Our fourth assignment in MIS 2 was about visualizing ourselves being invited by the university (University of Southeastern Philippines) to prepare an Information systems plan for the university, and then discussing the steps in order to expedite the implementation of the ISP.
Since the university is also an organization and is in the trend in Information Technology, Though, seldom noticed because of its lack of implementation not realizing the dreams, vision, mission, goals, It is also practicing to have an Information systems Plan the same approach with the other organizations.
Although the university is visualizing for an unreachable dream through its strategic Information System’s planning, it can be thought that its actual implementation is yet too far from the truth.
As a result, students, faculties, staffs and other residents and the university itself seem not to recognize the existing ISP and the plans to improve it.
IN this particular assignment, I was assumed or presumed to be an IT expert or even a Systems Analyst who was hired by the university to prepare an ISP.
It is not necessarily for me to create a new ISP, what are the things I must do is to study and understand the real scenario of the university, And then, study the existing ISP. And decide to create modifications, changes, improvement and possibly integration with the current ISP that was not yet realized.
Also, I have to consider the various specifications and constraints. Considering that it is a state university which is subsidized by the government, so budget allotted for ISP must be optimized.
In the article Information Systems Plan: The Bet-Your-Business Project by by Michael M. Gorman, the rationale for an Information plan is stated.
Every year, $300-700 million dollar corporations spend about 5% of their gross income on information systems and their supports. That's from about $15,000,000 to $35,000,000! A significant part of those funds support enterprise databases, a philosophy of database system applications that enable corporations to research the past, control the present, and plan for the future.
Even though an information system costs from $1,000,000 to $10,000,000, and even through most chief information officers (CIOs) can specify exactly how much money is being spent for hardware, software, and staff, CIOs cannot however state with any degree of certainty why one system is being done this year versus next, why it is being done ahead of another, or finally, why it is being done at all.
Many enterprises do not have model-based information systems development environments that allow system designers to see the benefits of rearranging an information systems development schedule. Consequently, the questions that cannot be answered include: What effect will there be on the overall schedule if an information system is purchased versus developed?
At what point does it pay to hire an abnormal quantity of contract staff to advance a schedule?
What is the long term benefit from 4GL versus 3GL?
Is it better to generate 3GL than to generate/use a 4GL?
What are the real costs of distributed software development over centralized development?
If these questions were transformed and applied to any other component of a business (e.g., accounting, manufacturing, distribution and marketing), and remained unanswered, that unit's manager would surely be fired!
We not only need answers to these questions NOW!, we also need them quickly, cost effectively, and in a form that they can be modeled and changed in response to unfolding realities. This paper provides a brief review of a successful 10-step strategy that answers these questions.
Too many half-billion dollar organizations have only a vague notion of the names and interactions of the existing and under development information systems. Whenever they need to know, a meeting is held among the critical few, an inventory is taken, interactions confirmed, and accomplishment schedules are updated.
This ad hoc information systems plan was possible only because all design and development was centralized, the only computer was a main-frame, and the past was acceptable prologue because budgets were ever increasing, schedules always slipping, and information was not yet part of the corporation's critical edge.
Well, today is different, really different! Budgets are decreasing, and slipped schedules are being cited as preventing business alternatives. Confounding the computing environment are different operating systems, DBMSs, development tools, telecommunications (LAN, WAN, Intra-, Inter-, and Extra-net), and distributed hard- and software.
Rather than having centralized, long-range planning and management activities that address these problems, today's business units are using readily available tools to design and build ad hoc stop-gap solutions. These ad hoc systems not only do not interconnect, support common semantics, or provide synchronized views of critical corporate policy, they are soon to form the almost impossible to comprehend confusion of systems and data from which systems order and semantic harmony must spring.
Not only has the computing landscape become profoundly different and more difficult to comprehend, the need for just the right--and correct--information at just the right time is escalating. Late or wrong information is worse than no information.
Information systems managers need a model of their information systems environment. A model that is malleable. As new requirements are discovered, budgets modified, new hardware/software introduced, this model must be such that it can reconstitute the information systems plan in a timely and efficient manner.
Characteristics of a Quality ISP
A quality ISP must exhibit five distinct characteristics before it is useful. These five are presented in the table that follows.
Characteristic
Description
Timely The ISP must be timely. An ISP that is created long after it is needed is useless. In almost all cases, it makes no sense to take longer to plan work than to perform the work planned.
Useable The ISP must be useable. It must be so for all the projects as well as for each project. The ISP should exist in sections that once adopted can be parceled out to project managers and immediately started.
Maintainable The ISP must be maintainable. New business opportunities, new computers, business mergers, etc. all affect the ISP. The ISP must support quick changes to the estimates, technologies employed, and possibly even to the fundamental project sequences. Once these changes are accomplished, the new ISP should be just a few computer program executions away.
Quality While the ISP must be a quality product, no ISP is ever perfect on the first try. As the ISP is executed, the metrics employed to derive the individual project estimates become refined as a consequence of new hardware technologies, code generators, techniques, or faster working staff. As these changes occur, their effects should be installable into the data that supports ISP computation. In short, the ISP is a living document. It should be updated with every technology event, and certainly no less often than quarterly.
Reproducible The ISP must be reproducible. That is, when its development activities are performed by any other staff, the ISP produced should essentially be the same. The ISP should not significantly vary by staff assigned.
Whenever a proposal for the development of an ISP is created it must be assessed against these five characteristics. If any fail or not addressed in an optimum way, the entire set of funds for the development of an ISP is risked.
