By
Raul Bernardino
Introduction:
Today
Information Technology (IT) projects are more complex and sometimes it gets to
be crept in the scope or even failure before it reaches to the success result.
Therefore, in my opinion to organize a software enterprise or to delivery any
IT projects for the organization, companies, and institutions have to be in
line with the Information Technology Project Management knowledge and tools.
The
first consideration is that any enterprise projects have to be a systematic in
order to accomplish organization vision/goal, in line with organization
strategy, such as to digitalize the manual operation to the automate operation,
to ensure effectiveness of the business operations and system has to easy to
use. In general to develop any system enterprise has to follows SDLC tools. The
SDLC stands for System Development Life Cycle as it shows in the below diagram:
The SDLC
diagram above is a framework to describe step by step that involving the
software development. It is starting from ideas and assessment of the business
requirement needs or feasibility, followed by initial project plan. Those eight
steps are a sequence steps from ideas to maintenance. In the traditional approach
it has four steps of system development project such as:
a)
Concept:
The concept comes from someone ideas, end user ideas, business analyst, or
system analyst to develop an application
b)
Development:
The development part Business Analyst, System Analyst, Developer, designer,
tester have to build a proto-type
c)
Implementation:
In this stage end users and business analyst will confirm the features; in
other end the developers will do a maintenance
d)
Close-out:
In the close-out stage some time it faces the issues such as new regulation,
new technology, and etc.
The traditional system development
approach as shows in the below diagram:
The second
consideration in the organizing the software enterprise is a triple constrain
of the project management as follows:
Scope: The scope is “work that needs to be done in order to deliver a product, service, or
result with the specific feature and functions”, PMBOK Guide, P. 104
Time: The
time is referring to the schedule or duration of the project
Cost: the
cost is referring money, labor, equipments, and other resources needed to
accomplish the project.
The third consideration
of developing the software enterprise is focusing on the people. The reason is
that to develop software has to involve the human being (people). People in the
organization use the software for the business operation in order to improve
the productivities. People that architecting and developing the application,
and etc. There is different type of personality according to the McGregor (1960)
“Theory X and Theory Y”. The theory X personality will be an average person
such as to avoid their own responsibility, little ambition, wants security,
prefers directed, the rewards are not sufficient, and dislike the current work.
While the Theory Y personality will be happy with works that they have. These
people have self direction and self-control to achieve the goals and objectives
of the organization. People will learn to accept and even seek for
responsibility. They are also imaginative person realization of the dream for
the organization. McGregor, Maslow, and Herzberg also said that motivation is
deeply in root in the human biology and psychology.
People from
different cultures and nations have different attitude and behavior. Hofstede,G
“had
done systematic observation on personal attitude and value in on single
organization such as IBM around the world and it concludes four dimension of
the group of personality. They are:
a. Power of distance
b. Individualism and collectivisms
c. Masculinity and femininity
d. Uncertain
avoidance” , Hall, P.
A.V. & Fernandez-Ramil, J. (2007,P. 57)
The fourth
consideration of the software development as follows:
a)
Market:
Before, we are trying to develop new software enterprise; we have to do several
researches around and if there is someone have done it, then we have to compare
with the following questions such as: “are this new enterprise are unique?” Are
this new production is better that existing one? Is it cheap compare to
existing one? The project team have to do a short of research be for deciding
to organization new software enterprise.
b) Economic:
To organize software enterprise implementation, we have to measure cost benefit
for the investment. Is this application in line with over all organization
strategy? Is this enterprise application support organization business growth?
By having this enterprise, organization are more effective and efficient in the
decision making processes? The aim of having the new software enterprise is to
speed the productivities of the organization and to facilitate business process
in the decision making or other purposes.
c)
Financial:
By organizing the software enterprise has to have adequate fund to execute the
project such as to pay labors, equipment, developers, designers, and other
resources.
d)
Technical:
New software needs new technical expertise. The new technology application may
need new hardware or software. It has to be tested with current applications
and without any bags or errors. The technical engineers can be deployed to be
on site or work from remote as a part of the virtual team. Hiring the right
technical person to develop the application will help the organization to not
wasting time and money on mistakes.
e)
Management:
Managing the new software enterprise need several skills, such as soft skills,
leadership, negotiator, communicator, team building, has to have project
management knowledge, and etc. It is including using similar projects lesson
learned from the past. It is important to decide to use internal resources that
currently organization have or deploy from the outsourcing.
In
conclusion: To organize new software enterprise, we have to have feasibility
documents from business analyst such scope and visioning report, work
requirement plan and business requirement documents. Business analyst and
System Analyst develop the design. The developer and system engineers are
developing the code according to the design. The developer and system analyst
prototype or piloting the software enterprise or produce beta version and
release candidate for testing purpose before it releases the gold version to deploy.
During the process of developing the enterprise in SDLC, the team works, the
communication plan, have clear vision/goals, use triple constrains in the
project, and people are rewarded and recognized. These all are an integrate
part to reach the successful result.
References:
Hall, P. A.V. & Fernandez-Ramil, J. (2007) Managing the
Software Enterprise:
Software
Engineering and Information Systems in Context. London: Thomson
Learning.
Schwalbe, K. Information Technology Project Management, Revised 6th edition
Clause,
R., (n.d)), Key
considerations in Adding Enterprise, [Online]. Available from:
Endeavour Software technology, [Online]. Available from:
Gallier,
R. and Leidner, D.E., (n.d), Strategy Information Management: Challenges
and
Strategies in Managing Information System, [Online]. Available from:
Enterprise
Project Management, [Online]. Available from:
