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Systems Development Model

noreply@blogger.com (☻MaGZ☻) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:39:00 +0000

PROCESS MODELS

The System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) process applies to information system development projects ensuring that all functional and user requirements and agency strategic goals and objectives are met. The SDLC provides a structured and standardized process for all phases of any system development effort. These phases track the development of a system through several development stages from feasibility analysis, system planning and concept development; to acquisition and requirements definition; design; development; integration and testing; deployment and acceptance; though deployment and production; and finally to system retirement.

The systems development life cycle (SDLC) is a conceptual model used in project management that describes the stages involved in an information system development project, from an initial feasibility study through maintenance of the completed application.

Various Systems Development Life Cycle methodologies have been developed to guide the processes involved, and these are the Software Process Models.

According to Kerem Kosaner (2008), Process models are processes of the same nature that are classified together into a model. Thus, a process model is a description of a process at the type level. Since the process model is at the type level, a process is an instantiation of it. The same process model is used repeatedly for the development of many applications and thus, has many instantiations. One possible use of a process model is to prescribe how things must/should/could is done in contrast to the process itself which is really what happens. A process model is roughly an anticipation of what the process will look like. What the process shall be will be determined during actual system development.

A software process model is a development strategy that incorporates the development process, methods and tools used to design software. It is chosen based on the nature of the software and the methods and tools used in development. It often represent a networked sequence of activities, objects, transformations, and events that embody strategies for accomplishing software evolution. Such models can be used to develop more precise and formalized descriptions of software life cycle activities. A software process model is an abstract representation of a process. It presents a description of a process from some particular perspective.

These software models are classified as the traditional process models and the process models in recent times. There are many to mention software process models. So let me identify and discuss at least three of the systems development model.

The waterfall modelThe waterfall model is a popular version of the systems development life cycle model for software engineering. Often considered the classic approach to the systems development life cycle, the waterfall model describes a development method that is linear and sequential. Waterfall development has distinct goals for each phase of development. Imagine a waterfall on the cliff of a steep mountain. Once the water has flowed over the edge of the cliff and has begun its journey down the side of the mountain, it cannot turn back. It is the same with waterfall development. Once a phase of development is completed, the development proceeds to the next phase and there is no turning back.

Waterfall model phases

Requirements analysis and definition

What is a requirement?

It may range from a high-level abstract statement of a service or of a system constraint to a detailed mathematical functional specification. This is inevitable as requirements may serve a dual function and it may be the basis for a bid for a contract - therefore must be open to interpretation. Also may be the basis for the contract itself - therefore must be defined in detail. Both these statements may be called as a requirement.

Requirements definition: A statement in natural language plus diagrams of the services the system provides and its operational constraints. Written for customers

Requirements specification: A structured document setting out detailed descriptions of the system services. Written as a contract between client and contractor

Software specification: A detailed software description which can serve as a basis for a design or implementation. Written for developers

In this phase, establishing what the customer requires from a software system must the main concern. It is necessary to remember first the requirements needed in a systems development life cycle. The problem is specified along with the desired service objectives (goals) and the constraints are being identified.

System and software design

In System Analysis and Design phase, the whole software development process, the overall software structure and its outlay are defined. In case of the client/server processing technology, the number of tiers required for the package architecture, the database design, the data structure design etc are all defined in this phase. After designing part a software development model is created. Analysis and Design are very important in the whole development cycle process. Any fault in the design phase could be very expensive to solve in the software development process. In this phase, the logical system of the product is developed. Software Requirement Analysis is also known as feasibility study. In this requirement analysis phase, the development team visits the customer and studies their system requirement. They examine the need for possible software automation in the given software system. After feasibility study, the development team provides a document that holds the different specific recommendations for the candidate system. It also consists of personnel assignments, costs of the system, project schedule and target dates.

The requirements analysis and information gathering process is intensified and focused specially on software. To understand what type of the programs to be built, the system analyst must study the information domain for the software as well as understand required function, behaviour, performance and interfacing. The main purpose of requirement analysis phase is to find the need and to define the problem that needs to be solved.

In the system and software design phase, the system specifications are translated into a software representation. The software engineer at this stage is concerned with Data structure, Software architecture, Algorithmic detail and Interface representations.

The hardware requirements are also determined at this stage along with a picture of the overall system architecture. By the end of this stage the software engineer should be able to identify the relationship between the hardware, software and the associated interfaces. Any faults in the specification should ideally not be passed ‘down stream. It is the level of deriving a solution which satisfies software requirements.

Implementation and unit testing

In the implementation and testing phase stage the designs are translated into the software domain into a detailed documentation from the design phase can significantly reduce the coding effort. Testing at this stage focuses on making sure that any errors are identified and that the software meets its required specification. After code generation phase the software program testing begins. Different testing methods are available to detect the bugs that were committed during the previous phases. A number of testing tools and methods are already available for testing purpose.

Integration and system testing

In the integration and system testing phase all the program units are integrated and tested to ensure that the complete system meets the software requirements. After this stage the software is delivered to the customer [Deliverable – The software product is delivered to the. In integration and system testing, the design must be decoded into a machine-readable form. If the design of software product is done in a detailed manner, code generation can be achieved without much complication. For generation of code, Programming tools like Compilers, Interpreters, and Debuggers are used. For coding purpose different high level programming languages like C, C++, Pascal and Java are used. The right programming language is chosen according to the type of application.

Operation and maintenance

The maintenance phase is usually the longest stage of the software. In this phase the software is updated to meet the changing customer needs, adapted to accommodate changes in the external environment, correct errors and oversights previously undetected in the testing phases and enhancing the efficiency of the software. Software will definitely go through change once when it is delivered to the customer. There are large numbers of reasons for the change. Change could happen due to some unpredicted input values into the system. In addition to this the changes in the system directly have an effect on the software operations. The software should be implemented to accommodate changes that could be happen during the post development period.

The waterfall model maintains that one should move to a phase only when its preceding phase is completed and perfected. Phases of development in the waterfall model are thus discrete, and there is no jumping back and forth or overlap between them

As many find this approach particularly rigid, modifications have been made over the years and new variants of the model have emerged

The drawback of the waterfall model is the difficulty of accommodating change after the process is underway.

The advantage of waterfall development is that it allows for departmentalization and managerial control. A schedule can be set with deadlines for each stage of development and a product can proceed through the development process like a car in a carwash, and theoretically, be delivered on time. Development moves from concept, through design, implementation, testing, installation, troubleshooting, and ends up at operation and maintenance. Each phase of development proceeds in strict order, without any overlapping or iterative steps.

The disadvantage of waterfall development is that it does not allow for much reflection or revision. Once an application is in the testing stage, it is very difficult to go back and change something that was not well-thought out in the concept stage. Alternatives to the waterfall model include joint application development (JAD), rapid application development (RAD), synch and stabilize, build and fix, and the spiral model. The waterfall model however is argued by many to be a bad idea in practice, mainly because of their belief that it is impossible to get one phase of a software product's lifecycle "perfected" before moving on to the next phases and learning from them. A typical problem is when requirements change midway through, resulting in a lot of time and effort being invalidated due to the "Big Design Up Front"

IIn summary, the criticisms of a non-iterative development approach (such as the waterfall model) are as follows:

Poor flexibility; the majority of software is written as part of a contract with a client, and clients are notorious for changing their stated requirements. Thus the software project must be adaptable, and spending considerable effort in design and implementation based on the idea that requirements will never change is neither adaptable nor realistic in these cases.

Unless those who specify requirements and those who design the software system in question are highly competent, it is difficult to know exactly what is needed in each phase of the software process before some time is spent in the phase "following" it.

Constant testing from the design, implementation and verification phases is required to validate the phases preceding them. Users of the waterfall model may argue that if designers follow a disciplined process and do not make mistakes that there is no need to constantly validate the preceding phases.

Frequent incremental builds (following the "release early, release often" philosophy) are often needed to build confidence for a software production team and their client.

It is difficult to estimate time and cost for each phase of the development process.

The waterfall model brings no formal means of exercising management control over a project and planning control and risk management are not covered within the model itself.

Only a certain number of team members will be qualified for each phase, which can lead at times to some team members being inactive.

Prototyping Model

An easily modified and extensible model (representation, simulation or demonstration) of planned software system, likely including its interface and input/output functionality

The main focus of this model is to develop a prototype of the software. The client then evaluates the working prototype, and suggests improvements and corrections, which all go into developing the real application.

