Week 3 - Systems Planning in the Information Age

Lesson Learnt in the Lecture of Week 3

In the lecture of week 3, I learn some new strategic framework in the Information System Strategy, such as PEST, SWOT and Suillivan’s Framework. 

For the PEST analysis, it is not only suitable to the development of Information System strategy, but also suitable to the general management for a company. I think that this is a very powerful tool especially in the early stage of the planning process. It provided a direction for us to think the whole picture that will affect our decision making. 

For the SWOT analysis, it gave us the direction to do a performance review, and to understand our current situation by identify our strengths and weakness, and the opportunities and threats in the external environment. After analysis, we can make a better decision that can overcome our weaknesses and strength our strength in the future.

For Suillivan’s Framework, it separated the IS environment of a company into four quarter by the degree of dependence on IT and the degree of centralization of IT control in an organization. This framework only provide a matrix to the decision maker on the current environment of the IS strategy and provide a desirable environment that they want to achieve in the future. 

External Reference: Systems Planning in the Information Age

I studied the journal of System Planning in the Information Age, which is the suggested reading for the Week 3 Lecture Notes. After I read this article, I learnt more about the internal context of Suillivan’s Framework which is about the four main environments of IS/IT strategy.

The journal tell us about the IS strategy in the past is using the approach of Stage of Growth, but due to the change of data resource technology and the development of on-line system, this approach cannot adapt to the environment as it is quite low to change. So he introduced another approach – Business Systems Planning. It focuses on the conceptualizing and designing the data resource for the overall organization. But the disadvantage is it assumes the data were no legacy from the past, but it is not the real case. Also this approach is used for the centralized environment, which is not helpful at that time when most computing resources are physically decentralized. After that he suggested another approach which is called Critical Success Factors. This approach helps the manager to focus on some important job in order to identifying individual requirements for the IS. But this approach needs to deal with individual piece, and that is very time consuming to control all the resources in the company. So he suggested the newest approach which is to develop IS architecture which focuses on communication, information processing and storage. It is especially helpful in the current environment of distributed computing. It also suggest to set up some standards and protocol, so that different systems can communicate with each other more easy.

I think that this journal do not provide a clear picture to the reader about how to plan a system in the information age, as the author only separate different business strategies into different quarters in the Suillivan’s Framework. He should provide more real examples on different quarters and IT strategies, so that we can have a better understanding the detail of it.

References:

Systems Planning in the Information Age, Cornelius H. Sullivan, Jr.

Week 2: Successful Reengineering Demands IS/Business Partnerships

This journal was extracted from the Suggestion Reading of Lecture 2 for the subject of COMP326. In this journal, the focus point is analysis the reason of failure for many business reengineering projects. The author indicated that the important for IS Department to participate in the business reengineering project, and he also provide Breezy Service Company as an example for fail in the reengineering project due to the business leader ignore IS Department during the project.

In traditional, business leader would think that IS Department do not understand the pace and empowerment of true reengineering, and they are just taking orders and system mechanics. Therefore business leaders think that only the ideas from the business side, like finance, marketing are worthy to consider.

The author of the journal suggested that the role of Information System should be a leadership role in the reengineering area of technology expertise and project management expertise, and to be the role of partnership with the business leader in the other area of the reengineering project. It is because people from IS are familiar on working with large project by using different standard model and architecture, also they are familiar on how to implement the plan to the actual environment. These technical methods are the basic mean to plan and control the whole project.

If the business leaders ignore IS Department during the project, it may lead to fail to implement the original plan to the actual environment, and the whole reengineering project will be fail. Therefore the author suggested the five-step model for business and IS to increase the chance for success in business reengineering. The first step is to redefine the IS’s role, the business leader needs to encourage the people from IS to be a leader for the business reengineering instead of just taking orders, they should use their skills in project management to apply in the large project, and analysis the feasibility of the business reengineering in the technology part. The second step is to access the current capability, such as to forecast the future need by comparing with the current need. After predict the future need, IS should develop a strategy and architecture, so that it can coordinate the goal of business reengineering. They should also help the company to integrate different part into a whole project. After the model and architecture had been developed, IS should help to develop a master plan, and help to execute the plan. In the master plan, IS and business leader should work together to set priorities and recognize the infrastructure to implement the reengineering model.

To conclude IS and business leader should work together to plan, manage and implement the business reengineering together, so that each of them can contribute to the success of a large project. In my opinion, this journal has broadened my horizon in the business reengineering. Before I read this journal, I thought that IS can only provide a support role to the business function. But this journal told me the important of IS role in the business reengineering. This journal reminded me the technical skills I learnt in the project management on how to develop a project on a standard method, which are useful not only on those IT project, but nearly for all large project in business reengineering.

References:

Successful Reengineering Demand IS/Business Partnerships, Erwin V. Martinez