Role of a System Analyst as a Project Manager

PROJECT MANAGER



The role of a System analyst is to help organizations understand the challenges before them to make this transition and to ensure that the needs and expectations of the client are represented correctly in the final solution. Each company needs to define the specific roles and responsibilities that an analyst plays in their organization.

However, the general roles and responsibilities of an analyst are defined below. The system analyst is the person (or persons) who guides through the development of an information system. In performing these tasks the analyst must always match the information system objectives with the goals of the organization.
A systems analyst must possess good interpersonal communication skills because they must be able to converse back and forth with the client over what the problem is and how to go about finding the best solution. A good systems analysis should be able to take initiative and do things without being told. Also this person should have good reasoning and problem solving skills. These are all things that should be within the person naturally along with the actual computer skills necessary to analyze systems for a client.

As the System Analyst analyzes data, it includes system's study in order to get facts about business activity. It is about getting information and determining requirements. This responsibility includes only requirement determination, not the design of the system.

Apart from the analysis work, a System Analyst is also responsible for the designing of the new system/application.

A System Analyst is also required to perform as a programmer, where he actually writes the code to implement the design of the proposed application.
Due to the various responsibilities that a system analyst requires to handle, he has to be multifaceted person with varied skills required at various stages of the life cycle. In addition to the technical know-how of the information system development a system analyst should also have the following knowledge.

Business knowledge: As the analyst might have to develop any kind of a business system, he should be familiar with the general functioning of all kind of businesses.
Interpersonal skills: Such skills are required at various stages of development process for interacting with the users and extracting the requirements out of them
Problem solving skills: A system analyst should have enough problem solving skills for defining the alternate solutions to the system and also for the problems occurring at the various stages of the development process.

Information System Project is being initiated because the new information system is part of an overall strategic plan. Also the new information system responds to what an immediate business need.

What is a project by the way?

 A project is a planned undertaking with a beginning and an end that produce predetermined result and is usually constrained by a schedule and resource.
Not all project end in a successful manner. According to some researched, only 28% of system development projects successful and 72% of projects canceled, completed late, completed over budget, and/or limited in functionality. The reasons of this project failure would come form the incomplete or changing requirements of the project. The limited involvement of the user towards the system is also included. The lack of executive and technical support of the management into the project. Basically, the poor project planning with unclear objectives and lack of required resources needed for the project.

The role of System Analyst differs from organization to organization. Thus, any System Analyst should conceive necessary skill in order to be an effective toward the field of IT.

Let us focus on the managerial skills a System Analyst seizes.
Managerial skills needed by systems analysts include but are not limited to:

1. Resource management effectively managing the project's resources, including time, equipment, hardware, software, people, money, etc.
2. Project management determining the tasks and resources needed for a project and how they are related to each other,
3. Risk management identifying and minimizing risks,
4. Change management managing the system's (organization's) transition from one state to another.

In this matter, project management is needed in order no to have a project failure again to the future systems. Hence, it gives another role for a System Analyst to function as a Project Manager.

One question that we have asked is, “What would be the role of a System Analyst as a Project Manager?”,"What does it take to be a successful project manager?" It's as if there's a secret recipe for being successful in the field of project management. A few would dispute that nothing but experience counts; others favor formal training and certifications.

From our interviewee's point of view, the role of the Project Manager is the one who looks into the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to describe, organize, oversee and control the various project processes by their organization. He also added that a project manager is the person who has the overall responsibility for the successful planning and execution of a project. He must possess a combination of skills including an ability to ask penetrating questions, detect unstated assumptions and resolve interpersonal conflicts as well as more systematic management skills.

On what I have read, the planning function includes defining the project objective and developing a plan to accomplish the objective. The project manager should work with the project sponsor in order to define the specific objective of the project. Working with the sponsor is beneficial in many ways. For example, the sponsor is the person responsible for the resultant project and thus has a stake in the success of the project. Therefore, the sponsor should be very helpful in defining the project objective. In addition, "sponsors often can help secure interdepartmental cooperation and influence contractors and suppliers" (Davies, p. 83). This can be helpful throughout the life of the project.

The project manager must also develop a plan to accomplish the objective. The project manager should include project team members in this phase. Including members of the project team in the plan development phase "ensures a more comprehensive plan than he or she could develop alone (and) gains the commitment of the team to achieve the plan" (Gido & Clements, p. 292).

The project manager must then determine what tasks must be completed. Once this has been done, the tasks should be assigned to project team members or subcontractors. The project manager may also delegate authority to certain team members to oversee task completion via supervision of those assigned the tasks.

Basically, a System Analyst requires a lot of skill needed to perform all his responsibilities towards and project that they will be encountering. It is not necessary that he would be automatically being good on certain skill. At least he has the ability to learn and develop those skills for the future projects he would accept.

References:

http://www.lifecyclestep.com/open/407.2TheRoleofanAnalyst.htm
http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/
http://www.lifecyclestep.com