ISP Within the Context of the Meta data Environment
The information systems plan is the plan by which databases and information systems of the enterprise are accomplished in a timely manner. A key facility through which the ISP obtains its Adata@ is the meta data repository. The domain of the meta data repository is set forth in Figure 1, and, as seen through Figure 1, persons through their role within an organization perform functions in the accomplishment of enterprise missions, they have information needs. These information needs reflect the state of certain enterprise resources such as finance, people, and products that are known to the enterprises. The states are created through business information systems and databases.
The majority of the meta data employed to develop the ISP resides in the meta entities supporting the enterprise=s resource life cycles (see TDAN issue #7, December 1998, Resource Life Cycle Analysis), the databases and information systems, and project management. All these meta entities are depicted within the meta data repository meta model in Figure 2.
The ISP Steps
The information systems plan project determines the sequence for implementing specific information systems. The goal of the strategy is to deliver the most valuable business information at the earliest time possible in the most cost-effective manner.
The end product of the information systems project is an information systems plan (ISP). Once deployed, the information systems department can implement the plan with confidence that they are doing the correct information systems project at the right time and in the right sequence. The focus of the ISP is not one information system but the entire suite of information systems for the enterprise. Once developed, each identified information system is seen in context with all other information systems within the enterprise.
Information Systems Plan Development Steps
Step
Name
Description
1. Create the mission model The mission model, generally shorter than 30 pages presents end-result characterizations of the essential raison d=etre of the enterprise. Missions are strategic, long range, and a-political because they are stripped of the Awho@ and the Ahow.@
2. Develop a high-level data model The high-level data model is an Entity Relationship diagram created to meet the data needs of the mission descriptions. No attributes or keys are created.
3. Create the resource life cycles (RLC) and their nodes Resources are drawn from both the mission descriptions and the high level data model. Resources and their life cycles are the names, descriptions and life cycles of the critical assets of the enterprise, which, when exercised achieve one or more aspect of the missions. Each enterprise resource Alives@ through its resource life cycle.
4. Allocate precedence vectors among RLC nodes Tied together into a enablement network, the resulting resource life cycle network forms a framework of enterprise=s assets that represent an order and set of inter-resource relationships. The enterprise Alives@ through its resource life cycle network.
5. Allocate existing information systems and databases to the RLC nodes The resource life cycle network presents a Alattice-work@onto which the Aas is@ business information systems and databases can be Aattached.@ See for example, the meta model in Figure 2. The Ato-be@ databases and information systems are similarly attached. ADifference projects@ between the Aas-is@ and the Ato-be@ are then formulated. Achievement of all the difference projects is the achievement of the Information Systems Plan.
6. Allocate standard work break down structures (WBS) to each RLC node Detailed planning of the Adifference projects@ entails allocating the appropriate canned work breakdown structures and metrics. Employing WBS and metrics from a comprehensive methodology supports project management standardization, repeatability, and self-learning.
7. Load resources into each WBS node Once the resources are determined, these are loaded into the project management meta entities of the meta data repository, that is, metrics, project, work plan and deliverables. The meta entities are those inferred by Figure 2.
8. Schedule the RLC nodes through a project management package facilities. The entire suite of projects is then scheduled on an enterprise-wide basis. The PERT chart used by project management is the APERT@ chart represented by the Resource Life Cycle enablement network.
9. Produce and review of the ISP The scheduled result is predicable: Too long, too costly, and too ambitious. At that point, the real work starts: paring down the suite of projects to a realistic set within time and budget. Because of the meta data environment (see Figure 1), the integrated project management meta data (see Figure 2), and because all projects are configured against fundamental business-rationale based designs, the results of the inevitable trade-offs can be set against business basics. Although the process is painful, the results can be justified and rationalized.
10. Execute and adjust the ISP through time. As the ISP is set into execution, technology changes occur that affect resource loadings. In this case, only steps 6-9 need to be repeated. As work progresses, the underlying meta data built or used in steps 1-5 will also change. Because a quality ISP is Aautomated@ the recasting of the ISP should only take a week or less.
Collectively, the first nine steps take about 5000 staff hours, or about $500,000. Compared to an IS budget $15-35 million, that's only about 3.0% to 1.0%.
If the pundits are to be believed, that is, that the right information at the right time is the competitive edge, then paying for an information systems plan that is accurate, repeatable, and reliable is a small price indeed.
Executive and Adjusting the ISP Through Time
IT projects are accomplished within distinct development environments. The two most common are: discrete project and release. The discrete project environment is typified by completely encapsulated projects accomplished through a water-fall methodology.
In release environments, there are a number of different projects underway by different organizations and staff of varying skill levels. Once a large number of projects are underway, the ability of the enterprise to know about and manage all the different projects degrades rapidly. That is because the project management environment has been transformed from discrete encapsulated projects into a continuous flow process of product or functionality improvements that are released on a set time schedule. Figure 3 illustrates the continuous flow process environment that supports releases. The continuous flow process environment is characterized by: Multiple, concurrent, but differently scheduled projects against the same enterprise resource
Single projects that affect multiple enterprise resources
Projects that develop completely new capabilities, or changes to existing capabilities within enterprise resources
It is precisely because enterprises have transformed themselves from a project to a release environment that information systems plans that can be created, evolved, and maintained on an enterprise-wide basis are essential.
There are four major sets of activities within the continuous flow process environment. The user/client is represented at the top in the small rectangular box. Each of the ellipses represents an activity targeted to a specific need. The four basic needs are:
Need Identification
Need Assessment
Design
Deployment
The box in the center is the meta data repository. Specification and impact analysis is represented through the left two processes. Implementation design and accomplishment is represented by the right two processes. Two key characteristics should be immediately apparent. First, unlike the water-fall approach, the activities do not flow one to the other. They are disjoint. In fact, they may be done by different teams, on different time schedules, and involve different quantities of products under management. In short, these four activities are independent one from the other. Their only interdependence is through the meta data repository.
