- Email: [email protected]
Methodology for effective information system planning
Methodology for effective information system planning JOHN EMBERTON and ROBB MANN
Abstract: It is very common within organizations with a high investment in information technology (IT) that effective information system planning is nonexistent. This paper offers some advice about avoiding the pitfalls and puts forward a systematic approach for realization of the full benefits of IT. Keywords: information management, methodologies.
systems planning,
S the awareness of the modern business person in information technology (IT) grows, it is reasonable to expect that exploitation of IT in support of their business will also grow. However, the evidence is that this is not the case. There are many reasons for this, many of which arise in other walks of life. First the enthusiastic amateur, who enjoys doing things his or her own way and reinventing every wheel in sight. To this day there are still those designing and writing their own database management system when buying-in would be a more cost effective solution. Second, the 'not invented here' syndrome, where anything produced outside the company is by definition, no good. Statements such as 'we are a unique organization' usually dominate any discussions. Third, the man sent to drain the swamp is a situation in which the crocodiles become the problem rather than the swamp. Without an effective IT plan the 'fire fighting' will never stop. At the root of all of this, in practical IT terms, is the fact that senior management typically use one set of techniques or a methodology for strategic planning, middle managers use different techniques for tactical planning and requirements definition, while IT staff use different techniques again for system development, with inadequate interfaces at all levels. If techniques such as 'critical success factor analysis' are used by strategic planners then evaluation of options against these factors should be consistent at all levels. Thus solutions abound at the higher levels which are not technically feasible at the lower levels - often due to an outmoded technical infrastructure incapable of
A
PA Computers and Telecommunications, Rochester House, 33 Greycoat Street, London SWIP 2QF, UK
244
adaption to modern thinking. This naturally leads to frustration at the higher levels and, in many cases, personal implementations of microcomputer solutions suitable for only that person which merely add to the chaos. The typical IT environment of 1987 is one where most of the current systems were developed individually in response to specific operational requirements with little consideration of system integration or management information provision. This manner of evolution inevitably results in fragmentation of data relating to key business entities, such as customer and products, across a number of separate computer files with duplications, inconsistency and the inability to correlate such data for management reporting. Thus, while current systems provide good support to discrete operations of the business such as financial management, manufacturing and distribution, their real potential to provide powerful planning and control facilities to management is unlikely to be properly realized. Related to the above problem is the real 'usefulness' of any current information systems. While key data is not readily accessible, it is likely that current systems are generating a lot of unused paper. A flood of unwanted information often has the effect of devaluing good information. Also, because of fragmentation of systems, it is common for there to be duplication of function, with people in different departments performing essentially the same manipulation of the data. This often manifests itself through people taking hard-copy printouts from one computer system and re-entering the data into PCs. As well as being inefficient, this leads to unnecessary errors, and can also cast the whole IT department in a poor light. These problems are often compounded by a mix of technologies which are incompatible and lead to overall costs of computing being higher than they need be for the benefits derived. This scenario may seem to be extreme, but there are many installations just like this. For example many research and development divisions of major companies run duplicate stock control, personnel management and supplier order systems on their so called 'technical' machine environments. As with any ailment, the first step to recovery is
0950-5849/88/040244-06503.00 © 1988Butterworth & Co (Publishers) Ltd.
information and software technology
recognition of the problem, and - once recognized there are many cures available. However, there is a plethora of information engineering toolkits, workbenches and other products currently available, such as IEF 1, IEW 2, Tetrarch 3, Auto-mate 4 and Excelerator 5. The uninformed DP manager can easily fall into the trap of tackling the symptom rather than the true cause; that is solving the day to day technical problems but still failing to respond to the senior management need for better information systems. There is a need for a single approach to both short-term and long-term IT planning which permits a total reappraisal of current IT provision in the light of management aspirations for such immotive benefits as competitive edge and decision support, gains commitment to action from all levels of management, and leads to practical, implementable solutions. The starting point for such an approach is for the DP manager and his or her key users to take a step backwards from firefighting and undertake a disciplined review which involves:
and users need to be sufficiently aware and properly trained to be able to exploit them. This demands full user commitment to and involvement in any such study. The migration plan will be particularly important. Significant investments cannot simply be discarded, nor can the new strategy be implemented overnight. Hence the strategy itself will not quickly solve all ills. Part of the migration plan, therefore, must be to look at how some of the problems can be alleviated in the short term. A typical, well proven methodology 3 for undertaking such a study is presented in Figure 1. This comprises five main stages:
• establishing the functional architecture of the business, • determining how data is created, updated, accessed and used by all facets of the business, • documenting this in terms of:
This involves a rigorous review of the business through structured interviews with senior management, resulting in three major deliverables.
