Chapter 11
Information System Planning
Information Systems Planning
 Process of Information System Planning
 Strategic Alignment of Business and
Information Technology
 Selecting Systems to Invest In
 Project Management
 Role of Systems Analysis
Introductory Case…
 Owens Corning SAP installation
– Badly needed
– Very costly
– Will it pay back?
– What could have gone wrong?
– What still can go wrong?
– What did they do right?
– Did you like the project team approach?
– Should they have done it differently?
A WCA approach...
 CUSTOMER
– Building supply companies and contractors that purchase building
materials from Owens Corning
 PRODUCT
– Reengineered work systems that are
more responsive to market needs
WCA, continued...
 BUSINESS PROCESS
– Major steps:
• Create a vision for how company operations should change
• Select SAP R/3 as the approach for improving information systems
• Create a large project team at headquarters
• Analyze how to use SAP
• Install SAP on computers
• Train people to use it
• Use SAP in practice
– Rationale:
• Replace multiple, incompatible information systems with an integrated
information system that makes it possible to serve customers more
effectively.
WCA, continued...
 PARTICIPANTS
– Project team consisting of half business professionals and half IS
professionals
– Users who were trained and then used the new information system
 INFORMATION
–
–
–
–
Company strategy
Project goals
Details of business operations
Selected options for using SAP
 TECHNOLOGY
– SAP R/3 software package
– Computers and other hardware
Process of Information System
Planning
 What is an information system plan?
 Challenges in IS planning
 Principles for IS planning
 Role of IS and user departments
 Allocating (and reallocating) resources
 Project roles of IS staff
What is an information system
plan?
 Who
– is responsible for each part of the plan
 What
– does IS need to do
 When
– do things need to be completed
 How
– Will we do it (what technology)
 What is the desired result?
Why is IT planning challenging?
 Difficult to foresee and assess opportunities
 Difficult to mesh with organizational plans
& objectives
 Tough to build systems
– Owens Corning case…
 Difficult to maintain system performance
– Saga of web registration at UNC
Principles for IS Planning
 Support organizations IT architecture
– what is an IT architecture?
 Technology is part of the system, not all
 Recognize life cycle costs
 Design for maintainability
 Remember the humans!
 Support the evolution of the technical
system
Roles of IS and users
 IS department produces IS plan…but can’t
do it in a vacuum
– Need help and input from the users
 User roles (what are these?)
– Sponsors
– Champions
– Steering committee
Resource allocation
 Maintaining existing systems and
supporting users
 New development, infrastructure, R&D
– Important to do this; will often pay significant
benefits
• Technical
• Political
IT staff roles
 Large system development projects involve many
roles such as the following -- can you define their
roles?
– Project managers
– Application programmers
– Systems analysts
– Programmer-analysts
– Technical writers
– Computer operators
– Database administrators
– System managers
– Systems programmers
– User support staffs
Strategic Alignment of Business and
IT
 Consistency with business priorities
Strategic Alignment of Business and
IT
 Reengineering & downsizing
 Enterprise-wide and inter-organizational
systems
 Information systems architecture
– Let’s look at the Orange County template
Strategic Alignment of Business and
IT
 Centralization?
Strategic Alignment of Business and
IT
 Business infrastructure
 Outsourcing
– Good or bad? What’s your opinion?
Selecting systems to invest in
 Cost/benefit analysis
 Risks
 Financial comparisons (NPV, IRR, payback,etc.)
Project Management Issues
 Division of labor
– IS department
– Users
 Keeping on schedule…
– Gantt chart
Why is it hard to develop/deliver the right
system?
A Gantt chart in action…
 Take 5 minutes and develop a Gantt chart
for the steps in buying a home audio system
Role of Systems Analysis
 Information sources for analyzing systems
– Interview
– Inputs, outputs and documentation of existing systems
– On-site observation
– Questionnaires
– Benchmarking
 Interviews
– Watch for
• missing viewpoints
• superficial information
• distorted information