The second characteristic flows from the first. Because these four activities are independent one from the other, the enterprise evolves by means of releases rather than through whole systems. If it evolved through whole systems, then the four activities would be connected either in a waterfall or a spiral approach, and the enterprise would be evolving through major upgrades to encapsulated functionality within specific business resources. In contrast, the release approach causes coordinated sets of changes to multiple business resources to be placed into production. This causes simultaneous, enterprise-wide capability upgrades across multiple business resources.
Through this continuous-flow process, several unique features are present:
All four processes are concurrently executing.
Changes to enterprise resources occur in unison, periodically, and in a very controlled manner.
The meta data repository is always contains all the enterprise resource specifications: current or planned. Simply put, if an enterprise resource semantic is not within the meta data repository, it is not enterprise policy.
All changes are planned, scheduled, measured, and subject to auditing, accounting, and traceability.
All documentation of all types is generated from the meta data repository.
ISP Summary
In summary, any technique employed to achieve an ISP must be accomplishable with less than 3% of the IT budget. Additionally, it must be timely, useable, maintainable, able to be iterated into a quality product, and reproducible. IT organizations, once they have completed their initial set of databases and business information systems will find themselves transformed from a project to a release environment.
The continuous flow environment then becomes the only viable alternative for moving the enterprise forward. It is precisely because of the release environment that enterprise-wide information systems plans that can be created, evolved, and maintained are essential.
Strategic Information Systems Planning (SISP) - An IS Strategy for ERP Implementation
Written by:
Cecil Bozarth, SCRC
The following is based on Dr. Bozarth’s research on “ERP Implementation Efforts at Three Firms: Applying lessons from the SISP and IT-enabled change literature” which is scheduled to appear in the International Journal of Operations and Production Management.
Strategic information systems planning, or SISP, is based on two core arguments. The first is that, at a minimum, a firm’s information systems investments should be aligned with the overall business strategy, and in some cases may even become an emerging source of competitive advantage. While no one disagrees with this, operations management researchers are just starting to study how this alignment takes place and what the measurable benefits are. An issue under examination is how a manufacturer’s business strategy, characterized as either “market focused” or “operations focused,” affects its ability to garner efficiency versus customer service benefits from its ERP investments.
The second core argument behind SISP is that companies can best achieve IS-based alignment or competitive advantage by following a proactive, formal and comprehensive process that includes the development of broad organizational information requirements. This is in contrast to a “reactive” strategy, in which the IS group sits back and responds to other areas of the business only when a need arises. Such a process is especially relevant to ERP investments, given their costs and long-term impact. Seegars, Grover and Teng (1) have identified six dimensions that define an excellent SISP process (notice that many of these would apply to the strategic planning process in other areas as well):
1. Comprehensiveness
Comprehensiveness is “the extent to which an organization attempts to be exhaustive or inclusive in making and integrating strategic decisions”.
2. Formalization
Formalization is “the existence of structures, techniques, written procedures, and policies that guide the planning process”.
3. Focus
Focus is “the balance between creativity and control orientations inherent within the strategic planning system”. An innovative orientation emphasizes innovative solutions to deal with opportunities and threats. An integrative orientation emphasizes control, as implemented through budgets, resource allocation, and asset management.
4. Top-down flow
SISP should be initiated by top managers, with the aid of support staff.
5. Broad participation
Even though the planning flow is top-down, participation must involve multiple functional areas and, as necessary, key stakeholders at lower levels of the organization.
6. High consistency
SISP should be characterized by frequent meetings and reassessments of the overall strategy.
The recommendations found in the SISP literature have been echoed in the operations management literature. It has been suggested that firms should institutionalize a formal top-down planning process for linking information systems strategy to business needs as they move toward evolution in their management orientation, planning, organization, and control aspects of the IT function.
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Six Steps to Implementation
Many organizations have invested a great deal of effort in educating and informing consumers about health care quality. The most ambitious of these sponsors have embarked on multi-year projects to measure quality of care at various level of the health care system and report their findings to the public. Others with more limited resources and expertise may adapt publicly available materials to their own needs or recommend alternative sources of information for their audiences.
Although no two projects are exactly alike, successful sponsors generally follow the following six steps. Understanding what is involved in implementing a quality measurement and reporting project from start to finish is especially important for those sponsors that do it all themselves. But even sponsors that borrow as much as they can from others need to be aware of these steps so that they can make a conscious choice to skip those that do not apply.
Step 1. Getting Started
The first step in a consumer information project is to lay the foundation for the project—financially, politically, and organizationally. While this may sound obvious, many projects fail because sponsors do not take the time to prepare. They dive right into the process of collecting and reporting data, only to be taken by surprise when someone objects to the project or the money runs out.
On the other hand, some projects never even get off the ground because the sponsors can't move beyond the planning process. The key to moving beyond the organizational stage is to develop and stick to a schedule that will force decisions and push the participants forward in the process.
Step 2. Collecting and Analyzing Data
During the planning stage (Step 1), sponsors choose what types of quality measures to share with the audience.
For many sponsors, the next step in a consumer information project is to gather that data and conduct the appropriate analyses so that these measures have meaning for consumers.
Step 3. Presenting the Information
Presentation—or how you say what you have to say—plays a critical part in ensuring that your efforts to convey quality information are successful. One of the most challenging aspects of a performance measurement project is figuring out how to present the data in a way that helps consumers interpret the information and apply it to their health care-related decisions. Many sponsors have struggled with this question, only to find themselves making the same mistakes as others before them. One of the key objectives of this site is to support project sponsors in learning from the experiences of their peers as well as from the findings of researchers regarding the best ways to discuss, format, and display information on quality.
