CHAPTER 13. Acquiring Information Systems and Applications

Transcription

1 CHAPTER 13 Acquiring Information Systems and Applications

2 CHAPTER OUTLINE 13.1 Planning for and Justifying IT Applications 13.2 Strategies for Acquiring IT Applications 13.3 The Traditional Systems Development Life Cycle 13.4 Alternative Methods and Tools for Systems Development 13.5 Vendor and Software Selection

3 LEARNING OBJECTIVES 1. Define an IT strategic plan, identify three objectives it must meet, and describe the four common approaches to cost-benefit analysis. 2. Discuss the four business decisions that companies must make when they acquire new applications. 3. Identify the six processes involved in the systems development life cycle, and explain the primary tasks and importance of each process. 4. Describe four alternative development methods and four tools that augment development methods, and identify at least one advantage and one disadvantage of each method and tool. 5. Analyze the process of vendor and software selection

4 13.1 Planning for and Justifying IT Applications Organizations must analyze the need for the IT application. Each IT application must be justified in terms of costs and benefits. The application portfolio

5 Information Systems Planning

6 Information Systems Planning (continued) Organizational Strategic Plan IT Architecture IT Strategic Plan

7 IT Steering Committee

8 IS Operational Plan Contains the following elements: Mission IT environment Objectives of the IT function Constraints of the IT function Application portfolio Resource allocation and project management

9 Evaluating & Justifying IT Investment: Benefits, Costs & Issues Assessing the costs Fixed costs Total cost of ownership (TCO) Assessing the benefits (Values) Intangible benefits: Benefits from IT that may be very desirable but difficult to place an accurate monetary value on. Comparing the two

10 Conducting the Cost-Benefit Analysis Using Net Present Value (NPV) Return on investment Breakeven analysis The business case approach

11 13.2 Strategies for Acquiring IT Applications Four fundamental business decisions to make before choosing a strategy: (1) How much computer code does the company want to write? (2) How will the company pay for the application? (3) Where will the application run? (4) Where will the application originate?

12 Strategies for Acquiring IT Applications Purchase a Prewritten Application Customize a Prewritten Application Lease the applications Application Service Providers and Software-as-a-Service Vendors Use Open-Source Software Outsourcing Custom Development

13 Operation of an Application Service Provider (ASP) Customer A Customer B Customer C Application Application Application Database Database Database ASP Data Center

14 Operation of a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Vendor Customer A Customer B Customer C Application Customer A Customer B Customer C SaaS Vendor Data Center

15 13.3 Traditional Systems Development Life Cycle Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) Systems Investigation Systems Analysis (i.e.define) Systems Design Programming and Testing Implementation (i.e.deploy) Operation and Maintenance

16 Six-Stage Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) with Supporting Tools Business Need Prototyping Systems Investigation Deliverable: Go/No Go Decision Systems Analysis Deliverable: User Requirement Systems Design Deliverable: Technical Specification Programming and Testing Implement The System Operation and Maintenance Upper CASE Tools Joint Application Design (JAD) Lower CASE Tools

17 The SDLC Major advantages Control Accountability Error detection Major drawbacks Relatively inflexible Time-consuming and expensive Discourages changes once user requirements are gathered

18 SDLC Systems Investigation Begins with the business problem (or opportunity) followed by the feasibility analysis. Feasibility study Deliverable: Go/No-Go Decision

19 Feasibility Study Technical feasibility Economic feasibility Organizational feasibility Behavioral feasibility

20 SDLC System Analysis The examination of the business problem that the organization plans to solve with an information system. Main purpose is to gather information about existing system to determine requirements for the new or improved system. Deliverable is a set of system requirements, also called user requirements.

21 SDLC Systems Design Describes how the system will accomplish this task. Deliverable is the technical design that specifies: System outputs, inputs, user interfaces Hardware, software, databases, telecommunications, personnel & procedures Blueprint of how these components are integrated

22 SDLC System Design (continued) Scope creep is caused by adding functions after the project has been initiated. Kajano/Shutterstock

23 SDLC Programming & Testing Programming involves the translation of a system s design specification into computer code. Testing checks to see if the computer code will produce the expected and desired results under certain conditions. Testing is designed to delete errors (bugs) in the computer code.

24 SDLC Systems Implementation Implementation involves three major conversion strategies: Direct Conversion Pilot Conversion Phased Conversion Parallel Conversion (not used much today)

25 SLDC Operation & Maintenance Audits are performed to assess the system s capabilities and to determine if it is being used correctly. Systems need several types of maintenance. Debugging Updating Maintenance

26 13.4 Alternative Methods and Tools for Systems Development Joint application design (JAD) Rapid application development (RAD) Agile development End-user development

27 RAD versus SDLC

28 Tools for Systems Development Prototyping Integrated computer-assisted software engineering (ICASE) Component-based development Object-oriented development

29 13.5 Vendor & Software Selection Step 1: Identify potential vendors Step 2: Determine the evaluation criteria Request for proposal (RFP) Step 3: Evaluate vendors and packages Step 4: Choose the vendor and package Step 5: Negotiate a contract Step 6: Establish a service level agreement