The prototyping model is used when the client is unsure about the exact specification but has a genuine need. Then the software engineers can develop a rough prototype to gain an approval of the customer. If the prototype developed is a working model, the developers may use code fragments of the prototype when developing the final application.

Of course, the developers must resist the temptation to extend a prototype into a full fledged application. Because if this is done, the quality will suffer in the long run. The prototype is only meant for evaluation purposes. Some code fragments may be used, but using the whole prototype is not generally a good idea.
The goal of prototyping based development is to counter the first two limitations of the waterfall model discussed earlier. The basic idea here is that instead of freezing the requirements before a design or coding can proceed, a throwaway prototype is built to understand the requirements. This prototype is developed based on the currently known requirements. Development of the prototype obviously undergoes design, coding and testing. But each of these phases is not done very formally or thoroughly. By using this prototype, the client can get an "actual feel" of the system, since the interactions with prototype can enable the client to better understand the requirements of the desired system.

Prototyping is an attractive idea for complicated and large systems for which there is no manual process or existing system to help determining the requirements. In such situations letting the client "plan" with the prototype provides invaluable and intangible inputs which helps in determining the requirements for the system. It is also an effective method to demonstrate the feasibility of a certain approach. This might be needed for novel systems where it is not clear that constraints can be met or that algorithms can be developed to implement the requirements.

gather requirements
developer & customer define overall objectives, identify areas needing more investigation – risky requiremnets

quick design focusing on what will be visible to user – input & output formats
use existing program fragments, program generators to throw together working version prototype evaluated and requirements refined

There are several steps in the Prototyping Model:

The requirements are being gathered for new system requirements are defined in as much detail as possible. This usually involves interviewing a number of users representing all the departments or aspects of the existing system.

A preliminary design is created for the new system.

A first prototype of the new system is constructed from the preliminary design. This is usually a scaled-down system, and represents an approximation of the characteristics of the final product.

The users thoroughly evaluate the first prototype, noting its strengths and weaknesses, what needs to be added, and what should to be removed. The developer collects and analyzes the remarks from the users.

The first prototype is modified, based on the comments supplied by the users, and a second prototype of the new system is constructed.

The second prototype is evaluated in the same manner as was the first prototype.

The preceding steps are iterated as many times as necessary, until the users are satisfied that the prototype represents the final product desired.

The final system is constructed, based on the final prototype.

The final system is thoroughly evaluated and tested. Routine maintenance is carried out on a continuing basis to prevent large-scale failures and to minimize downtime.

The process iterated until customer & developer satisfied

• then throw away prototype and rebuild system to high quality

• alternatively can have evolutionary prototyping – start with well understood requirements.

Advantages of Prototyping

Users are actively involved in the development. It provides a better system to users, as users have natural tendency to change their mind in specifying requirements and this method of developing systems supports this user tendency.

Since in this methodology a working model of the system is provided, the users get a better understanding of the system being developed.

Errors can be detected much earlier as the system is mode side by side.

Quicker user feedback is available leading to better solutions.

Disadvantages

Leads to implementing and then repairing way of building systems.

Practically, this methodology may increase the complexity of the system as scope of the system may expand beyond original plans.

customer may want to hang onto first version, may want a few fixes rather than rebuild. First version will have compromises

developer may make implementation compromises to get prototype working quickly. Later on developer may become comfortable with compromises and forget why they are inappropriate.

customer may want to hang onto first version, may want a few fixes rather than rebuild. First version will have compromises

developer may make implementation compromises to get prototype working quickly. Later on developer may become comfortable with compromises and forget why they are inappropriate.

And last systems development life cycle would be the, The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is a methodology used to develop and refine an organization's software development process. The model describes a five-level evolutionary path of increasingly organized and systematically more mature processes. CMM was developed and is promoted by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), a research and development center sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). SEI was founded in 1984 to address software engineering issues and, in a broad sense, to advance software engineering methodologies. More specifically, SEI was established to optimize the process of developing, acquiring, and maintaining heavily software-reliant systems for the DoD. Because the processes involved are equally applicable to the software industry as a whole, SEI advocates industry-wide adoption of the CMM.

The CMM is similar to ISO 9001, one of the ISO 9000 series of standards specified by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The ISO 9000 standards specify an effective quality system for manufacturing and service industries; ISO 9001 deals specifically with software development and maintenance. The main difference between the two systems lies in their respective purposes: ISO 9001 specifies a minimal acceptable quality level for software processes, while the CMM establishes a framework for continuous process improvement and is more explicit than the ISO standard in defining the means to be employed to that end.

CMM's Five Maturity Levels of Software Processes

At the initial level, processes are disorganized, even chaotic. Success is likely to depend on individual efforts, and is not considered to be repeatable, because processes would not be sufficiently defined and documented to allow them to be replicated.

At the repeatable level, basic project management techniques are established, and successes could be repeated, because the requisite processes would have been made established, defined, and documented.

At the defined level, an organization has developed its own standard software process through greater attention to documentation, standardization, and integration.

At the managed level, an organization monitors and controls its own processes through data collection and analysis.

At the optimizing level, processes are constantly being improved through monitoring feedback from current processes and introducing innovative processes to better serve the organization's particular needs.

The Software development Life Cycle models could control, monitor large projects, can evaluate costs and completion targets, well defined user input, have ease of maintenance, there are standards in development and design. Nevertheless, it increased development time and cost, the systems used these models must be defined up front, user input is sometimes limited and it is really hard to estimate costs and sometimes project overruns.

At one time the model was beneficial mostly to the world of automating activities that were assigned to clerks and accountants. However, the world of technological evolution is demanding that systems have a greater functionality that would assist help desk technicians/administrators or information technology specialists/analysts.

References:

http://www.selectbs.com/adt/analysis-and-design/what-is-the-waterfall-model

http://searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid183_gci755441,00.html

http://www.e-digg.com/services/software/sdlc-life-cycle.html

Kerem Kosaner (2008), Software Engineering.

http://www.Process Modeling Definition « Software Engineering.htm

Critical Success Factors

noreply@blogger.com (☻MaGZ☻) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:43:00 +0000

Critical Success Factors

In simple terms, any organization that produces products and/or delivers services should be viewed as a transformation mechanism requiring continuous process improvement and innovation. When appropriate events and conditions trigger action (process initiation), customer requirements and organizational resources such as raw materials, money, information, and yes, processes are transformed into goods, services, and business outcomes for the customers' benefit or for the process completion.

What is a Critical Success Factor?

Rockart defined CSFs as:

"The limited number of areas in which results, if they are satisfactory, will ensure successful competitive performance for the organization. They are the few key areas where things must go right for the business to flourish. If results in these areas are not adequate, the organization's efforts for the period will be less than desired."

He also concluded that CSFs are "areas of activity that should receive constant and careful attention from management."

Critical Success Factors (CSF’s) are the critical factors or activities required for ensuring the success your business. The term was initially used in the world of data analysis, and business analysis.

Most smaller and more pragmatic businesses can still use CSF’s but we need to take a different, more pragmatic approach.

Critical Success Factors have been used significantly to present or identify a few key factors that organizations should focus on to be successful.

As a definition, critical success factors refer to "the limited number of areas in which satisfactory results will ensure successful competitive performance for the individual, department, or organization”.

Critical success Factors define key areas of performance that are essential for the organization to accomplish its mission. Identifying the business drivers for change and the critical success factors is the most important element of any business transformations. John F. Rockart concludes that CSF’s are areas of activity that should receive constant and careful attention from management. Critical success factors are strongly related to the mission and strategic goals of your business project. Whereas the mission and goals focus on the aims and what is to be achieved. Critical success factors focus on the most important areas and get to the very heart of both what is to be achieved and how you will achieve it.

The critical success factor (CSF) approach is a technique that will aid health administrators, planners and managers to identify, specify and sort among the most relevant and critical factors determining an organization's survival and success. Following a top-down management perspective, this paper discusses the CSF methodology as a strategic information management process comprising several important phases: (i) understanding the external factors such as the organization's industry, market and environment; (ii) achieving strong support and championship from top management; (iii) encouraging the proactive involvement of management and staff in generic CSF identification; (iv) educating and directing the participation of staff members in CSF verification and further refinement of generic CSFs into specific CSFs; and (v) aggregating, prioritizing and translating activity-related CSFs into organizational information requirements for the design of the organization's management information infrastructure. The implementation of this CSF approach is illustrated in the context of a British Columbia community hospital, with insights provided into key issues for future health researchers and practitioners.