o o o o
a functional business model data architecture model system integration models data/function usage matrices
Such business models are needed so that the most cost-effective systems strategy, which truly meets the needs of the business and of the users, can be devised, prioritized and a practical implementation plan drawn up. Only those companies able to plan in this way are likely to develop the implemented system base needed to ensure that key operational systems are stable whilst at the same time providing a platform from which they are able to make bold technological decisions that can give them the cutting edge they need. A summary mission statement for such an approach would be to 'undertake a review of the current and projected future information needs of the business, and from this to work out the most cost-effective systems strategy to fulfil these needs and an efficient and undisruptive migration path'. However, the key objective of such an exercise should not be a simple technical reappraisal, but rather to seek enhancement of service to users by providing them with the full opportunities of information technology in terms of technical facility, administrative support and exploitation of the information resource. A major step along the way will be to increase the involvement of the users in the whole process, and to give them greater understanding and greater responsibility. It is not sufficient to provide them with the technology. The technology, data and systems need to be configured in such a way as to be properly useful,
vol 30 no 4 mav 1988
1 2 3 4 5
Corporate analysis Technical strategy formulation Evaluation Strategy development Report production
Corporate analysis
Business functional model The starting point is the formulation of the corporate mission of the enterprise. This mission statement then provides the basis for the creation of a business model. Top management responds extremely well to pictorial presentations and there are a variety of software tools to help in the drawing of a complete functional business model. Interpretation of the business model then reveals all of the business systems which are candidates for
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During the process of defining the business model and the corporate data model, key business issues are explored with management to determine overall corporate as well as major divisional objectives by means of critical success factor analysis. These objectives are used for subsequent prioritization of candidate computer systems. Typical objectives might include: maximize earnings achieve top competitive position increase market share improve manufacturing productivity minimize inventory
Technical strategy formulation
I
Figure 2. Functional analysis computerization, including existing computer systems. The use of hierarchical techniques enables high-level business models to be developed further to support system design and even program design, as shown in Figure 2.
A key activity during this stage is construction of the usage matrix from which strategy options are formulated. The columns of the usage matrix consist of data entities derived from the corporate data model. The rows are the candidate computer systems identified in stage 1. Each cell of the matrix is then completed to indicate whether any system updates or retrieves data attributes of any of the entities of the corporate data model. A systematic procedure is then applied to sort the
Corporate data model This is independent of all hardware and software considerations but is a necessary prerequisite for later technical, file or database design. It depicts the major data entities within the organization and how they relate to each other. First, data entities are identified and formally defined in terms of their identifying attributes or primary keys. In successive iterations, information about the corporate data is collected and used to expand or refine the model. It is essential that automated tools which maintain data entities and their inter-relationships as in Tetrarch 3 are used to prevent clerical overheads becoming too burdensome. This corporate data model is used for the following purposes: • specifying the use of entities by candidate information systems, • tracking the life cycle of each entity, • defining candidate subject databases (a subject database is a subset of the corporate data model which supports a number of information systems), • planning how the physical data will be stored and what type of DBMS technology will be used. The planning for technology must also define how data components will be distributed across the available computer hardware, • serving as the basis for detailed data analysis and physical database or file design.
