Systems Analysis & Design - Initiating & Planning Systems Development Projects

Activities
Project Initiation

Focuses on activities designed to assist in organizing team to conduct project planning.

Includes forming the project initiation team, establishing customer relationships, developing a plan to get the project started, setting project management procedures and creating overall environment.
Project Planning

Define activities and the work needed to complete each activity within a single project.

Outcomes :

1. BPP (Baseline Project Plan)
2. SOW (Statement of Work)

ssumptions about resources availability and potential problems will be made.

Assessing Project Feasibility
Economic
-a process of identifying the financial benefits and costs associated with a development project.
Technical
-a process of assessing the development organization’s ability to construct a proposed system.
-Include hardware, software, and operating system to be used in development.
Operational
-a process of assessing the degree to which a proposed system solves business problems or takes advantage of business opportunities.
Schedule
-a process of assessing the degree to which the potential time frame and completion dates for all major activities within a project meet the deadline and constraints for affecting change.
Legal and contractual
-a process of assessing potential legal and contractual ramifications due to the construction of a system.
Political
-a process of evaluating how stakeholders within the organization view the proposed system.

Economic Feasibility
Identify financial benefits and costs associated with a development project
Benefits :
Tangible - can be measured in dollars and with certainty
Categories :
1. Cost of reduction and avoidance
2. Error reduction
3. Increased feasibility
4. Increased speed of activity
5. Improvement of mgmt planning & control
6. New markets & increase sales opportunity
Intangible - cannot be measured in dollars/with certainty

May have direct organizational benefits or societal impact

Economic Feasibility - Costs
Tangible - Examples: items like hardware, software, operational
Intangible - Examples: loss of customer goodwill
One-time - associated with project initiation & development and the startup of the system.
- Example: new hardware, software purchase
Recurring - cost resulting from the ongoing evolution and use of the system
- Example: application software maintenance incremental data storage expense

Technical Feasibility
Assess the development organization’s ability to construct a proposed system.
Assessment Factors:
1. Project size.
2. Project structure.
3. The development group’s experience with the application and technology area.
4. The user group’s experience with development projects and application area.

Building the BPP
Baseline Project Plan (BPP)
contains all information collected during project initiation and planning.
Four Sections in BPP:
1. Introduction - project review & recommendation.
2. System Description - alternatives & system description.
3. Feasibility Assessment - economic, political & schedule, timeline and resource analysis.
4. Management Issues - team configuration and management, communication plan, project standards and procedures, others.