the lifecycle followed to develop a software package.) The project management lifecycle defines how to manage a project. It will always be the same, regardless of the project lifecycle being employed. One of a Project Manager's challenges is to understand how to align the specific project lifecycle with the project management lifecycle. Project tasks and project management tasks are concurrent and ongoing, and can be associated by project management deliverables. The Project Schedule, for example, contains both project and project management tasks. Phases in the two lifecycles will overlap, depending upon the project lifecycle being employed. The Project Manager needs to be aware of how the inputs and outputs of one lifecycle affect and shape the other. The material in this section is organized according to the project management lifecycle. While no two projects are exactly alike, all projects should progress through the same five project management phases: In Project Origination an individual proposes a project to create a product or develop a service that can solve a problem or address a need in the Performing Organization. The Performing Organization then submits the proposal to an evaluation and selection process. If selected, a budget or further management commitment for the project may also be required before a Project Manager is actually assigned and the project is authorized to progress to Project Initiation. Depending upon the standards and practices of the Performing Organization, a time delay between the project's proposal and selection and its actual initiation may occur. At the beginning of Project Initiation, a Project Manager is assigned. The Project Manager works with the Project Sponsor to identify the necessary resources and team members needed to further develop the key project parameters - Cost, Scope, Schedule, and Quality (CSSQ). The Project Team documents its charge in the form of a Project Charter, which is based on the Project Proposal, which includes the initial Business Case. Approval of the Project Charter by the Project Sponsor authorizes the designated team to begin the initial planning effort. The initial Project Plan resulting from Project Initiation differs in the level of detail and the validity of its estimates from Project Origination, and must be at a level sufficient to acquire any additional resources needed to progress to the next phase. The Project Plan also includes plans for involving and communicating with all the parties that are affected by the project, as well as identification of an initial set of foreseeable risks that can threaten the project. At the conclusion of Project Initiation, based on the initial planning documents, the Business Case is revised and re-evaluated and a decision is made to either halt the project, or proceed to Project Planning. Project Planning builds on the work done in Project Initiation, refining and augmenting CSSQ and Project Plan deliverables. Usually, additional members join the Project Team, and they assist the Project Manager in further elaborating the details of the Cost, Scope, Schedule and Quality. A number of key elements are added to the Project Plan, including project-specific items such as change control, acceptance management and issue management, as well as externally-focused items such as organizational change management and project transition. The initial list of project risks is augmented, and detailed mitigation plans are developed. Project Planning marks the completion of the Project Plan -i.e., no work is left uncovered. However, some of the later phases of the project work may continue to be planned in more depth (e.g., Transition and Implementation details may not be developed until later in Project Execution). At the conclusion of Project Planning, the Business Case is revised and re-evaluated based on the completed planning documents and a decision is again made to either halt the project, or to commit the resources necessary for Project Execution and Control. Project Execution and Control is where most of the resources are applied / expended on the project. A significant number of team members will join the project at the beginning of this phase. The primary task of the Project Manager during Project Execution and Control is to enable the Project Team to execute the tasks on the defined Project Schedule and develop the product or service the project is expected to deliver. The Project Manager uses the processes and plans prepared during Project Initiation and Project Planning to manage the project, while preparing the organization for the implementation of the product/service and for transitioning the product/service responsibility from the Project Team to the Performing Organization. In Project Closeout, the Project Team assesses the outcome of the project, as well as the performance of the Project Team and the Performing Organization. This is accomplished primarily through soliciting and evaluating feedback from Customers, Project Team members, Consumers and other stakeholders. The primary purpose of this assessment is to document best practices and lessons learned for use on future projects. Key project metrics are also captured to enable the Performing Organization to compare and evaluate performance measurements across projects."3 The model of the problem Here we will point to the role of project manager in the organisation chart at first. We will then analyse the process of project completion as the project manager does it mostly in "Project Planning" and "Project Execution" phases stated via GANTT charts. The above chart shows the important role of Management in the studio/company. Here as you can see, the process of completion of projects is done through "Analysis", "Design" and "Development" the same as many other organisations or companies. In our web design studio, one third of management power is lost and this has caused the lack of good cooperation between the staffs and this causes huge problems if the company still gets the same amount of projects and /or does not wish to kick some of the unused staffs out. In order to analyse the workflow of the organisation to identify the weaknesses in project management, we will analyse the GANTT chart of a project named "News digest web site" which developers needed to implement the project in ASP.NET 2.0, MS SQL Server and C#. The developers also needed to have an extensive knowledge in XML to develop the web site. The above GANT chart has been designed by one of the two remained managers at the company. This manager has only asked the employees to follow this schedule to accomplish the project after some primary analysis. However after 30 days the chart looked like this: In this chart, the problem is related to design and development processes. The design process has been extended for 9 days and this shows that the designer has had serious problems with the order. In fact the designer has not been professional enough to handle this project. On the other hand, the development process has been extended for 5 more days which shows that the analysis and design processes has not been good enough or maybe the developers too have not had enough expertise on the subject they have been working. Conclusion In this paper, we analyzed the Information System of a web design studio and we used the principles of Information Technology Project Management to resolve some of the issues occurred which reduced the system's performance before by providing models of the problem situation. Selection of best IT project management principles as the most appropriate method for solving the problem and we arrived to some actions recommend which resolved the issues in practice. References Danesh Web Design Studios, about the company available at http://saeed.danesh.googlepages.com/gaf.html WikiPedia, Project Management ,27.06.2007 available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management Project Management Lifecycle, NYS Project Management Guidebook Release 2 Available to download from http://www.oft.state.ny.us/pmmp/guidebook2/index.htm Projectmanagement.com, project management, advantages and disadvantages, available from http://www.projectmanagement.com/pm/discussions/PMdiscussionsTopicContainer.cfmID=580 Strategic Choice Theory, jinjisoshiki,available from http://www.geocities.co.jp/WallStreet/4716/schoice.htm Read More