Five Key Points About Presentation
Here are the five most important things to remember about presenting information on health care quality:
1. There is no one way to do this—but there are better ways and worse ways.
At this time, there is no universally accepted approach to providing information on quality to consumers. The marketplace is full of experiments, most of which have not been evaluated. But we do know that some approaches to presenting quality information work better than others in the sense that consumers find it easier to understand the data and evaluate their options.
2. The answer that's best for you depends on who your audience is and how they'll use the information.
The way you present information—and even the information itself—should be driven by the needs of whoever is supposed to be reading it. Consumers are the focus of this Web site, but they are not the only audience for health care quality information. Sponsors can develop information for:
Public or private purchasers.
Non-purchasing intermediary organizations, such as consumer advocacy groups.
Policymakers.
Provider organizations.
Individual providers.
Health plans.
Each of these audiences has different needs for quality information. As a result, an approach that is appropriate for individual consumers may not be at all useful for a different audience.
For example:
Plans and providers may want more detail in order to identify specific opportunities to improve quality.
Policymakers, on the other hand, may want a higher level of aggregation that would reveal larger trends in the marketplace.
Intermediary organizations and purchasers may want enough data to draw their own conclusions rather than having the information interpreted for them.
3. Data cannot be presented in a vacuum.
The context you provide (or fail to provide) for the information affects what your audience pays attention to and how they interpret it. In particular, consumers are more likely to care about the information if you can connect it to their concerns about health care and the health care system. For instance, data on ease of referrals has greater relevance to an audience that understands how a health plan may limit their access to specialists. This implies that it is not enough to provide data; a quality report must include some explanation of how the health care system works and what the data reveal about a health care organization.
4. For the typical consumer, a quality measure has no meaning on its own.
It is the sponsor's job to turn quality measures into information that consumers can easily comprehend, evaluate, and use. You can do this by doing one or more of the following:
Grouping measures into consumer-friendly categories.
Offering a basis for comparison, such as an average or benchmark for the market.
Interpreting the information for your audience by making it clear which results are truly better than others.
For explanations and examples of each of these tasks, go to How To Say It.
5. The medium shapes the message.
Whether you rely on printed reports, Web sites, or live presentations, the medium you choose to deliver the information can determine how much you present and how you display it. For instance, you can offer many more layers of detail on the Web than you can in print without overwhelming your audience. A printed report, on the other hand, offers the ability to create large displays of information across multiple pages. This suggests that you will need to have some sense of what the final product will be before you can decide on a design and format for quality information.
Making Sure Your Materials Work for Your Audience
No matter how limited your resources may be, do what you can to test the materials as you develop them to make sure they are suitable for your audience. This approach allows you to identify and remedy trouble spots along the way rather than waiting until the information has been disseminated to discover any problems. Specifically, sponsors can conduct ongoing testing to assess:
Whether consumers can read the information easily.
Whether they can understand it.
Whether the content is appropriate for your audience.
Whether people are interested in your content (i.e., its salience).
Whether consumers can use your materials for the purpose for which they are intended.
Whether they can navigate through the materials to find the information they want.
Techniques for this kind of iterative testing include one-on-one interviews as well as focus groups.
For specifics on testing your materials, conducting interviews, and focus groups, go to Refining What You Do.
Step 4. Disseminating Information
Long before you have the information to distribute, you need to be thinking about how and when to get it into the hands of consumers. Sponsors should ask themselves:
What can we do to ensure that our audience is aware of our information and motivated to use it?
When is the best time to make the information available? Is this timing realistic?
What channels can we use to distribute the information to our audience? How can we make sure they see it?
How should we package the information? Should it stand alone or be incorporated into other information?
The answers to these questions will affect how much time you have to produce the report as well as the kinds of measures and depth of content that you can include. For example:
If the goal is to release a performance report in early fall so that consumers have it in time for the open enrollment season, you may not have enough time to conduct your own survey of enrollees but you could ask your plans to share the HEDIS® scores—which include results of the CAHPS® survey—that they have to report to NCQA by early summer.
If the most sensible way to package the performance information is to integrate it into open enrollment materials, you will have to deal with space constraints that would not be necessary in a stand-alone document. This may affect the way you present the data or how much data you can include.
Step 5. Supporting Consumers
For many sponsors of consumer information projects, the job ends once the reports have been distributed. But both experienced sponsors and researchers testing consumer behavior have demonstrated that it is not enough to give consumers data. They need help in interpreting the information on quality, integrating it with other relevant data (such as costs), and using it to make decisions. Without this help, many simply ignore the information they have, or worse, use it inappropriately.
Strategies for providing "decision support" include the following:
Refer consumers to consumer advocates and other "information intermediaries" who can help your audience understand and use the information you provide..
Offer consumers a worksheet that guides them through the process of evaluating their options. Design computer-based systems that facilitate decisionmaking by allowing the user to weight different factors or by ranking the available choices based on the user's response to a set of questions.
To determine which strategy will work best for your audience, you may want to consult with representative consumers and/or appropriate intermediaries. Also, be sure to evaluate your support strategy once it is implemented to find out how well it is serving the needs of your audience and how you can improve it.
Step 6. Evaluating the Project
Finally, the last step for sponsors is to evaluate the extent to which the project achieved its objectives. This could be as simple as asking whether consumers are aware of the information you produced or as complicated as finding out whether and how consumers used the information to help make decisions.
Evaluations are important for internal purposes because they enable you to determine how effective your project is and how it can be improved. But they are equally critical for external reasons. First, being able to demonstrate that the project has had a positive impact will help you secure political support and continued funding. In addition, an evaluation allows other sponsors to learn from your experience.
The following methods are commonly used to evaluate projects:Focus groups.Surveys.Usability testing.Analysis of changes in enrollment patterns.