For most businesses, there are only a generally a limited number of areas – like sales or product development – which makes a business succeed. We can select critical success factor with insights and analysis. The success or failure of your business depends on how you approach your unique set of critical success factors. Understanding these factors and spending 100 percent attention to them is a sure way to add power to your efforts and jump start towards a new level of performance.

Identifying Critical Success Factors is important as it allows firms to focus their efforts on building their capabilities to meet the Critical Success Factor's, or even allow firms to decide if they have the capability to build the requirements necessary to meet Critical Success Factors (CSF's).

Critical Success Factors is identifying as a very iterative process. Every mission, strategic goals and Critical Success Factors are essentially linked and each will be refined as you develop them.

Here are five steps to Critical Success Factors that will directly affect your success in achieving any goal:

Establish your businesses or project's mission and strategic goals.

In achieving a success for an organization it is always a must to identify your mission, goals and objectives because these will serve as a basis on how will you decide what could be the possible Critical Success Factors that you are going to apply. You cannot skip on choosing your critical success factors unless you identify your mission and goals. In identifying your Critical Success Factors is just like identifying your plans or your ways of achieving your goals and objectives and making your mission possible to happen. For a project to have its significance and completion in due time, it would start with a mission and a set of goals. A project can also be done without these goals and mission but it is best for a team to be specific in what they would want to conquer within the whole development duration. It would also be easy for them to identify the activities that they will be dealing with towards the endpoint since a precise set of targets are known from the very beginning.

For each strategic goal, ask yourself "what area of business or project activity is essential to achieve this goal?" The answers to the question are your candidate CSFs.

There are four basic types of Critical Success Factor's.

Industry Critical Success Factor's (CSF's) resulting from specific industry characteristics; these factors result from specific industry characteristics. These are the things that the organization must do to remain competitive.

Strategy Critical Success Factor's (CSF's) resulting from the chosen competitive strategy of the business; these factors result from the specific competitive strategy chosen by the organization. The way in which the company chooses to position themselves, market themselves, whether they are high volume low cost or low volume high cost producers, etc.

Environmental Critical Success Factor's (CSF's) resulting from economic or technological changes; these factors result from macro-environmental influences on an organization. Things like the business climate, the economy, competitors, and technological advancements are included in this category.

Temporal Critical Success Factor's (CSF's) resulting from internal organizational needs and changes; these factors result from the organization's internal forces. Specific barriers, challenges, directions, and influences will determine these CSFs.

Towards these given types of Critical Success Factors, you are then ready to answer the step two and would mainly used in the business process your organization operates.

Evaluate the list of candidate CSFs to find the absolute essential elements for achieving success - these are your Critical Success Factors.

After it, you should have identify the resources, assistance, information or anything else that might be needed to reach the goal. As you identify and evaluate candidate CSFs, you may uncover some new strategic objectives or more detailed objectives. So you may need to define your mission, objectives and CSFs iteratively. Deriving other data or information about the subject of your project or goal is also important. After you have identified and specify your strategic goals and objectives, then you have to list down the possible Critical Success Factors that could be used to help that goals and objectives be achieved. This helps you maintain the impact of your Critical Success Factors, and so give good direction and prioritization to other elements of your business or project strategy.

Identify how you will monitor and measure each of the CSFs.

The monitoring and measuring each CSF’s is effectively done during surveys, interviews and research toward the people. The most important data collection activity is conducting interviews with participants. In this activity, the participants have an opportunity to talk about their management challenges and their contributions to the organization and/or the operational unit’s successes and failures. The interactive nature of the interview process provides opportunities for clarification and for guiding the interview in areas that might expose particular barriers and obstacles to accomplishing the mission.

Step Five: Communicate your CSFs along with the other important elements of your business or project's strategy.

It is a basic thing that every element in an organization communicates with each other in order to organize all the data that work along with the business strategies.

Step Six: Keep monitoring and reevaluating your CSFs to ensure you keep moving towards your aims. Indeed, whilst CSFs are sometimes less tangible than measurable goals, it is useful to identify as specifically as possible how you can measure or monitor each one.

Critical Success Factor is a great element of an organizational activity which is central to its future success. Critical success factors may change over time, and may include items such as product quality, employee attitudes, manufacturing flexibility, and brand awareness. This can enable analysis. Thus giving any organization the courage to make plans and establishing business strategies according to the mission, vision, objectives and goals that set by the company. It is a nice start for every company so that every end of the day, they could see a beautiful result from all their hardships which is the great success they have made.

References:

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_80.htm
http://www.army.mil/ArmyBTKC/focus/cpi/csf.htm
http://rapidbi.com/created/criticalsuccessfactors.html

Role of a System Analyst as a Project Manager

noreply@blogger.com (☻MaGZ☻) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 19:29:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (☻MaGZ☻) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 18:04:00 +0000

ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

In the spectrum of organizational change, which is the most radical type of change: automation, rationalization of procedures, business re engineering, or paradigm shifts?

In a business world today, the most frequent question would be, “What is the best thing to do to make an organization progress?” Since our world is experiencing a very fast-changing environment, I guess we could never adopt those changes easily. It is also because of the hundred of opportunities and pitfalls passing us every moment. We will also be confused of the thousands of techniques, solutions and methods that claim to help business improve productivity, quality and customer satisfaction.

In these buzzwords, a company President or business owner has so many choices that could be called as Total Quality Management, Customer Satisfaction or Re-engineering. We could compare them to a new bargain hunter into a massive grocery store, who are hungry but still could not choose because of the different varieties of products with so many brands, sizes that usually lead to confusion on what to buy.

In response to this confusion, many do nothing, often afraid of making the wrong choices. Others change the techniques they use every few months, using the “program du’jeur” method of organizational change, otherwise known as MBS (Management by Best Seller). Neither of these replies successfully helps the organization to stay in the industry longer. Changing nothing will produce nothing. Implementing a different buzzword (Total Quality, Just in Time, Re-engineering, etc.) every few months often creates a “whipsaw” effect that causes mass confusion among your employees.

Today's business environment produces change in the workplace more suddenly and frequently than ever before. Mergers, acquisitions, new technology, restructuring and downsizing are all factors that contribute to a growing climate of uncertainty. Jobs, health, even marriages can be placed at risk, jeopardizing productivity and profitability.
People have deep attachments to their organization, work group, and way of working. The ability to adapt to changing work conditions is key for individual and organizational survival. Change will be ever present and learning to manage and lead change includes not only understanding human factors but also skill to manage and lead change effectively.

These buzzwords are often a hammer in search of a nail, techniques applied with no clear focus as to the why, expected results or return on investment.

According to an article that I read, a senior management of an organization proclaimed in a memo that Total Quality should be a way of life. One senior vice president declared that he wanted 25% of his organization using Total Quality tools within a year. This caused tremendous excitement in the organization, However, the follow-through was delayed, occasionally inappropriate and sometimes not there. Many employees became discouraged with the process and considered it just another management fad. With the next business downturn, virtually all training had stopped and little enthusiasm was left. Other organizations clearly focus on technical problems and on improving what they had. They are initially successful, but become victims of their own success. I call this an improved, planned incremental approach. Their initial quality improvement teams may be so successful they rapidly create more teams, without the qualitative organization-wide changes (re-engineering) necessary to sustain a permanent effort.
Change is hard on people and organizations. But it's one of those necessary evils that keep companies in the lead or helps destroy them.

The problem with the people involve in the transformation initiative in the resistance to change. The people easily react on these and take this kind of announcement as a hitch. They immediately complain to one another that the changes will going to devastate all the operations they have in the organization.

Workplaces are faced with endless change (Herscovitch and Meyer, 2002), and effective management of that change is an important competency currently required by an organization (Paton and McCalman, 2000). The growing frequency and complexity of workplace change requires employees to adapt to change without disruption; however,
resistance to change is the more common reaction (Caldwell et al., 2004). As managers make decisions for coping with change, they must consider not only how firm performance will be affected but also how employees will be affected.

As Herscovitch and Meyer (2002, p. 474) stated:
Given the accelerated rate and complexity of changes in the workplace, it is not surprising that there is a large and growing literature on the causes, consequences, and strategies of organizational change. What is surprising, however, is the paucity of research on employee reactions to change.

There is a growing interest in understanding how change is experienced by individual employees (Judge et al., 1999) and researchers are beginning to investigate the role of employee commitment in organizational change situations (Herscovitch and Meyer, 2002; Noble and Mokwa, 1999). To attain commitment, we believe that top management must strive to understand its critical role in the successful implementation of strategic initiatives.