246
USAGE
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TABLES iI PLFINNING :R [ [ I I FI PERSONNEL IR I UU SUPPLIER MGT I [ [ U OEPOT-~AINT R U I I R FIR R ASSET-RESIST ~R U RI I U PER-PFIYMENTS :R RE I [I PRICING IR RRI R STOCK-ACCDUN JR RP [Ill R OROEFI-ENTRY RBFIR RFI I FI RR BEN-LEGGER :R R R R R FIR [ FI R R VEH-IRIP-SCH R R R FIll U O R VEH-TRIP-STA :R FIFI Ill[ FI RET-HET-BUDG N R R I COMPETITOR IR R [ PROSPECT :FI R MAN-PLANNING IR FI U R R R RFI N R TRIP-VFIR-~ON :R U PAYROLL ~R U PENSION :FI U R FI UUUUU R FUEEI-NAINT :R R R R R RR UURRR FI FLEET-IRF IR R R RR UU RFI UU U U WON~S-IN-PRR :~ R U U HA RR U LOANO-SRANIS ~R UR RFI RR R FI PFIDDUCT-INF IR R U RFI TRADE-DEBTOR IR UU UU U U AFTERM~RKEI R RRUU RRRNFIRFI UR CUBTONER-INF IFI FI R FIRRRRFIRR RFIR RRR R R R~:R TOP-MGT-[NFO :RRRRRRRRR R RR RRFIRR R R RET-INV-PERF IR R R R R R GROUP-ACCOUN IN R RFI R R COST-CONTROL :R R R RRR RFI R RFI RFIFIRR R R S-BTN-PNUPIT :R RR R RR R R CASHFLOW-F/C IFI FIR FI FI Do STDCK-NONITR :R R FI RFI RR R R SFILES-ODATS IN R FIR R RR R DISCOUNT-CON IR FI R A CONTRIDUTIUN IR
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information and software technology
Development of the technical strategy
matrix in order to determine the sequence of phases of implementation of the corporate data model. These subsets of the corporate data model are termed 'subject databases'. A typical sorted matrix is shown as Figure 3. Inspection of the leading diagonal of insertions (Is) provides guidance for the identification of subject databases e.g. entities in column 2 - 4 would be candidates to form a 'corporate planning' subject database set. This procedure also quantifies the technical priorities of particular systems and determines each system's prerequisite system and database components. This information is one of the components required to help select the strategic system portfolio.
Using the existing technical environment and the functional definition as the basis, management can then define priorities for implementation, also taking account of system time and resource estimate and overall risk in terms of people, technology and system complexity. Alternative technical strategies can also be selected for consideration. This will typically include the following. First, the type of database management system (DBMS) to be used (i.e. hierarchical, network, inverted file or relational), and the appropriate product set including perhaps dictionary, report generator etc. Second, fourth generation languages, working in conjuction with the DBMS, which have the potential of reducing software development costs quite dramatically. Third, office automation including word processing, desk top publishing etc. can also be included. Fourth, definition of the appropriate telecommunications network in terms of topology, protocols, line capacity and security. Finally, definition of end-user computing policies for software, hardware development standards and access rules to corporate data. It is important at this stage to undertake a risk analysis to establish whether the key candidate systems are practical solutions or high risk aspirations. If the risk analysis indicates that the risk is excessive, alternative technical, system phasing or manpower scenarios can be evaluated in an attempt to reduce the risk to an acceptable level.
Evaluation A typical candidate system list, interpreted as an ideal system architecture through the above process, is likely to require anything between five and ten elapsed years to implement. The evaluation phase prioritizes the systems in terms of key business issues.
Corporate objectives Each candidate computer system should be scored against the corporate objectives defined during the business analysis stage in order to ensure that the strategic system plan optimally meets business needs.
Intangible benefits In today's era of strategic information systems, traditional cost-benefit analysis is difficult and has considerable limitations. A practical approach is to score systems in relation to expected intangible benefits. This is also used later together with the results of the traditional evaluation of tangible costs and benefits in selecting the information system portfolio.
Strategy development At this point, sufficient information is available to develop a detailed IS plan containing a definition of all
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vol 30 no 4 may 1988
247
required systems, their order of implementation, an estimate of required people resources as well as the hardware required to support them. This is typically presented in bar chart format as shown in Figure 4, w h e r e ' D ' represents the elapsed period for system design; 'P' for programming and T for system implementation.