References:
http://www.tdan.com/view-articles/5262
http://scm.ncsu.edu/public/facts/facs060329.html
http://www.talkingquality.gov/docs/section1/1_2.htm
Since the university is also an organization and is in the trend in Information Technology, Though, seldom noticed because of its lack of implementation not realizing the dreams, vision, mission, goals, It is also practicing to have an Information systems Plan the same approach with the other organizations.
Although the university is visualizing for an unreachable dream through its strategic Information System’s planning, it can be thought that its actual implementation is yet too far from the truth.
As a result, students, faculties, staffs and other residents and the university itself seem not to recognize the existing ISP and the plans to improve it.
IN this particular assignment, I was assumed or presumed to be an IT expert or even a Systems Analyst who was hired by the university to prepare an ISP.
It is not necessarily for me to create a new ISP, what are the things I must do is to study and understand the real scenario of the university, And then, study the existing ISP. And decide to create modifications, changes, improvement and possibly integration with the current ISP that was not yet realized.
Also, I have to consider the various specifications and constraints. Considering that it is a state university which is subsidized by the government, so budget allotted for ISP must be optimized.
In the article Information Systems Plan: The Bet-Your-Business Project by by Michael M. Gorman, the rationale for an Information plan is stated.
Every year, $300-700 million dollar corporations spend about 5% of their gross income on information systems and their supports. That's from about $15,000,000 to $35,000,000! A significant part of those funds support enterprise databases, a philosophy of database system applications that enable corporations to research the past, control the present, and plan for the future.
Even though an information system costs from $1,000,000 to $10,000,000, and even through most chief information officers (CIOs) can specify exactly how much money is being spent for hardware, software, and staff, CIOs cannot however state with any degree of certainty why one system is being done this year versus next, why it is being done ahead of another, or finally, why it is being done at all.
Many enterprises do not have model-based information systems development environments that allow system designers to see the benefits of rearranging an information systems development schedule. Consequently, the questions that cannot be answered include: What effect will there be on the overall schedule if an information system is purchased versus developed?
At what point does it pay to hire an abnormal quantity of contract staff to advance a schedule?
What is the long term benefit from 4GL versus 3GL?
Is it better to generate 3GL than to generate/use a 4GL?
What are the real costs of distributed software development over centralized development?
If these questions were transformed and applied to any other component of a business (e.g., accounting, manufacturing, distribution and marketing), and remained unanswered, that unit's manager would surely be fired!
We not only need answers to these questions NOW!, we also need them quickly, cost effectively, and in a form that they can be modeled and changed in response to unfolding realities. This paper provides a brief review of a successful 10-step strategy that answers these questions.
Too many half-billion dollar organizations have only a vague notion of the names and interactions of the existing and under development information systems. Whenever they need to know, a meeting is held among the critical few, an inventory is taken, interactions confirmed, and accomplishment schedules are updated.
This ad hoc information systems plan was possible only because all design and development was centralized, the only computer was a main-frame, and the past was acceptable prologue because budgets were ever increasing, schedules always slipping, and information was not yet part of the corporation's critical edge.
Well, today is different, really different! Budgets are decreasing, and slipped schedules are being cited as preventing business alternatives. Confounding the computing environment are different operating systems, DBMSs, development tools, telecommunications (LAN, WAN, Intra-, Inter-, and Extra-net), and distributed hard- and software.
Rather than having centralized, long-range planning and management activities that address these problems, today's business units are using readily available tools to design and build ad hoc stop-gap solutions. These ad hoc systems not only do not interconnect, support common semantics, or provide synchronized views of critical corporate policy, they are soon to form the almost impossible to comprehend confusion of systems and data from which systems order and semantic harmony must spring.
Not only has the computing landscape become profoundly different and more difficult to comprehend, the need for just the right--and correct--information at just the right time is escalating. Late or wrong information is worse than no information.
Information systems managers need a model of their information systems environment. A model that is malleable. As new requirements are discovered, budgets modified, new hardware/software introduced, this model must be such that it can reconstitute the information systems plan in a timely and efficient manner.
Characteristics of a Quality ISP
A quality ISP must exhibit five distinct characteristics before it is useful. These five are presented in the table that follows.
Characteristic
Description
Timely The ISP must be timely. An ISP that is created long after it is needed is useless. In almost all cases, it makes no sense to take longer to plan work than to perform the work planned.
Useable The ISP must be useable. It must be so for all the projects as well as for each project. The ISP should exist in sections that once adopted can be parceled out to project managers and immediately started.
Maintainable The ISP must be maintainable. New business opportunities, new computers, business mergers, etc. all affect the ISP. The ISP must support quick changes to the estimates, technologies employed, and possibly even to the fundamental project sequences. Once these changes are accomplished, the new ISP should be just a few computer program executions away.
Quality While the ISP must be a quality product, no ISP is ever perfect on the first try. As the ISP is executed, the metrics employed to derive the individual project estimates become refined as a consequence of new hardware technologies, code generators, techniques, or faster working staff. As these changes occur, their effects should be installable into the data that supports ISP computation. In short, the ISP is a living document. It should be updated with every technology event, and certainly no less often than quarterly.
Reproducible The ISP must be reproducible. That is, when its development activities are performed by any other staff, the ISP produced should essentially be the same. The ISP should not significantly vary by staff assigned.
Whenever a proposal for the development of an ISP is created it must be assessed against these five characteristics. If any fail or not addressed in an optimum way, the entire set of funds for the development of an ISP is risked.
ISP Within the Context of the Meta data Environment
The information systems plan is the plan by which databases and information systems of the enterprise are accomplished in a timely manner. A key facility through which the ISP obtains its Adata@ is the meta data repository. The domain of the meta data repository is set forth in Figure 1, and, as seen through Figure 1, persons through their role within an organization perform functions in the accomplishment of enterprise missions, they have information needs. These information needs reflect the state of certain enterprise resources such as finance, people, and products that are known to the enterprises. The states are created through business information systems and databases.