The phenomenon is so entrenched it can only be chalked up to human nature. But while managing change can sometimes feel like moving a mountain, it can also be incredibly rewarding, particularly when you start seeing results.

In implementing changes, there are four practices that I guess should be accepted according to the article I have read.

You should have an apparent purpose or goal to a change initiative. Change should be a relatively orderly process, but for that to occur, people have to understand why change is necessary and how changes will affect them. This is easier, of course, when the problems are obvious—earnings are collapsing or a competitor has dropped prices 20 percent. Because we cannot immediately see the changes that had been made by the senior officers. Aggressive pressure seems to be rising, but you do not know for sure, and still, you have to take action. With that business rationale for changes, in those cases, unyielding communication should be reinforced with lots of data, is the best ammunition you have. It will be more challenging for them to communicate especially if the change takes place on a larger company. The larger your company, the more challenging it will be to communicate the need for change. After all, if the company has been through enough change programs, employees will assume you will go away if they just wait long enough. In a business scenario, it is more suggested to stick to your guns and stand strong to your goals.

Employ and uphold only right adherent and get-on-with-it type's people. We all know that the very first dilemma that an organization could have in a business transformation is the resistance of the employee to change. All and sundry in business claims to like change. To say or else would be career suicide. Based on researched and estimation, only or less than 10 percent of the population on a company is real in adopting the change. And only 70 to 80 percent of them agreed that transformation is needed they will say, “OK already, get on with it.” The rest are resisters. To see the effect to make change happen, organizations must enthusiastically employ and uphold only real adherent and people who were very much willing to explore and transform to a more new organization. But with everyone claiming to like change, how can you tell who is for real? These people have certain fearlessness about the unknown. If they fail, they know they can pick themselves up, dust themselves off and move on. They're thick-skinned about risk, which allows them to make bold decisions without a lot of data.

Rummage out and eliminate the people who always resist changing, even if their performance is satisfactory because among the four practices, this would be the hardest practice to be employed. Its tough to let anyone go, but it's particularly difficult to fire people who are not actually screwing up and may in fact be doing quite well. However in any organization, there are still who do not want to accept the reality of change even how harsh the scenario would be. They are so invested—emotionally, intellectually, or politically—in the status quo that they cannot see a way to improve anything. These people usually have to go. It may sound cruel on their part but still you are just thinking not for yourself but for the sake of the whole organization you are with. So it is needed that you should avoid any resisters in an organization. They foster an underground resistance and lower the morale of the people who support change. They're wasting their own time: They're working at a company where they don't agree with or share in the vision, and they should be encouraged to find one where they do.

Anticipate the things that may happen. Most organizations capitalize on obvious opportunities. When a competitor fails, they move in on their customers. When a new technology emerges, they invest in it and create product line extensions. Nevertheless, the valid truth that should always be considered is the unpredictable events that may happen. The opportunities should be assess on how they can affect the organization and how to make the most of them. Fostering this capability takes a certain determination, but the rewards can be huge. Bankruptcies are another type of calamity that reveals all kinds of opportunities. Of course, they're tragic to the employees. Jobs are lost, and pensions disappear into thin air. But jobs and futures can also be created from the cinders. With all the noise out there about change, it's easy to get overwhelmed and confused. But these are the only four practices that matter. That's it. There's nothing to be afraid of.

So let me define first what is organizational change really means based on the researched I have gathered.

The typical concept of organizational change is in regard to organization-wide change, as opposed to smaller changes such as adding a new person, modifying a program, etc. Examples of organization-wide change might include a change in mission, restructuring operations, new technologies, mergers, major collaborations, "rightsizing", new programs such as Total Quality Management, re-engineering, etc. Some experts refer to organizational transformation. Often this term designates a fundamental and radical reorientation in the way the organization operates. Organizational change is any action or set of actions resulting in a shift in direction or process that affects the way an organization works. Change can be deliberate and planned by leaders within the organization change can originate outside the organization and be beyond its control. Change may affect the strategies an organization uses to carry out its mission, the processes for implementing those strategies, the tasks and functions performed by the people in the organization, and the relationships between those people. Naturally, some changes are relatively small, while others are sweeping in scope, amounting to an organizational transformation. Change is a fact of organizational life, just as it is in human life. An organization that does not change cannot survive long much less thrive in an unpredictable world. Several factors may make organizational change necessary, including new competition in the marketplace or new demands by customers.

These types of external forces may create expectations of improved efficiency, better service, or innovative products. When organizational change is well planned and implemented, it helps assure the organizations continued survival. It can produce many tangible benefits, including improved competitiveness, better financial performance, and higher levels of customer and employee satisfaction. These benefits may take some time to achieve; however, and the transition period that accompanies major organizational change usually is a time of upheaval and uncertainty. Not every individual in the organization will benefit personally from change; some will be casualties of change, especially if jobs are cut or realigned. But change should make the organization as a whole stronger and better equipped for the future. It usually occurs when a company makes a transition from its current state to some desired future state. Managing organizational change is the process of planning and implementing change in organizations in such a way as to minimize employee resistance and cost to the organization, while also maximizing the effectiveness of the change effort.

Today’s business environment requires companies to undergo changes almost constantly if they are to remain competitive. Factors such as globalization of markets and rapidly evolving technology force businesses to respond in order to survive. Organizational change management includes processes and tools for managing the people side of the change at an organizational level. These tools include a structured approach that can be used to effectively transition groups or organizations through change. When combined with an understanding of individual change management, these tools provide a framework for managing the people side of change. Organizational change management processes include techniques for creating a change management strategy (readiness assessments), engaging senior managers as change leaders (sponsorship), building awareness of the need for change (communications), developing skills and knowledge to support the change (education and training), helping employees move through the transition (coaching by managers and supervisors), and methods to sustain the change (measurement systems, rewards and reinforcement). Change should not be done for the sake of change -- it's a strategy to accomplish some overall goal. Usually organizational change is provoked by some major outside driving force, e.g., substantial cuts in funding, address major new markets/clients, need for dramatic increases in productivity/services, etc. Typically, organizations must undertake organization-wide change to evolve to a different level in their life cycle, e.g., going from a highly reactive, entrepreneurial organization to more stable and planned development. Transition to a new chief executive can provoke organization-wide change when his or her new and unique personality pervades the entire organization.

Range of Organizational Change

The spectrum of organizational change is composed of four parts, arranged from lowest to highest in terms of both risks and rewards: automation, rationalization of procedures, business re-engineering, and paradigm shift. Meanwhile, the term radical is synonymous with deep-seated, essential, major, thorough, sweeping, and drastic. So when we say radical organizational change, we are referring to a type of organizational change that will bring about largely significant and drastic changes.

1. AUTOMATION: Using technology to perform current tasks more efficiently & effectively.
Automation or industrial automation or numerical control is the use of control systems such as computers to control industrial machinery and processes, reducing the need for human intervention. In the scope of industrialization, automation is a step beyond mechanization. Whereas mechanization provided human operators with machinery to assist them with the physical requirements of work, automation greatly reduces the need for human sensory and mental requirements as well. Processes and systems can also be automated. Mechanizing procedures to speed up the performance of existing tasks. It is the process of having a machine or machines accomplish tasks hitherto performed wholly or partly by humans. As used here, a machine refers to any inanimate electromechanical device such as a robot or computer. As a technology, automation can be applied to almost any human endeavor, from manufacturing to clerical and administrative tasks. An example of automation is the heating and air-conditioning system in the modern household. After initial programming by the occupant, these systems keep the house at a constant desired temperature regardless of the conditions outside.

2. RATIONALIZATION OF PROCEDURES: Streamline Standard Operating Procedures; eliminate bottlenecks.
It is the process of constructing a logical justification for a belief, decision, action or lack thereof that was originally arrived at through a different mental process. It is a defense mechanism in which unacceptable behaviors or feelings are explained in a rational or logical manner; this avoids the true explanation of the behavior or feeling in question.
It is the application of efficiency or effectiveness measures to an organization. Rationalization can occur at the onset of a downturn in an organization's performance or results. It usually takes the form of cutbacks intended to bring the organization back to profitability and may involve layoffs, plant closures, and cutbacks in supplies and resources. It often involves changes in organization structure, particularly in the form of downsizing. The term is also used in a cynical way as a euphemism for mass layoffs.