Manp o wer strategy People resources must be validated against the budgeted quantity of development staff by grade for each year of the planning horizon. This information is used to quantify manpower costs to ensure that the IS plan's time and resource estimates are realistic. It may be necessary to iterate between system and manpower planning to determine the optimum match so that the plans can be quantified in financial terms.
Strategic capacity planning The scope of each system to be developed in the planning time frame has been defined both functionally and in terms of access to the corporate data model. Moreover, the time frames for design, programming and implementation have been defined. This information can be used in conjucntion with collected volumes and other performance criteria to build strategic capacity planning models which allow performance and total hardware cost to be estimated for each year of the plan.
The objectives of defining this as a formal stage are the following: • to bring together the work carried out by the study in a form that is easily comprehensible, • to ensure that the conclusions drawn are supported by substantiating material, • to ensure that the strategy deliverables are maintainable.
Deliverables of study The key deliverables from for this type of IS planning exercise are shown in Figure 5 superimposed on a traditional trade off model. This indicates how both business and technical planning issues are identified and modelled to provide a basis for practical implementations which address both the business and technical dimensions, thus fulfilling, very effectively, the defined mission.
Benefits of this approach The strength of this approach is that it uses techniques which have been developed 'top down'. Other methodologies, which have been based on system and database design techniques, are too technically biased to accommodate strategic IT planning as part of the corporate planning process. Some of the key strengths of such a methodology are:
Report production The report production stage covers the full duration of the project in as much as deliverables for the report are being developed throughout the life of the study.
Political
Technical
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1
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• The deliverables are easily understood and contributed to by nontechnical user management. • The combination of functional and data analysis provide a strong foundation for strategic recommendations. • The ability to build software models allows ongoing maintenance of the strategy after the completion of the study. • Flexibility in the use of what are, in effect, documented best practices facilitates different types, sizes and complexities of organizations. This is still not the end of the story, however; the emerging IS plan must be implemented. There are many development methodologies to help in this task, and it is essential that they are driven by the system architecture. Key bridging deliverables from the corporate systems strategy study to individual system implementation projects are: • the corporate data model • system functional charters • technical strategy
Corporate data model Figure 5. Framework for strategic IS plan combined with implementation plan
248
This systematic definition of the underlying data structure of the organization determines the feasibility and means of integrating computer systems. Efficient
information and software technology
databases cannot be designed unless this techniologyindependent blueprint is taken into account.
Feasibility pointers
acitturf
System functional charters The scope of each candidate system must be defined in sufficient detail by the system architecture study so that each project manager understands fully the charter of his/her project.
Technical strategy
Capacity
APoPl~~:aiti ioOn
This must include specific technology choices such as hardware, networks, database systems, fourthgeneration languages and methodologies so that comprehensive technical standards can be defined. A further important bridge to implementation is hardware appraisal, i.e. an understanding of the hardware resource necessary to support all the identified systems. A detailed capacity plan must be drawn up to include technical details of the existing workloads running on the current computers and scientific estimates of the impact of proposed systems using the selected technology, together with a mechanism to refine these estimates as each such system is designed and implemented. This task is important not only to establish hardware expenditure but also to identify technical infeasibilities in advance. Each of these technical bridging components is essential to the successful development of candidate systems within the strategic IS plan. The blueprint for effective IS planning and implementation is shown in Figure 6, combining the elements of system architecture, development methodology and capacity planning within a single composite framework. The interfaces (bridges) between these key components are shown in Figure 7.
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Figure 7. Interfaces between key elements of Figure 6 Considerable research effort is being devoted by the IT industry to the development of integrated project support environments (IPSEs), which will automate the bottom tiers of our framework pyramid. However there is every possibility, even with an IPSE, that when a perfect system is designed, it solves the wrong business problem - unless it has been defined within the broader framework. Only by the use of a composite methodology, combining strategic level studies with rigorous development methodology and hardware appraisal techniques, can top management and IT executives be reassured that the right applications are being developed in the most efficient manner to meet the true needs of the business.