The majority of the meta data employed to develop the ISP resides in the meta entities supporting the enterprise=s resource life cycles (see TDAN issue #7, December 1998, Resource Life Cycle Analysis), the databases and information systems, and project management. All these meta entities are depicted within the meta data repository meta model in Figure 2.
The ISP Steps
The information systems plan project determines the sequence for implementing specific information systems. The goal of the strategy is to deliver the most valuable business information at the earliest time possible in the most cost-effective manner.
The end product of the information systems project is an information systems plan (ISP). Once deployed, the information systems department can implement the plan with confidence that they are doing the correct information systems project at the right time and in the right sequence. The focus of the ISP is not one information system but the entire suite of information systems for the enterprise. Once developed, each identified information system is seen in context with all other information systems within the enterprise.
Information Systems Plan Development Steps
Step
Name
Description
1. Create the mission model The mission model, generally shorter than 30 pages presents end-result characterizations of the essential raison d=etre of the enterprise. Missions are strategic, long range, and a-political because they are stripped of the Awho@ and the Ahow.@
2. Develop a high-level data model The high-level data model is an Entity Relationship diagram created to meet the data needs of the mission descriptions. No attributes or keys are created.
3. Create the resource life cycles (RLC) and their nodes Resources are drawn from both the mission descriptions and the high level data model. Resources and their life cycles are the names, descriptions and life cycles of the critical assets of the enterprise, which, when exercised achieve one or more aspect of the missions. Each enterprise resource Alives@ through its resource life cycle.
4. Allocate precedence vectors among RLC nodes Tied together into a enablement network, the resulting resource life cycle network forms a framework of enterprise=s assets that represent an order and set of inter-resource relationships. The enterprise Alives@ through its resource life cycle network.
5. Allocate existing information systems and databases to the RLC nodes The resource life cycle network presents a Alattice-work@onto which the Aas is@ business information systems and databases can be Aattached.@ See for example, the meta model in Figure 2. The Ato-be@ databases and information systems are similarly attached. ADifference projects@ between the Aas-is@ and the Ato-be@ are then formulated. Achievement of all the difference projects is the achievement of the Information Systems Plan.
6. Allocate standard work break down structures (WBS) to each RLC node Detailed planning of the Adifference projects@ entails allocating the appropriate canned work breakdown structures and metrics. Employing WBS and metrics from a comprehensive methodology supports project management standardization, repeatability, and self-learning.
7. Load resources into each WBS node Once the resources are determined, these are loaded into the project management meta entities of the meta data repository, that is, metrics, project, work plan and deliverables. The meta entities are those inferred by Figure 2.
8. Schedule the RLC nodes through a project management package facilities. The entire suite of projects is then scheduled on an enterprise-wide basis. The PERT chart used by project management is the APERT@ chart represented by the Resource Life Cycle enablement network.
9. Produce and review of the ISP The scheduled result is predicable: Too long, too costly, and too ambitious. At that point, the real work starts: paring down the suite of projects to a realistic set within time and budget. Because of the meta data environment (see Figure 1), the integrated project management meta data (see Figure 2), and because all projects are configured against fundamental business-rationale based designs, the results of the inevitable trade-offs can be set against business basics. Although the process is painful, the results can be justified and rationalized.
10. Execute and adjust the ISP through time. As the ISP is set into execution, technology changes occur that affect resource loadings. In this case, only steps 6-9 need to be repeated. As work progresses, the underlying meta data built or used in steps 1-5 will also change. Because a quality ISP is Aautomated@ the recasting of the ISP should only take a week or less.
Collectively, the first nine steps take about 5000 staff hours, or about $500,000. Compared to an IS budget $15-35 million, that's only about 3.0% to 1.0%.
If the pundits are to be believed, that is, that the right information at the right time is the competitive edge, then paying for an information systems plan that is accurate, repeatable, and reliable is a small price indeed.
Executive and Adjusting the ISP Through Time
IT projects are accomplished within distinct development environments. The two most common are: discrete project and release. The discrete project environment is typified by completely encapsulated projects accomplished through a water-fall methodology.
In release environments, there are a number of different projects underway by different organizations and staff of varying skill levels. Once a large number of projects are underway, the ability of the enterprise to know about and manage all the different projects degrades rapidly. That is because the project management environment has been transformed from discrete encapsulated projects into a continuous flow process of product or functionality improvements that are released on a set time schedule. Figure 3 illustrates the continuous flow process environment that supports releases. The continuous flow process environment is characterized by: Multiple, concurrent, but differently scheduled projects against the same enterprise resource
Single projects that affect multiple enterprise resources
Projects that develop completely new capabilities, or changes to existing capabilities within enterprise resources
It is precisely because enterprises have transformed themselves from a project to a release environment that information systems plans that can be created, evolved, and maintained on an enterprise-wide basis are essential.
There are four major sets of activities within the continuous flow process environment. The user/client is represented at the top in the small rectangular box. Each of the ellipses represents an activity targeted to a specific need. The four basic needs are:
Need Identification
Need Assessment
Design
Deployment
The box in the center is the meta data repository. Specification and impact analysis is represented through the left two processes. Implementation design and accomplishment is represented by the right two processes. Two key characteristics should be immediately apparent. First, unlike the water-fall approach, the activities do not flow one to the other. They are disjoint. In fact, they may be done by different teams, on different time schedules, and involve different quantities of products under management. In short, these four activities are independent one from the other. Their only interdependence is through the meta data repository.