3. BUSINESS RE-ENGINEERING: Radical redesign of processes to improve cost, quality, service; maximize benefits of technology. Business Re engineering is the analysis and redesign of work flow within and between enterprises. BPR reached its heyday in the early 1990's when Michael Hammer and James Champy published their best-selling book, "Re engineering the Corporation". The authors promoted the idea that sometimes radical redesign and reorganization of an enterprise (wiping the slate clean) was necessary to lower costs and increase quality of service and that information technology was the key enabler for that radical change. Hammer and Champy felt that the design of workflow in most large corporations was based on assumptions about technology, people, and organizational goals that were no longer valid. It is the main way in which organizations become more efficient and modernize. Business process re engineering transforms an organization in ways that directly affect performance.

They suggested seven principles of re engineering to streamline the work process and thereby achieve significant levels of improvement in quality, time management, and cost:

1. Organize around outcomes, not tasks.
2. Identify all the processes in an organization and prioritize them in order of redesign urgency.
3. Integrate information processing work into the real work that produces the information.
4. Treat geographically dispersed resources as though they were centralized.
5. Link parallel activities in the workflow instead of just integrating their results.
6. Put the decision point where the work is performed, and build control into the process.
7. Capture information once and at the source.

4. PARADIGM SHIFT: Radical reconceptualization of the nature of the business and the nature of the organization. A Paradigm Shift Involves: Rethinking the Nature of the Business, Overhaul of the Organization; A Complete Reconception of How The System Should Function.

For millions of years we have been evolving and will continue to do so. Change is difficult. Human Beings resist change; however, the process has been set in motion long ago and we will continue to co-create our own experience. It all begins in the mind of the person. What we perceive, whether normal or metanormal, conscious or unconscious, is subject to the limitations and distortions produced by our inherited and socially conditional nature. However, we are not restricted by this for we can change. We are moving at an accelerated rate of speed and our state of consciousness is transforming and transcending. Many are awakening as our conscious awareness expands.

Among of the range of the organizational change that has been mentioned, I guess the most radical type of change would be the paradigm shifts. It is because Paradigm shift is a change from one way of thinking to another. It's a revolution, a transformation, a sort of metamorphosis. It just does not happen, but rather it is driven by agents of change. Paradigm shift also involves rethinking the whole nature of the business, a complete re-conception of how the system should function. So, it literally offers a new perception to the organization adopting such change. It allows the organization to rebuild their business processes from top to bottom. It conveys an idea to the organization way of thinking to replace the old processes progression.

References:

http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/feap/newsletters/managing-org.-change.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_management
http://www.brint.org/KMEbusiness.pdf

noreply@blogger.com (☻MaGZ☻) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 12:53:00 +0000

SYSTEM ANALYST

Last Friday, December 11, 2009, we had successfully interviewed a System Analyst from the Davao Light and Power Company at Bajada J.P. Laurel Ave., Davao City. It was a nice interview for they welcomed us very warm. They offer us all a seat to be comfortable throughout the interview. Before proceeding to the question, let me define first the real meaning and purpose of a System Analyst.

All organizations rely on computer and information technology to conduct business and operate efficiently. That is why in our generation for today would always need Systems Analyst. A System Analyst is a business professional who uses analysis and design techniques to solve business problems using information technology.

A System Analyst has three required skills to be considered. It includes the ability to work on the technical and business side and also the ability to handle people, which is the most important skill.

Out of the all the written purpose, skills and the job of a System Analyst, our interviewee have agreed that the very fundamental skill a System Analyst should well thought-out is the communication skill. Communication skill includes effective interpersonal communication (written, verbal, visual, electronic, face-to-face conversations, presentations in front of groups), listening, and group facilitation skills If a System Analyst possess this skill, according to him, and they could easily motivate people. And with the client's side it will not be hard for them to communicate with each other and would make their business work smoothly and well. Sometimes lack of communication leads to misunderstanding resulting to project failures later on. Because this communication and interpersonal skill is very crucial in obtaining information, in motivating the people around you or their clients that is why this skill should be use in the right way and be develop in order to expedite his role as a System Analyst. They should first and foremost have people skills. You have to be able to work with a variety of people and be able to work in teams. You should be an assertive person also. 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. 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.

The systems analyst (sometimes called systems architect or systems designer) orchestrates the effort. He starts by interviewing users, teasing out what they need as opposed to what they want—the nice-to-have things usually cost more than necessary. He often uses modeling software to evaluate what-ifs.

System Analysts need good speaking and writing skills, too, so that they can explain their systems and give good instructions to their clients.

Then, members of the team develop a shopping list, plot a step-by-step game plan, implement the system, test it, and troubleshoot. They also might supervise the trainers, who will try their best to convince everyone that the new system "really will make your life easier."

According to him, the understanding of the complexity and workings of an organization in order to provide necessary support is one of their tasks which are one of the issues a System Analyst encounter.

Another skill he thinks to be developed in order to be more effective in any modeling process is the technical skills. This includes the knowledge about the system application, administrative works, business functions, and technical functions. He should know about all the systems of the company. How it functions and what should be the proper things being processed by the company's system.

· System Application

In some organizations, programmer-analysts design and update the software that runs a computer. They also create custom applications tailored to their organization’s tasks. Because they are responsible for both programming and systems analysis, these workers must be proficient in both areas. As this dual proficiency becomes more common, analysts are increasingly working with databases, object-oriented programming languages, client–server applications, and multimedia and Internet technology. Computer systems analysts start their work by asking people what they need their computers to do. Then, they plan a computer system that can do those tasks well. A system can include many computers working together and different types of software and tools.

After System analysts understand what the system needs to do, they break down the task into small steps. They draw diagrams and charts to show how information will get into the computers, how that information will be processed, and how it will get to the people who need it. For example, System analysts might decide how sales information will get into a store's computers and how the computer will add up the information in a way that makes it useful for store managers.

System Analysts experiment with different computer system plans. They try various tools and steps until they find the system that is fastest, easiest, and least expensive.

After planning a system, System analysts test it to make sure it works. They check to make sure that information is processed quickly and without mistakes. They also watch to see if the system is easy to use. Often, they have to change their plans to make the systems better.

· Business functions

Some analysts also have a master's degree in business. This helps them to understand the types of computers that businesses need. As a System Analyst you must know your business processes, know your customer interfaces, know your system interfaces, know your rules, regs and laws, know all there is to know about the data and put on your "real world glasses". If you want to encourage folks to take up this role/job, teach them about critical thinking. Learning about programming, modeling and architecture are fine but I'll guarantee you that even if you excel at all these skills, if you can't ferret out the real data requirements you'll never truly be a successful Analyst.

· Technical functions

When a system is approved, systems analysts determine what computer hardware and software will be needed to set it up. They coordinate tests and observe the initial use of the system to ensure that it performs as planned. They prepare specifications, flow charts, and process diagrams for computer programmers to follow; then they work with programmers to “debug,” or eliminate errors, from the system. Systems analysts who do more in-depth testing may be called software quality assurance analysts. In addition to running tests, these workers diagnose problems, recommend solutions, and determine whether program requirements have been met.

Next, System analysts decide which computers, software, and tools to buy. They also tell computer programmers how to make any new software that is needed. They give the programmers step-by-step instructions. Some analysts help make the software, too.

He also added the networking capabilities of the System Analyst to be developed. Because the main job for some systems analysts is getting computers to work together. They connect them into a network. Analysts decide how to get information from one computer to another. Many help people get data from the Internet. Systems analysts work to make the computer systems within an organization, or across organizations, compatible so that information can be shared. Many systems analysts are involved with these “networking” tasks, connecting all the computers internally, in an individual office, department, or establishment, or externally, as when setting up e-commerce networks to facilitate business among companies.

From our interviewee, logical thinking skills are also important. Because System Analysts need to understand computers, math, and planning in order to do his job well. They need to know math so that they can solve problems and figure out how much computer power different systems would use.

The last should be the wide knowledge on how to model data and processes. It is not necessary that a System Analysts is good in programming. Being a systems analyst requires programming skill, but as important is the ability to see the big picture: translate geek speak into plain English, identify the organization's needs, and get everybody on board. Creative liberal-arts types with computer expertise may make better systems analysts than pure techies.

To begin an assignment, systems analysts consult managers and users to define the goals of the system. Analysts then design a system to meet those goals. They specify the inputs that the system will access, decide how the inputs will be processed, and format the output to meet users needs. System Analysts use techniques such as structured analysis, data modeling, information engineering, mathematical model building, sampling, and cost accounting to make sure their plans are efficient and complete. They also may prepare cost-benefit and return-on-investment analyses to help management decide whether implementing the proposed technology would be financially feasible.

Listed above are the fundamental skills a System Analyst should be developing in order to maximize his role in an organization he will be working.