References
Business
1 The Information Engineering Facility (IEF) Information Engineering Products Ltd. (a James Martin Associate Group Company)
User involvement
2 The Information Engineering Workbench, (IEW) Arthur Young (IES) Ltd., UK
3 Tetrarch Information System Planning, PA Computers and Telecommunications
development
Automated tools \
4
Auto-mate, Learmonth & Burchett Management Systems Ltd., UK
5 Excelerator, Excelerator Software Product Ltd. (a subsidiary of Index Technology Corporation)
Figure 6. Framework of key elements in IS planning
vol 30 no 4 may 1988
[]
249
Abstract: It is very common within organizations with a high investment in information technology (IT) that effective information system planning is nonexistent. This paper offers some advice about avoiding the pitfalls and puts forward a systematic approach for realization of the full benefits of IT. Keywords: information management, methodologies.
systems planning,
S the awareness of the modern business person in information technology (IT) grows, it is reasonable to expect that exploitation of IT in support of their business will also grow. However, the evidence is that this is not the case. There are many reasons for this, many of which arise in other walks of life. First the enthusiastic amateur, who enjoys doing things his or her own way and reinventing every wheel in sight. To this day there are still those designing and writing their own database management system when buying-in would be a more cost effective solution. Second, the 'not invented here' syndrome, where anything produced outside the company is by definition, no good. Statements such as 'we are a unique organization' usually dominate any discussions. Third, the man sent to drain the swamp is a situation in which the crocodiles become the problem rather than the swamp. Without an effective IT plan the 'fire fighting' will never stop. At the root of all of this, in practical IT terms, is the fact that senior management typically use one set of techniques or a methodology for strategic planning, middle managers use different techniques for tactical planning and requirements definition, while IT staff use different techniques again for system development, with inadequate interfaces at all levels. If techniques such as 'critical success factor analysis' are used by strategic planners then evaluation of options against these factors should be consistent at all levels. Thus solutions abound at the higher levels which are not technically feasible at the lower levels - often due to an outmoded technical infrastructure incapable of
A
PA Computers and Telecommunications, Rochester House, 33 Greycoat Street, London SWIP 2QF, UK
244
adaption to modern thinking. This naturally leads to frustration at the higher levels and, in many cases, personal implementations of microcomputer solutions suitable for only that person which merely add to the chaos. The typical IT environment of 1987 is one where most of the current systems were developed individually in response to specific operational requirements with little consideration of system integration or management information provision. This manner of evolution inevitably results in fragmentation of data relating to key business entities, such as customer and products, across a number of separate computer files with duplications, inconsistency and the inability to correlate such data for management reporting. Thus, while current systems provide good support to discrete operations of the business such as financial management, manufacturing and distribution, their real potential to provide powerful planning and control facilities to management is unlikely to be properly realized. Related to the above problem is the real 'usefulness' of any current information systems. While key data is not readily accessible, it is likely that current systems are generating a lot of unused paper. A flood of unwanted information often has the effect of devaluing good information. Also, because of fragmentation of systems, it is common for there to be duplication of function, with people in different departments performing essentially the same manipulation of the data. This often manifests itself through people taking hard-copy printouts from one computer system and re-entering the data into PCs. As well as being inefficient, this leads to unnecessary errors, and can also cast the whole IT department in a poor light. These problems are often compounded by a mix of technologies which are incompatible and lead to overall costs of computing being higher than they need be for the benefits derived. This scenario may seem to be extreme, but there are many installations just like this. For example many research and development divisions of major companies run duplicate stock control, personnel management and supplier order systems on their so called 'technical' machine environments. As with any ailment, the first step to recovery is
0950-5849/88/040244-06503.00 © 1988Butterworth & Co (Publishers) Ltd.