The second characteristic flows from the first. Because these four activities are independent one from the other, the enterprise evolves by means of releases rather than through whole systems. If it evolved through whole systems, then the four activities would be connected either in a waterfall or a spiral approach, and the enterprise would be evolving through major upgrades to encapsulated functionality within specific business resources. In contrast, the release approach causes coordinated sets of changes to multiple business resources to be placed into production. This causes simultaneous, enterprise-wide capability upgrades across multiple business resources.
Through this continuous-flow process, several unique features are present:
All four processes are concurrently executing.
Changes to enterprise resources occur in unison, periodically, and in a very controlled manner.
The meta data repository is always contains all the enterprise resource specifications: current or planned. Simply put, if an enterprise resource semantic is not within the meta data repository, it is not enterprise policy.
All changes are planned, scheduled, measured, and subject to auditing, accounting, and traceability.
All documentation of all types is generated from the meta data repository.
ISP Summary
In summary, any technique employed to achieve an ISP must be accomplishable with less than 3% of the IT budget. Additionally, it must be timely, useable, maintainable, able to be iterated into a quality product, and reproducible. IT organizations, once they have completed their initial set of databases and business information systems will find themselves transformed from a project to a release environment.
The continuous flow environment then becomes the only viable alternative for moving the enterprise forward. It is precisely because of the release environment that enterprise-wide information systems plans that can be created, evolved, and maintained are essential.
Strategic Information Systems Planning (SISP) - An IS Strategy for ERP Implementation
Written by:
Cecil Bozarth, SCRC
The following is based on Dr. Bozarth’s research on “ERP Implementation Efforts at Three Firms: Applying lessons from the SISP and IT-enabled change literature” which is scheduled to appear in the International Journal of Operations and Production Management.
Strategic information systems planning, or SISP, is based on two core arguments. The first is that, at a minimum, a firm’s information systems investments should be aligned with the overall business strategy, and in some cases may even become an emerging source of competitive advantage. While no one disagrees with this, operations management researchers are just starting to study how this alignment takes place and what the measurable benefits are. An issue under examination is how a manufacturer’s business strategy, characterized as either “market focused” or “operations focused,” affects its ability to garner efficiency versus customer service benefits from its ERP investments.
The second core argument behind SISP is that companies can best achieve IS-based alignment or competitive advantage by following a proactive, formal and comprehensive process that includes the development of broad organizational information requirements. This is in contrast to a “reactive” strategy, in which the IS group sits back and responds to other areas of the business only when a need arises. Such a process is especially relevant to ERP investments, given their costs and long-term impact. Seegars, Grover and Teng (1) have identified six dimensions that define an excellent SISP process (notice that many of these would apply to the strategic planning process in other areas as well):
1. Comprehensiveness
Comprehensiveness is “the extent to which an organization attempts to be exhaustive or inclusive in making and integrating strategic decisions”.
2. Formalization
Formalization is “the existence of structures, techniques, written procedures, and policies that guide the planning process”.
3. Focus
Focus is “the balance between creativity and control orientations inherent within the strategic planning system”. An innovative orientation emphasizes innovative solutions to deal with opportunities and threats. An integrative orientation emphasizes control, as implemented through budgets, resource allocation, and asset management.
4. Top-down flow
SISP should be initiated by top managers, with the aid of support staff.
5. Broad participation
Even though the planning flow is top-down, participation must involve multiple functional areas and, as necessary, key stakeholders at lower levels of the organization.
6. High consistency
SISP should be characterized by frequent meetings and reassessments of the overall strategy.
The recommendations found in the SISP literature have been echoed in the operations management literature. It has been suggested that firms should institutionalize a formal top-down planning process for linking information systems strategy to business needs as they move toward evolution in their management orientation, planning, organization, and control aspects of the IT function.
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Six Steps to Implementation
Many organizations have invested a great deal of effort in educating and informing consumers about health care quality. The most ambitious of these sponsors have embarked on multi-year projects to measure quality of care at various level of the health care system and report their findings to the public. Others with more limited resources and expertise may adapt publicly available materials to their own needs or recommend alternative sources of information for their audiences.
Although no two projects are exactly alike, successful sponsors generally follow the following six steps. Understanding what is involved in implementing a quality measurement and reporting project from start to finish is especially important for those sponsors that do it all themselves. But even sponsors that borrow as much as they can from others need to be aware of these steps so that they can make a conscious choice to skip those that do not apply.
Step 1. Getting Started
The first step in a consumer information project is to lay the foundation for the project—financially, politically, and organizationally. While this may sound obvious, many projects fail because sponsors do not take the time to prepare. They dive right into the process of collecting and reporting data, only to be taken by surprise when someone objects to the project or the money runs out.
On the other hand, some projects never even get off the ground because the sponsors can't move beyond the planning process. The key to moving beyond the organizational stage is to develop and stick to a schedule that will force decisions and push the participants forward in the process.
Step 2. Collecting and Analyzing Data
During the planning stage (Step 1), sponsors choose what types of quality measures to share with the audience.
For many sponsors, the next step in a consumer information project is to gather that data and conduct the appropriate analyses so that these measures have meaning for consumers.
Step 3. Presenting the Information
Presentation—or how you say what you have to say—plays a critical part in ensuring that your efforts to convey quality information are successful. One of the most challenging aspects of a performance measurement project is figuring out how to present the data in a way that helps consumers interpret the information and apply it to their health care-related decisions. Many sponsors have struggled with this question, only to find themselves making the same mistakes as others before them. One of the key objectives of this site is to support project sponsors in learning from the experiences of their peers as well as from the findings of researchers regarding the best ways to discuss, format, and display information on quality.
Five Key Points About Presentation
Here are the five most important things to remember about presenting information on health care quality:
1. There is no one way to do this—but there are better ways and worse ways.
At this time, there is no universally accepted approach to providing information on quality to consumers. The marketplace is full of experiments, most of which have not been evaluated. But we do know that some approaches to presenting quality information work better than others in the sense that consumers find it easier to understand the data and evaluate their options.