References:

http://www.systemsanalyst.com/

http://www.blurtit.com/q170760.html

http://www.umsl.edu/~sauterv/analysis/3skills.html

IS Plan

noreply@blogger.com (☻MaGZ☻) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 03:44:00 +0000

IS Plan

Being invited by the University President would really be a great pleasure. Since expediting the implementation is the main task to do, I assume that it refers only to the actual implementation of the Information System plan; hence it is a fact that we already have a background and a plan for the University.

Since planning is being the issue, let me state how strategic planning works. Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people. Various business analysis techniques can be used in strategic planning, including SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) and PEST analysis (Political, Economic, Social, and Technological analysis) or STEER analysis involving Socio-cultural, Technological, Economic, Ecological, and Regulatory factors. According to what I have researched, strategic plan is a document used by an organization to align its organization and budget structure with organizational priorities, missions, and objectives. As it says, it is also a process of comprehensive, integrative program planning that considers, at a minimum, the future of current decisions, overall policy, organizational development, and links to operational plans. Strategic planning is a basic document for planning of different projects of the program and their sub-projects; this is according to the project management club. It is based on the content of the Financing Memorandum and the Monitoring and Evaluation Matrix attached to the Financing Proposal and translates the two documents into detailed operational terms. A satisfactory strategic plan must be realistic and attainable so as to allow managers and entrepreneurs to think strategically and act operationally. In our Management Information Systems 1subject last semester, we are successfully done doing a business plan with our adopted company. With the help of the head officer in the department, all he information and other facts of that business plan was been discussed accordingly. As we always hear from our instructor, we the human resources or the IT personnel may lift up the company to its highest peak or eventually put it down depending on what we have wanted to. As what I have stated above, strategic planning must have the SWOT analysis. In to our preparation and to our research about the company, we have then listed some of the weaknesses and strength of the company. In such way we can decide how to build up a company.

In conducting strategic planning, each person or part of the organization that does the planning is really up into a purpose and what are those purposes in it. According to Field Marshal Helmuth Graf von Moltke “Planning is everything. Plans are nothing”. On what I have understood, it simply means that we can really plan for anything, for our future and for all the things that we ought to aspire. We can say that it is really easy to plan directly as it is in our hands and have the planning for ourselves. But in the end, after we have decided the planning, we cannot really have the activities to do the plan. Since I am going to be invited to speak out to the University president, lets me take the University of Southeastern Philippines as the subject. We all know that all the things, activities and transactions that happen within the school is done by the University professional professors and teachers. They do have their conference and meeting about the strategic planning for the school, but once it was been designed or talked properly, at the end of the discussion and after the technical paper was made, there are still no implementation for it. The words and discussions are being taken for granted. Meaning, the planning was still useless since it was not been implemented properly.

So what are the purposes of strategic planning? For example, in our own self, we do have dreams and visions in life. Before we are able to conquer those dreams and visions, we must first start by step by step process on it. We must have first decided on what our goals to achieve the dream. We must always think of planning as the first step. In strategic planning, especially in businesses and industry, the main purpose of it is to set the overall goals for the business and to develop a plan to achieve them. It involves stepping back from the day-to-day operations and asking where the business is headed and what its priorities should be. In the world market side, there are lots of purposes why strategic planning must be done.

First on the list, is the purpose on reducing the risks. Planning increases the likelihood of project success by providing insights into the project’s risks. Some projects are so risky that the business may choose not to start once they have learned about the risks. Other projects may contain features whose risks can be contained by early attention. The discussions that occur while estimating raise questions that expose potential dark corners of a project. Another is to reduce uncertainty within a team. A team is generating new capabilities and potentials about what is inside the business or the company throughout the whole project. They are also generating new knowledge—about it, the technologies in use, and themselves as a team. It is critical that this new knowledge be acknowledged and factored into an iterative planning process that is designed to help a team refine their vision. Next, is supporting in the decision making. Plans help the business to make decisions. How does an organization decide whether a particular project is worth doing if it does not have estimates of the value and the cost of the project? Beyond decisions about whether or not to start a project, estimates help them make sure that they are working on the most valuable projects possible. Strategic planning also helps in conveying information. A plan conveys expectations and describes one possibility of what may come to pass over the course of a project. A plan does not guarantee an exact set of features on an exact date at a specified cost. A plan does, however, communicate and establish a set of baseline expectations. Far too often a plan is reduced to a single date, and all of the assumptions and expectations that led to that date are forgotten. In relation with planning supports in decision making, it also acquires establishing trusts. Frequent reliable delivery of promised features builds trust between the developers and the customers. Reliable estimates enable reliable delivery. A customer needs estimates to make important prioritization and tradeoff decisions. Estimates also help a customer decide how much of a feature to develop. Customers are reluctant to make these types of tradeoff decisions early in a project unless the developers’ estimates have proved trustworthy.

Consequently, all of those things are being considered in order to have a very effective and successful Information System Plan (IS Plan). As a choice, I wanted to focus on the newly implemented University Registration Management Information System (USRMIS). Today, it is likely called as the Student Registration Management Information System (SRMIS). We all know that the University had just decided to in source the system and laid all their trust to our very own programmers. I would say to the University President, that in order to improve the services to its students, faculty, staff and stakeholders, it is very good to embark on the automation of its operation towards the institution’s system. Before deciding to pursue with this in source system, according to what I have interviewed with some personnel involve in this system, at present the University is leasing its enrolment system provided by ECPAC System (an outsource program) amounting to a very large amount that would be very costly to pay per month only. Considering that the University has a several colleges and at least two computers are utilizing the said ECPAC System per college in addition with the computer units being used in the office of the Registrar and the Accounting/Finance office. While ECPAC is providing these services, some problems arises for the reason that the system is not made and contextualized to cater the appropriate needs of the different offices and colleges of the University. In maintaining the program, the University had also encountered some difficulty since the customization is outsourced and there are some limitations that are not immediately address whenever there are changes in the procedures and policies in the University. Outsourced system also limiting the University on the source code, design and architecture of the ECPAC system because the University can never own these information. The University has also the restriction of opportunity to customize and repackage the system and eventually sell it for an income generating project later on.

I can proudly say that among all the Universities in the city, the University of Southeastern Philippines has the good programmers and IT people. When the Institute of Computing (IC) proposed about this Student Registration Management Information System (SRMIS), we could say that this project will soon address the issues in minimizing the operating procedures of the University in the proceeding years the system will be use. The in house development also gives enough liberty to customize these systems. It will also give the University an opportunity to have a stable and sustainable income generating project through these developed information systems. At present, the Institute of Computing (IC) has already developed the Students Registration Management Information System (SRMIS) for student and enrolment and registration system including the cashiering and collection system. The whole recently expanded Students Registration Management Information System (SRMIS), have aimed to develop an automated system for the registration and record keeping of the student’s records to be handled by the assigned office which is the Office of Admission and Student Records (OASR). It will also manage the student assessment in terms of how much number of units in total a student has enrolled and the corresponding fees associated with it. The additional fees such as laboratory, library, internet, insurance and other fees is being automated and will automatically reflect it on the Cashiering system. As of now, two faculty members of the Institute of Computing (IC) are the one in charge in developing the Students Registration Management Information System (SRMIS). Since, the programmers and the developers came from the University; it will not be costly later on with the maintenance of the said system considering that the rental of the ECPAC System cost too much. So, this time with this project the cost will be minimized and the University can save and eliminated expenditures related to the ECPAC System rental. Again, this project will be a great help for the faculty who were developing the system because they are given the chance for professional development. This project showcased the institute’s capability of developing information systems. Also it will advertise the University’s expertise in the field of Information Systems development. The project is under the Office of the President while the project development is under the direct supervision of the Institute of Computing.

A lot of things are being presented. We have seen the good side of it and also consider the disadvantage that it will bring to the University. But in order to expedite the implementation of the Students Registration Management Information System (SRMIS), here are the steps that I think will be a great aid for the success of the Information System.

Project Management is the first step they would do in order for the involving people be aware and understand what is all the Information System Plan (IS Plan) all about. Then it better for the people involve in the plan on what kind of involvement they will have in order for them to participate enthusiastically.
They would also coordinate with the parties involved in the IS implementation, since they will be the ones performing the roles in the IS plan.

