Background of Technology Project Essay

The Project to be studied is an implementation of a build assignment and tracking organization in an IT department in a medium sized company. The IT Department before the undertaking was started, had undergone a counsel change and a reorganization due to corporate cost sore and restructuring. The previous structure of the IT organization was teams of people that support specific practical applications in the remains, and the production line drug abusers of a particular application contacted the team assigned to their application for frame enhancements and support. There was no system for managing and tracking proposes and tasks, and it was left to the managers of to all(prenominal) one team to bobby pin project prioritization, assignment and tracking. This structure was changed to a pooled imaging structure where IT staff people were aggrouped by functional areas ( such as main(prenominal)frame support group, pc support group, web applications, etc). The IT structure was no longer hierarchical and the counterfeit was no longer handed flock in a top down approach thus creating a need for a systematic way of managing people and tasks to function effectively.SDLC (Systems using action Cycle)The Life Cycle for this particular project did not simply match the order of the phases as described in the Systems Development Life Cycle concept. Because of the immediate reorganization of the IT organization, current projects encountered delays and the IT procedures and tasks were disrupted. This prompted a need for a ready reshuffling of work between the new groups and a quick and dirty way to manage the work at hand and ledger unveiling work until a better system is implemented.InitiationThe initiation of a system (or project) begins when a business need or opportunity is identified. This happened for this project when a CIO was appointed to moderate the new IT organization and was asked to reduce head count by pooling the resources charm at the same time lifelessness provide timely and effective service to the business users of the IT systems and applications.System conceit Development anatomyIn this phase of SDLC, the business need has been authorise and the approaches for accomplishing the concept are reviewed for feasibility and appropriateness. Several approaches were considered for tackling the problem in the IT department. The beginning approach was an Excel spreadsheet to list all in all IT personnel and their assigned tasks and this turned out to be too cumbersome and hard for several(prenominal) persons to use. An in-house build uped web based system was alike considered and was in detail implemented but was cancelled since it was not flexible enough to handle the different tasks of the different IT groupings and the different sources of work demands. The last approach was all to buy an actual package that would retard the requirements and customize it for the IT organizations structure and procedure s or develop one in-house.Planning PhaseIn the planning phase, the concept/approach is further developed to describe how the business go forth operate once the approved system is implemented, and to define project resources, activities, schedules, tools, and reviews to ensure the products and /or services provide the required capability on-time and within budget.The planning phase for this particular project was be done while simple solutions were being utilise and implemented since there were time constraints and something had to be in place right away. A team was assembled to look into existing applications within the company or packages out in the market that would fit the requirement and assess its flexibility and long term viability for the organization. That team as well had to come up with a process flow of how work allow for be handled in the new IT structure to service in the use of the short-term solutions and to process in finding a long-term solution. Finally, d evil long term approaches were proposed. One was that of customizing the packaged software that was currently being used by the Help Desk to track PC and Mainframe work requests for PC Technicians and Mainframe SystemProgrammers, which was from a company called ameliorate. The other was to develop a work flow system in-house.Requirements Analysis PhaseIn this phase, functional user requirements are formally defined and delineate the requirements in terms of data, system performance, security, and maintainability requirements for the system.The functional user requirements for this project detailed all the different tasks that an IT organization performs and the information that needs to be tracked for each such as requestor, condition, assigned IT person etc. One of the main requirements gathered was that of accessibility of the work flow system. Different people will be entering work requests such as business users and help desk personnel and the user interface and performance r equirements for the devil vitrines would be farthest different. So the chosen system should have flexible interfaces and need to progress work status and results back to the requester in a medium that is getatable company wide. Another main requirement is that the system can be implemented quickly and should be flexible enough to easily add up features in the future.DesignThe physical characteristics of the system are intentional during this phase. For this project, afterward reviewing the requirements, the only option that would work was an out of the box solution such as the Remedy Action Request System. Since it was already being used by the Help Desk team, it has already proven itself as a flexible and reliable system to use. As a help desk software it allows entry of work request, assigns work, allows a way to log the progress of a request and stores all the history regarding a request. Design was simply a upshot of finding out the customizable options and features in Remedy and designing it for the different IT groups formed.Since help desk work was different as compared to application maturement work, two type of request were designed and one was for support/problems and one was an enhancement to the system or major project that have subtasks andinvolved lots of people with different roles and responsibilities. For the IT staff a client server platform was required for faster execution, and for accessibility and ease of use, a simple web-based interface was designed for the business users since they dont need to see too oft detail. Since company wide communications was done through and through email, work assignment, status and results need to be communicated through this medium.Development, Integration , Test and Implementation PhaseThe four phases for this project was combined into one because of the time constraints and since it was a packaged software approach and the main components no longer needed development and testing. Most of the development involved loading tables that the package uses such as logon ids, departments, user data etc, and the customization of the user interfaces. The necessary components of Remedy were installed and hooked up with the web servers and the email system. Before final rollout, it was given a outpouring basis by one representative in each IT group and finalized based on the recommendations of each representative. Once the work flow system was ready, the IT staff were trained on how to use it and how work should flow through the organization.ConclusionThe project as a whole went through a couple of cycles of the SDLC due to different implementations. But the final result was comparatively successful since it incorporated the ideas that Trepper suggested in his article Getting an edge on the competition which was about process management. According to Trepper, process management should also cover the establishment of actual development phases and activities, creation of a work flow among participants, and selection and implementation of tools and techniques better suited to the task. This was accomplished by the Remedy AR system.The customized Remedy AR System also incorporated the two principal source of best practices as listed by Trepper which is industry best practice and onesdeveloped within the company. The Remedy AR System already had the industry best practice since it is a widely used system and the company best practices were incorporated through the customization of the system based on recommendations of the different IT groups.