information and software technology
recognition of the problem, and - once recognized there are many cures available. However, there is a plethora of information engineering toolkits, workbenches and other products currently available, such as IEF 1, IEW 2, Tetrarch 3, Auto-mate 4 and Excelerator 5. The uninformed DP manager can easily fall into the trap of tackling the symptom rather than the true cause; that is solving the day to day technical problems but still failing to respond to the senior management need for better information systems. There is a need for a single approach to both short-term and long-term IT planning which permits a total reappraisal of current IT provision in the light of management aspirations for such immotive benefits as competitive edge and decision support, gains commitment to action from all levels of management, and leads to practical, implementable solutions. The starting point for such an approach is for the DP manager and his or her key users to take a step backwards from firefighting and undertake a disciplined review which involves:
and users need to be sufficiently aware and properly trained to be able to exploit them. This demands full user commitment to and involvement in any such study. The migration plan will be particularly important. Significant investments cannot simply be discarded, nor can the new strategy be implemented overnight. Hence the strategy itself will not quickly solve all ills. Part of the migration plan, therefore, must be to look at how some of the problems can be alleviated in the short term. A typical, well proven methodology 3 for undertaking such a study is presented in Figure 1. This comprises five main stages:
• establishing the functional architecture of the business, • determining how data is created, updated, accessed and used by all facets of the business, • documenting this in terms of:
This involves a rigorous review of the business through structured interviews with senior management, resulting in three major deliverables.
o o o o
a functional business model data architecture model system integration models data/function usage matrices
Such business models are needed so that the most cost-effective systems strategy, which truly meets the needs of the business and of the users, can be devised, prioritized and a practical implementation plan drawn up. Only those companies able to plan in this way are likely to develop the implemented system base needed to ensure that key operational systems are stable whilst at the same time providing a platform from which they are able to make bold technological decisions that can give them the cutting edge they need. A summary mission statement for such an approach would be to 'undertake a review of the current and projected future information needs of the business, and from this to work out the most cost-effective systems strategy to fulfil these needs and an efficient and undisruptive migration path'. However, the key objective of such an exercise should not be a simple technical reappraisal, but rather to seek enhancement of service to users by providing them with the full opportunities of information technology in terms of technical facility, administrative support and exploitation of the information resource. A major step along the way will be to increase the involvement of the users in the whole process, and to give them greater understanding and greater responsibility. It is not sufficient to provide them with the technology. The technology, data and systems need to be configured in such a way as to be properly useful,
vol 30 no 4 mav 1988
1 2 3 4 5
Corporate analysis Technical strategy formulation Evaluation Strategy development Report production
Corporate analysis
Business functional model The starting point is the formulation of the corporate mission of the enterprise. This mission statement then provides the basis for the creation of a business model. Top management responds extremely well to pictorial presentations and there are a variety of software tools to help in the drawing of a complete functional business model. Interpretation of the business model then reveals all of the business systems which are candidates for
D m~L,
I Da~a r~a~agemer,~ pol,cy [
[ ~rlageme,+t I
N
f--Z--~ c;L;+?,? ] ........... sy,+m+
I
6ependenc,es I
I Ir,form~l,o,, I
I
I
N
]
I
I t,lfr+ tr ~ctu~e
AI a e l , v e r a b l e ,
I
PN Q Figure 1. Methodology overview
245
Systems
t
I
[
J
i
I Key busi....
ruoctions [
. T
I
Business issues
l
I •
I
__~____l Corporatear!hitecture/
I
--11
[
I
\
II
___/
I
• • • • •
I
II
Program modules
Specification
I
II
1
During the process of defining the business model and the corporate data model, key business issues are explored with management to determine overall corporate as well as major divisional objectives by means of critical success factor analysis. These objectives are used for subsequent prioritization of candidate computer systems. Typical objectives might include: maximize earnings achieve top competitive position increase market share improve manufacturing productivity minimize inventory
Technical strategy formulation
I
Figure 2. Functional analysis computerization, including existing computer systems. The use of hierarchical techniques enables high-level business models to be developed further to support system design and even program design, as shown in Figure 2.