2. The answer that's best for you depends on who your audience is and how they'll use the information.
The way you present information—and even the information itself—should be driven by the needs of whoever is supposed to be reading it. Consumers are the focus of this Web site, but they are not the only audience for health care quality information. Sponsors can develop information for:
Public or private purchasers.
Non-purchasing intermediary organizations, such as consumer advocacy groups.
Policymakers.
Provider organizations.
Individual providers.
Health plans.
Each of these audiences has different needs for quality information. As a result, an approach that is appropriate for individual consumers may not be at all useful for a different audience.
For example:
Plans and providers may want more detail in order to identify specific opportunities to improve quality.
Policymakers, on the other hand, may want a higher level of aggregation that would reveal larger trends in the marketplace.
Intermediary organizations and purchasers may want enough data to draw their own conclusions rather than having the information interpreted for them.
3. Data cannot be presented in a vacuum.
The context you provide (or fail to provide) for the information affects what your audience pays attention to and how they interpret it. In particular, consumers are more likely to care about the information if you can connect it to their concerns about health care and the health care system. For instance, data on ease of referrals has greater relevance to an audience that understands how a health plan may limit their access to specialists. This implies that it is not enough to provide data; a quality report must include some explanation of how the health care system works and what the data reveal about a health care organization.
4. For the typical consumer, a quality measure has no meaning on its own.
It is the sponsor's job to turn quality measures into information that consumers can easily comprehend, evaluate, and use. You can do this by doing one or more of the following:
Grouping measures into consumer-friendly categories.
Offering a basis for comparison, such as an average or benchmark for the market.
Interpreting the information for your audience by making it clear which results are truly better than others.
For explanations and examples of each of these tasks, go to How To Say It.
5. The medium shapes the message.
Whether you rely on printed reports, Web sites, or live presentations, the medium you choose to deliver the information can determine how much you present and how you display it. For instance, you can offer many more layers of detail on the Web than you can in print without overwhelming your audience. A printed report, on the other hand, offers the ability to create large displays of information across multiple pages. This suggests that you will need to have some sense of what the final product will be before you can decide on a design and format for quality information.
Making Sure Your Materials Work for Your Audience
No matter how limited your resources may be, do what you can to test the materials as you develop them to make sure they are suitable for your audience. This approach allows you to identify and remedy trouble spots along the way rather than waiting until the information has been disseminated to discover any problems. Specifically, sponsors can conduct ongoing testing to assess:
Whether consumers can read the information easily.
Whether they can understand it.
Whether the content is appropriate for your audience.
Whether people are interested in your content (i.e., its salience).
Whether consumers can use your materials for the purpose for which they are intended.
Whether they can navigate through the materials to find the information they want.
Techniques for this kind of iterative testing include one-on-one interviews as well as focus groups.
For specifics on testing your materials, conducting interviews, and focus groups, go to Refining What You Do.
Step 4. Disseminating Information
Long before you have the information to distribute, you need to be thinking about how and when to get it into the hands of consumers. Sponsors should ask themselves:
What can we do to ensure that our audience is aware of our information and motivated to use it?
When is the best time to make the information available? Is this timing realistic?
What channels can we use to distribute the information to our audience? How can we make sure they see it?
How should we package the information? Should it stand alone or be incorporated into other information?
The answers to these questions will affect how much time you have to produce the report as well as the kinds of measures and depth of content that you can include. For example:
If the goal is to release a performance report in early fall so that consumers have it in time for the open enrollment season, you may not have enough time to conduct your own survey of enrollees but you could ask your plans to share the HEDIS® scores—which include results of the CAHPS® survey—that they have to report to NCQA by early summer.
If the most sensible way to package the performance information is to integrate it into open enrollment materials, you will have to deal with space constraints that would not be necessary in a stand-alone document. This may affect the way you present the data or how much data you can include.
Step 5. Supporting Consumers
For many sponsors of consumer information projects, the job ends once the reports have been distributed. But both experienced sponsors and researchers testing consumer behavior have demonstrated that it is not enough to give consumers data. They need help in interpreting the information on quality, integrating it with other relevant data (such as costs), and using it to make decisions. Without this help, many simply ignore the information they have, or worse, use it inappropriately.
Strategies for providing "decision support" include the following:
Refer consumers to consumer advocates and other "information intermediaries" who can help your audience understand and use the information you provide..
Offer consumers a worksheet that guides them through the process of evaluating their options. Design computer-based systems that facilitate decisionmaking by allowing the user to weight different factors or by ranking the available choices based on the user's response to a set of questions.
To determine which strategy will work best for your audience, you may want to consult with representative consumers and/or appropriate intermediaries. Also, be sure to evaluate your support strategy once it is implemented to find out how well it is serving the needs of your audience and how you can improve it.
Step 6. Evaluating the Project
Finally, the last step for sponsors is to evaluate the extent to which the project achieved its objectives. This could be as simple as asking whether consumers are aware of the information you produced or as complicated as finding out whether and how consumers used the information to help make decisions.
Evaluations are important for internal purposes because they enable you to determine how effective your project is and how it can be improved. But they are equally critical for external reasons. First, being able to demonstrate that the project has had a positive impact will help you secure political support and continued funding. In addition, an evaluation allows other sponsors to learn from your experience.
The following methods are commonly used to evaluate projects:Focus groups.Surveys.Usability testing.Analysis of changes in enrollment patterns.
References:
http://www.tdan.com/view-articles/5262
http://scm.ncsu.edu/public/facts/facs060329.html
http://www.talkingquality.gov/docs/section1/1_2.htm