In this step, it refers to considerations such as where would the project/system suitable to be implemented or placed in, budget on executing and maintaining it, who are going to manage it and are they suitable to handle implementation of the project? This also requires orienting the people involved about the different roles that need to be played in the IS plan. This is also in line with the employees that will be affected with the implementation of the Information System Plan (IS Plan). Their experiences must be noted for us to know how effective they can be in handling the implementation of the new Information System Plan (IS Plan). We must determine the strength in terms of time that is necessary for the implementation of the Information System Plan (IS Plan) and even the location variable. Through this information we could come up to reasonable activities and deadlines.

We must also consider the cost that is needed in the implementation of the system. It must be in relation to the overall budget the Information System Plan (IS Plan) have and the amount that is allotted in the implementation stage. And as said earlier the implementation plan must be within the allotted time. Also they should assign responsibilities and set timelines. This entails the development of efficient working plans that are constituted by the specific steps or action plans to implement the Information System Plan (IS Plan). Setting timelines for taking action in the Information System Plan (IS Plan) is very important to ensure that the plan is being carried out efficiently and productively and also to see results within a specified timeframe. We should determine the time to be allotted in order to complete the plan. With this we can utilize time management and other factors concerning schedules. Other than managing time we should also consider who will manage the plan and create planning teams that is capable in planning an IS. Project management must be properly supervised and development practices are also one most significant factor to be considered. We need to better understand the plan so that implementation won’t become more complicated. That is why such issues must be put into consideration.

The second step would be the Data Conversion. This includes analyzing the data that would be necessary for the system, the volume of the data to be converted and the issues involved in converting the data. Issues involving data conversion and allocation of resources must also be considered. Proper usage of resources must also be recognized because it might cause several failures, either when it comes to implementation or allocation of data. This will be applying for the change in information system development the University has decided. All the data from the past system must be properly transferred to the new one. This requires skilled personnel that know the previous system and persons that are also trained for the new system. Depending on the data that must be converted the personnel assigned must be reasonable in choosing the type of process in converting the data. The factors that must be considered includes the time and the percentage of error that my occur in the conversion process

To allocate resources is another step in order to expedite the implementation of the Information System Plan (IS Plan). This is a very critical part in the implementation of the Information System Plan (IS Plan) in the university where the budget for carrying out the ISP will be laid out in detail. A well-made IS plan will go to waste if the necessary resources are not allocated to it. Without resources, it is nearly impossible to expedite the implementation of the Information System Plan (IS Plan). Money is always involved and so even our university cannot escape from this fact. There are other necessary resources to expedite the Information System Plan (IS Plan). Some of these are people, time and physical resources. Resources not only of money but also of knowledge, of strength are needed to successfully implement the IS plan. It is of practical act to properly make use of all the resources available for the system. Analysis of the resources should be made. A university should look out for any source accessible. Overlooked resource could be a big lost for one’s organization. All these and more need to be properly and adequately allocated to ensure that the plan will not fail.

Next step is training of the people involve in the Information System Plan (IS Plan). Training is also the most important factor to be considered. IT staffs that are properly trained will make the project easily done. They need to have knowledge in terms of managing data and IS plan implementation. One of the things that are essential to successful continuous improvement in order to expedite implementation of IS plan are strongly matters on the people involve around the plan. User of the project are not IT professionals that is why time and training has to done to guide them in how to use and manipulate the project. If the person is knowledgeable or has received appropriate training then implementation if IS plan will be done faster. The people are the most fundamental resource of an Information System Plan (IS Plan). Since that they are the one who is using the systems the plan. They are the user or the client of the plan; it must be necessary that they have the knowledge about and how to deal with the change. There must be a necessary training for the IT staff and the general staff to run the information system in a smooth way. Since it is new system, a new way of operating the system and the function of the system must be utilize very well.

To monitor the progress of the new system should also be considered. The targeted task should be identified and the parties involved should see to it that the milestones are achieved. Milestones are very efficient measures of progress because it divides the whole project into smaller and more achievable tasks. Every milestone achieved can also motivate the people involved, as they are assured that they are making progress with the implementation of the ISP. Rather than setting a large and distant measure of progress, milestones can be used to keep track of progress in the smaller picture. To keep track with the project schedules they must observed the progress of the project development. Any progress should be made recognize. Updates and improvements must also be identified and evaluated if it has been going well with what has been planned for the system. They should evaluate if the desired outcomes had achieved, to see if still on the trail or if still following the timetable also to find out if there is a progress or not. By checking the details of each of the tasks or summary task we are better informed on the overall progress of the implementation. The programmers should submit a progress report on a monthly basis, in the progress report, programmers will be required to enumerate all deliverables expected from them and state the status of each deliverables required.

The compare and contrast of the actual implementation of the Information System Plan (IS Plan) to the original plan would be the final step. The original plan should be examined every now and then for detection of errors. Once errors are detected and revisions are made, the actual results of the revised action plans and the original plan should be compared or evaluated to look for the differences again for the errors, and to mull over what are the changes to be done, and what are the things to be added or subtracted. This would serve as a basis for revising the original action plan. Since it cannot be helped that the actual implementation of the Information System Plan (IS Plan) in the university would not follow the written plan exactly, it is necessary to compare how the plan is doing when it is carried out to how the plan is doing based on projections in the original plan.

With all those steps I have presented, I hope it could address the problems and solve it through expediting its implementation while utilizing the full potential of the university in delivering its services. Since we a state university, many opportunities may rise and make use of this and using it up to the maximum benefit would greatly improve the university. The foremost concern for this process of changing the information system is the willingness of the University for Implementation. We can never avoid a huge resistance for the implementation of an Information System Plan (IS Plan) would prove a huge risk and may cause the Information System Plan (IS Plan) to fail or never implemented. It would greatly help if the IS plan is backed and supported by the top university officials so that other parts of the university or colleges would have minimal amount of resistance. The IS plan with the acknowledgment from the university would be implemented faster if the university itself knows of the Information System Plan (IS Plan) so training and seminars are thereby held. The whole process of implementation would require much time and resources that focusing all efforts will be required for the implementation to go smoothly and immediately.

In our own self as well, we do have a strategic planning that was been planned accordingly. Now, it is our choice on how to implement it, how to maintain it and how to make it flexible in change without putting us into much cost.

References:

http://managementhelp.org/plan_dec/str_plan/basics.htm

http://www.tdan.com/view-articles/5262

http://entrepreneurs.about.com/od/businessplan/a/implementation.htm

http://www.thepbgrp.com/merger-acquisition-services/post.html

Skills and Characteristics of a System Analyst

noreply@blogger.com (☻MaGZ☻) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 03:09:00 +0000

A Good System Analyst

Last Wednesday, December 9, 2009, the group one has reported about the module one in our Systems Analysis and Design 1 subject. The report mainly discussed about The World of the Information System Analyst. The reporters have clearly stated and explained the topic very well. In view of the fact that they are in the focus of System Analyst, why not dig up on the thing a System Analyst always start of. That is the System Analysis and Design.

Based on what I read and understand in the report, Systems analysis is a process of understanding in detail what a system should accomplish. It is simply defined that System Analysis is all about understanding the goals and strategies of the business. This is where the key people plan carefully and decide their aspirations and steps on how to manage the operation and business processes their organization have. Because of the plans they have think of, in System Analysis, the people should have listed the important data rations that will aid the pursuant of those goals and aspirations the people of the organization establish.

We always mistook the fact that since we are talking about System Analysis, it is automatically about the job a programmer. Basically, System Analysis is not about programming. It is about on how an organization process to establish priorities on what they will accomplish in the future. With these strategies, these key people should pull the entire organization together around a single game plan for execution in attaining these goals.

On the other hand, let us talk about the System Design which also another factor in the world of being a System Analyst. Systems design is a process of specifying in detail how components of an information system should be physically implemented. It is very understandable that this is where an information system is being devised into an actual employment of the design a System Analyst plan to have. The system’s components are being identified detail by detail in order for the client to express the things that are really required in the Information System.

So what is Information System after all? An information system is a collection of interrelated components that collect, process, store, and provide as output the information needed to complete a business task. Example of it would be the Students Registration Management Information System (SRMIS) of the University. Maybe we might think why these are things being tackled, but as for the benefit of all of us, a System Analyst should know about it because Information System is crucial to success of modern business organization. It is constantly being developed to make business more competitive and it has a great impact in terms of the productivity and profits of an organization.

We are done with the factors a System analyst mainly deals with. The reporters have also point out a lot of situations showing on how a System Analyst really does their job. So let me define first what System Analyst means and what does a System Analyst perform in particular.