A key activity during this stage is construction of the usage matrix from which strategy options are formulated. The columns of the usage matrix consist of data entities derived from the corporate data model. The rows are the candidate computer systems identified in stage 1. Each cell of the matrix is then completed to indicate whether any system updates or retrieves data attributes of any of the entities of the corporate data model. A systematic procedure is then applied to sort the
Corporate data model This is independent of all hardware and software considerations but is a necessary prerequisite for later technical, file or database design. It depicts the major data entities within the organization and how they relate to each other. First, data entities are identified and formally defined in terms of their identifying attributes or primary keys. In successive iterations, information about the corporate data is collected and used to expand or refine the model. It is essential that automated tools which maintain data entities and their inter-relationships as in Tetrarch 3 are used to prevent clerical overheads becoming too burdensome. This corporate data model is used for the following purposes: • specifying the use of entities by candidate information systems, • tracking the life cycle of each entity, • defining candidate subject databases (a subject database is a subset of the corporate data model which supports a number of information systems), • planning how the physical data will be stored and what type of DBMS technology will be used. The planning for technology must also define how data components will be distributed across the available computer hardware, • serving as the basis for detailed data analysis and physical database or file design.
246
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information and software technology
Development of the technical strategy
matrix in order to determine the sequence of phases of implementation of the corporate data model. These subsets of the corporate data model are termed 'subject databases'. A typical sorted matrix is shown as Figure 3. Inspection of the leading diagonal of insertions (Is) provides guidance for the identification of subject databases e.g. entities in column 2 - 4 would be candidates to form a 'corporate planning' subject database set. This procedure also quantifies the technical priorities of particular systems and determines each system's prerequisite system and database components. This information is one of the components required to help select the strategic system portfolio.
Using the existing technical environment and the functional definition as the basis, management can then define priorities for implementation, also taking account of system time and resource estimate and overall risk in terms of people, technology and system complexity. Alternative technical strategies can also be selected for consideration. This will typically include the following. First, the type of database management system (DBMS) to be used (i.e. hierarchical, network, inverted file or relational), and the appropriate product set including perhaps dictionary, report generator etc. Second, fourth generation languages, working in conjuction with the DBMS, which have the potential of reducing software development costs quite dramatically. Third, office automation including word processing, desk top publishing etc. can also be included. Fourth, definition of the appropriate telecommunications network in terms of topology, protocols, line capacity and security. Finally, definition of end-user computing policies for software, hardware development standards and access rules to corporate data. It is important at this stage to undertake a risk analysis to establish whether the key candidate systems are practical solutions or high risk aspirations. If the risk analysis indicates that the risk is excessive, alternative technical, system phasing or manpower scenarios can be evaluated in an attempt to reduce the risk to an acceptable level.
Evaluation A typical candidate system list, interpreted as an ideal system architecture through the above process, is likely to require anything between five and ten elapsed years to implement. The evaluation phase prioritizes the systems in terms of key business issues.
Corporate objectives Each candidate computer system should be scored against the corporate objectives defined during the business analysis stage in order to ensure that the strategic system plan optimally meets business needs.
Intangible benefits In today's era of strategic information systems, traditional cost-benefit analysis is difficult and has considerable limitations. A practical approach is to score systems in relation to expected intangible benefits. This is also used later together with the results of the traditional evaluation of tangible costs and benefits in selecting the information system portfolio.
Strategy development At this point, sufficient information is available to develop a detailed IS plan containing a definition of all
PORTFOLIO
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required systems, their order of implementation, an estimate of required people resources as well as the hardware required to support them. This is typically presented in bar chart format as shown in Figure 4, w h e r e ' D ' represents the elapsed period for system design; 'P' for programming and T for system implementation.
Manp o wer strategy People resources must be validated against the budgeted quantity of development staff by grade for each year of the planning horizon. This information is used to quantify manpower costs to ensure that the IS plan's time and resource estimates are realistic. It may be necessary to iterate between system and manpower planning to determine the optimum match so that the plans can be quantified in financial terms.
