Information Systems for Management

1. Information Systems for Management

2. Agenda • Information system project • Organization analysis

3. Project orieneted management • Organizations are changing • The changes should be reflected in information systems • How can we adjust information systems to changes?

4. System design processes - classification • Designing systems supporting managers actions and reactions to changes. • Designing passive systems, detecting problems in organizations and providing information on problems occuring (managers, after the information analysis make decisions).

5. Comment • Designing passive systems, supporting passive management, focused on repetitive, schematic routines nowadays is less often used as dynamic market situation requires managing complex, unique processes (so called project management).

6. Informationprojects management: definitions • Information system project is a documentation concerning new information system or existing system modernization. • Project is a sequence ofunique, complex and related actions performed to achieve a common goal, limited with deadlines, budget, preliminary constraints.

7. Informationprojects management: definitions Project characteristics: • Time (deadlines), • Scope, • Resources (human, capital, material, technology, information).

8. Informationprojects management: definitions • Project management is a set of activities performed to achieved goals determined by managers in predefined time, using predefined resources. • Information project management is to create a product – information system.

9. Informationprojects management: definitions Project methodologies: • IPM: Institute of Project Management, • IPMA: International Project Management Association • Design Research Society, • Design Methodology Group

10. Informationprojects management: definitions • Project methodology: process of design organizing, approach to predefined problems solving. Methodology should be chosen with respect to: • Management infrastructure, • Resources accessible, • Staff qualifications, • Environment.

11. Informationprojects management: definitions • Project management: Goal and solution defined Goal and solution unknown

12. Informationprojects management: definitions • Project management stages:

13. Project teams • Creating and implementation is supervised by supervising team (supervising committee) Supervising team are: • Users, • Creators (makers), • Experts.

14. Project team Supervivingteamsaremakingdecisionsatstrategiclevel, includingthoseconcerningfinances and staff: • Defininggoals , • Definingimplementation team, • Analyzingthe company, • Definingimplementationbudget, • Choosing software provider, • Choosing a consulting company, • Providing top managerscommitment, • Definingimplementationschedule, • Appointingmembers of exective team, • Processverification, • Launchingthe system.

15. Project team Executive teams (executive committees) include users and make tactic decisions and project analysis: • Jobs and responsibilities assignement, • Implementation processmanagement, • Implementation reports, • Supervising, monitoring, reporting work in progress, • Initiating corrective actions when necessary.

16. Project team Membersfeatures: • competneces, • motivation, • communication (netsarebetterthan hierarchy) • In a net problemsareeasier to discover and find, project monitoring iseasier, • In a net communicationiseasierbecausethereare no artificialbarriers, • In a net solvingproblemsiseasier, problems and conflictsare of smallerrange.

17. Project categories • Implementation of a system bought from a system provider • Creating new, unique software

18. Information system lifecycle

19. Analysis Analysis: • Quantity, • Quality. Analysis is crucial for project success because at analysis and design stage about 50% of mistakes is made. What is more, the later the mistake is discovered, the more expensive for company it is.

20. Analysis Analysis includes the following set of factors: A={S, G, M, C, H, R} • S: subjects • G: goals • M: methods and technioques • C: conditions • H: hypothesis • R: relations

21. Analysis: subjects • Set of decisive subjects including subset of system users (in organization and inits environment). System is built to meet information requirements of its users, thus users identification is crucial for system quality.

22. Analysis: goals • Set of goals including subsets of users requirements. The set includes both goals that can be measured and goals that can be described. When defining goals, it is necessary to define relations between them, to identify goals of primary and secondary importance.

23. Analisys: methods and techniques • A set of methods which are used to define users requirements. Methods and techniques to be used can be based on intuition and common sense or include complex mathematical calculations. it is recommended to use different methods – to verify analysis results.

24. Analysis: conditions • A set of conditions in which analysis is performed, there are internal and external conditions. Conditions have both positive and negative influence. Negative conditions are constraints. Conditions refer to socio-psychological, technical, economical and organizational problems.

25. Analisys: hypothesis • Set of hypothesis refering to sets listed before. In dynamic conditions it is impossible to define all the sets elements, that is why some hypothesis are assumed,described by probabilities of actions to happen.

26. Analysis: relations • Sets of relations between sets listed above.

27. Analysisprocedure Analysis procedure includes: • Definition of set of users, • Definition of set of goals, • Definition of set of conditions, • Definition of set of hypothesis, • Analysis of organization. Each analysis stage should include identification of a tool which is to be used to solve a problem.

28. System users • System is designed for the organization as a whole, for a group of users or for individual users. System users are: • External users (clients, cooperating organizations and other organizations), • Internal users (managers of all organizational levels, operators).

29. System goals • Information system is built and used to enable organization realize its goals, so analysis should translate organization goals to information system goals. • Ingoal hierarchy there are goals of primary importance and goals of lesser importance as well.

30. Constraints • Active constraints: influence conditions of analysis, they should be decreased • Passive constraints: by making proper decisions their influence decreases • False constraints: initially they seem to be important, then they appear not important

31. Organizationanalysismethods By product: • Analysing requirements is side-effect, final product is analysed, • Used when creating problem oriented subsystems, not labour-consuming, but information requirements are met only partially.

32. Organizationanalysismethods Total study: • Analysis of large managers group, comparison (differnces between planned and existing system), • Used to identify important domains, connected with risk (requirements may not be defined properly), it is cost-consuming

33. Organizationanalysismethods • Critical Success Factors analysis: • Definition of domains which should continuously controlled and supervised by managers, • Analysis of tasks realization progress, allows to assess mangement efficiency, goals hierarchy should be correctly defined, labour-consuming

34. Organizationanalysismethods Key Indicator System analysis: • Selecting set of indicators providing information on organization condition, • Allows to identify functions requiring specific information, environment identification, goals hierarchy

35. Organizationanalysismethods • Business Process Model analysis: • Defining basic units, verification of business processes, • Enables process models creation, requirememnts analysis, recognition of data transfered between business processes.

36. Organizationanalysismethods • Enterprise Activity Matrix: • Based on assumption that in a company there is a limited number of tasks, so it is possible to create a matrix including all the tasks (what, how and with what resources can be done), • Gives a framework of is going on/ should be going on.

37. Analysistechniques • Observation (direct, indirect, secret), • Interviews, standardized and not-standardized, • Surveys/ questionnaires, • Discussions.

38. Approaches to analysis • Socjo-psychological approach, according to which analysis is a social project, • Structural approach, in which formal analysis of a system is conducted (result: hierarchical structure including data, functions and relations), • Object-oriented approach, allows to combine data and processes into objects.