Strategic capacity planning The scope of each system to be developed in the planning time frame has been defined both functionally and in terms of access to the corporate data model. Moreover, the time frames for design, programming and implementation have been defined. This information can be used in conjucntion with collected volumes and other performance criteria to build strategic capacity planning models which allow performance and total hardware cost to be estimated for each year of the plan.
The objectives of defining this as a formal stage are the following: • to bring together the work carried out by the study in a form that is easily comprehensible, • to ensure that the conclusions drawn are supported by substantiating material, • to ensure that the strategy deliverables are maintainable.
Deliverables of study The key deliverables from for this type of IS planning exercise are shown in Figure 5 superimposed on a traditional trade off model. This indicates how both business and technical planning issues are identified and modelled to provide a basis for practical implementations which address both the business and technical dimensions, thus fulfilling, very effectively, the defined mission.
Benefits of this approach The strength of this approach is that it uses techniques which have been developed 'top down'. Other methodologies, which have been based on system and database design techniques, are too technically biased to accommodate strategic IT planning as part of the corporate planning process. Some of the key strengths of such a methodology are:
Report production The report production stage covers the full duration of the project in as much as deliverables for the report are being developed throughout the life of the study.
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• The deliverables are easily understood and contributed to by nontechnical user management. • The combination of functional and data analysis provide a strong foundation for strategic recommendations. • The ability to build software models allows ongoing maintenance of the strategy after the completion of the study. • Flexibility in the use of what are, in effect, documented best practices facilitates different types, sizes and complexities of organizations. This is still not the end of the story, however; the emerging IS plan must be implemented. There are many development methodologies to help in this task, and it is essential that they are driven by the system architecture. Key bridging deliverables from the corporate systems strategy study to individual system implementation projects are: • the corporate data model • system functional charters • technical strategy
Corporate data model Figure 5. Framework for strategic IS plan combined with implementation plan
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This systematic definition of the underlying data structure of the organization determines the feasibility and means of integrating computer systems. Efficient
information and software technology
databases cannot be designed unless this techniologyindependent blueprint is taken into account.
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System functional charters The scope of each candidate system must be defined in sufficient detail by the system architecture study so that each project manager understands fully the charter of his/her project.
Technical strategy
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This must include specific technology choices such as hardware, networks, database systems, fourthgeneration languages and methodologies so that comprehensive technical standards can be defined. A further important bridge to implementation is hardware appraisal, i.e. an understanding of the hardware resource necessary to support all the identified systems. A detailed capacity plan must be drawn up to include technical details of the existing workloads running on the current computers and scientific estimates of the impact of proposed systems using the selected technology, together with a mechanism to refine these estimates as each such system is designed and implemented. This task is important not only to establish hardware expenditure but also to identify technical infeasibilities in advance. Each of these technical bridging components is essential to the successful development of candidate systems within the strategic IS plan. The blueprint for effective IS planning and implementation is shown in Figure 6, combining the elements of system architecture, development methodology and capacity planning within a single composite framework. The interfaces (bridges) between these key components are shown in Figure 7.
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Figure 7. Interfaces between key elements of Figure 6 Considerable research effort is being devoted by the IT industry to the development of integrated project support environments (IPSEs), which will automate the bottom tiers of our framework pyramid. However there is every possibility, even with an IPSE, that when a perfect system is designed, it solves the wrong business problem - unless it has been defined within the broader framework. Only by the use of a composite methodology, combining strategic level studies with rigorous development methodology and hardware appraisal techniques, can top management and IT executives be reassured that the right applications are being developed in the most efficient manner to meet the true needs of the business.
References
Business
1 The Information Engineering Facility (IEF) Information Engineering Products Ltd. (a James Martin Associate Group Company)
User involvement
2 The Information Engineering Workbench, (IEW) Arthur Young (IES) Ltd., UK
3 Tetrarch Information System Planning, PA Computers and Telecommunications
development
Automated tools \
4
Auto-mate, Learmonth & Burchett Management Systems Ltd., UK
5 Excelerator, Excelerator Software Product Ltd. (a subsidiary of Index Technology Corporation)
Figure 6. Framework of key elements in IS planning
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