As what I have read and researched on the internet, a System Analyst is a business professional who uses analysis and design techniques to solve business problems using information technology. Systems analyst has broad knowledge and variety of skills, including technical, business, and people. A Systems analyst encounters a variety of rapidly changing technologies. A Systems analyst works on strategic plans and then system development projects. Systems Analysts solve business problems using information systems technology. So as we can see, a System Analyst has many responsibilities to consider. It is not that easy because in a real world, A System Analyst deal with a lot of client. People with different personalities, with different needs in terms of the system the client want to have. So let us first highlight on what a System Analyst exactly should have. Since they say that he should have a broad knowledge and should have a lot of skills that ought to be mull over.

Also let us remember that they surely have always a transaction with any people in the industry of many organizations. That is why a System Analyst must have a wide familiarity and awareness in the field of Information Systems. It is not only with the knowledge in Information Technology an SA should possess but also the understanding on the business side and especially the technicalities they would face in every project they will going to made. Let us also focus on the skills a System Analyst should possess.

As I have said, there is a requirement on the level a System Analyst should have knowledge with. That is in the Technical side, the business and lastly in dealing with people. On the technical and knowledge skills, these are the following things to consider. He should have better information about computers or any peripheral devices, communication networks and connectivity. The technicalities stuff, like the Database and database management systems (DBMS), Programming languages (for example, VB.NET or Java) and Operating systems and utilities are such things must be look after.

As a System Analyst, a business outlook is also a necessity wherein he could have known how to process business functions performed by organization. A System Analyst should know how to strategies plans, traditions, and values of the organization. The organizational structure, organization management techniques and the functional work processes an organization practice. Another is the skill on how to deal with people. Systems analysts need to understand how people think, learn, react to change, communicate and work in a variety of jobs and levels. Remember you will not work a boss or head here, instead you work as a solution provider and need to consider on treating with diverse behavior any client could have. Really it is a crucial job especially in obtaining information from these clients. Let us not forget also that you would also deal the people around you, your co workers. So it is also needed that you know how to motivate people and get cooperation from them.

Again and again it is never an easy job, especially in the matter of integrity. Because a System Analyst has the solely access to confidential information, such as salary, an organization’s planned projects, security systems, other things an organization entrust to them. That is why they have to be reliable and trustworthy enough that an organization will confidently delegate to them. The System Analyst plans security in systems to protect confidential information. They must keep information private because in just one mistake, any impropriety can ruin an analyst’s career.

In today’s generation, we can never deny the fact that there a lot of transformation in terms of the trends in the technology. Changes that are very swift and could not easily handle if it is not manage well. Consequently, if this is the case, a System Analyst should have the ability to work despite of these evolutions the technology has. Then it is also mentioned that a System Analyst does strategic planning and then on the system development projects. With this, a System Analyst always considers and thinks forwardly in a business. They tend to imagine the future of having these missions of a company. As what I have learned in one our lessons in Management Information System 2, “If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail”. Thus, being proactive about the future is the best thing a System Analyst makes in their organization.

With Strategic planning, his performance could improve into a more competitive level. It could counter excessive inward and short-term thinking. The systems or programs that a System Analyst always encounters are never that easy. It is done for a longer time and the development of the system follows certain cycle within its growth. But in any organization, we can never avoid the problems that will arise in the middle of the business. These are the problems that we never expect and especially if it will occur in the process of acquiring outputs for a system. With this, a System Analyst must know how to solve business troubles using the things that they particularly specialized, the Information Systems Technology. They must know how to solve any issues that tend to happen. Let us take these situations where we can test the ability of a System Analyst.

 Customers want to order product anytime of the day.

 Suppliers want to minimize inventory holding costs.

 Marketing want to know customer needs better.

 Management wants to analyze financial information more efficiently.

These are the typical problems they could come across during the development of any system. So I could say that a System Analyst is really a tough job. They have to be very patient and persevere to finish a certain job according to what they agreed to accept.

But if they just have these following skills and capabilities, I think they would be an effective System Analyst as a problem solver. They should have a computer technology knowledge and programming expertise. Next is to understand the business problems. That is why he should possess a familiarity about the industry. Since they are dealing about rational concepts, a System Analyst should use logical methods for solving the unexpected problems.

Another is a System Analyst should have fundamental curiosity on anything, bringing himself a critical thinking towards any problem. Even though it has qualifications of an expertise in programming, it does not mean that he must concentrate in this matter. Instead, this time a System Analyst is more of a business problem solver than a technical programmer. And lastly, despite of all the difficulty he could face, it is still important that he knows and wants to make things better than worsening it out.

In all the things that have been discussed about the basic skills a System Analyst must possess, I could say that I could follow the characteristics of having a great interpersonal and communication skill. It will not going to be hard for me because I always like talking to people. I am confident in dealing with different people with different personalities. And I must say it is a gift that I could use if I will be a System Analyst someday. I could use this skill in any crucial transactions that I would be facing in the future since communication is the basic tool in having some business operations to other people.

Given that a System Analyst deals with integrity and security, the skill of being trustworthy, honest, the integrity and the morality are also the things I can consider that myself have. I am very willing to learn and can easily adopt with the new changes brought by the fast changing level of the technological transformation the world has.

It is very important to work professionally because this time, your name is at stake that is why you should do your job better and always make your clients satisfied on what you have done. So I must say that I possess the skills of professionalism, positive attitude, motivated, has the energy and lastly the passion.

Because I believe that even if you are the most intelligent person in the world but still you do not have the passion and humility, still you will not be successful on your chosen field.

Reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_analyst

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_analysis

http://www.freetutes.com/systemanalysis/

Assignment 2

noreply@blogger.com (☻MaGZ☻) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 03:04:00 +0000

The Nature of the Relationship of Business and IS Plan

Since we are talking about business plan and IS plan here, let us dig deeper the significance of planning in view of the nature of the relationship of each organizational plan and IT plan. To have a better perspective on this matter, I would like to show you some important aspects I have gathered through my researches about business planning.

Planning is something fundamental to anybody or any organization as it is a preparatory measure of some things that need to be done. As plan defines by Encarta, plan works as a system for achieving objective. Consequently, it is a method of doing something that is worked out in advance. clearly stated that it is a method of doing something that is worked out in advance. The way things are arranged or just an outline of items to be included in certain tasks.

In any organization, planning is the most important tool in achieving its objectives and purposes. To earn success, people should have an effective business plan to be carried out. Business planning encompasses all the goals, strategies and actions that an organization envision to ensure the business’s survival and growth. It is an incredibly effective way for individuals to focus on achieving the goals of the organization(Susan Ward).Basically, any form of business and/or establishments has business plans that set out its future strategies and financial development.

Huge, isn’t it? For convenience, let’s think of business planning as being broken into two large sections; profit-making business planning and contingency business planning. Profit-making business planning is all the general business planning that must be done to start and run a successful business. The best known example of this type of business planning is the business plan. The business plan isn’t a do-it-and-forget business planning exercise but a living document that needs to be updated throughout the lifecycle of any business. Once the business has officially started, profit-making business planning will center on setting and meeting goals and targets.

In establishing and managing the affair of state on any businesses, a manager has to set out a layout of his plans which will guide him in doing tasks concerning the achievement of his business goals. This will going to be a great help for him in governing his business colleagues and associates and direct the whole company to its program implementations. Without this solid foundation that serves as a backbone for the organization, no business will be able to have a clear perspective of its accomplishment. As planning guides the organization on the right track keeping it focused and remains relevant to the needs of its community, the reason why it exists. It supply a basis for measuring the results and progress of the business development. The key important thing is to make the organization move into a systematic and orderly way.

Because planning serves as way of proceeding for assessment of progress, most organizations understand the need for annual program objectives. When managers and leaders organize objectives for yearly program implementations, they usually set out goals made strategically to help them set the priorities of the company and organize work. And with the fast-evolving changes in our environment in the presents state of life, plans should likewise be made every now and then a very flexible one that could possibly handle the rapid alteration and transformations of various company programs and objectives intended for longer term plans.

Some definite objectives could not be anymore applicable in a certain period of time or it may be difficult to implement now that several changes are influencing the present status of the organization. Moreover, planning is an important factor to be considered by most of the leaders of an organization since this will assist them in making some of the strategies that will aid in defining ways to administer changes occurred from the internal and external factors in the community.

In most cases, those of higher positions like the Chief Executive Officers are the usual persons who creates and initiates the planning for the business components of the company and the lower rank staff like those in the supervising and control staff and employees are hands-on to the implementation of the plans. But some organizations have these certain offices and divisions which take charge with the business planning strategies. But in common cases, planning are done primarily by the administrative division.

Having realized the competence brought by technology to the corporate world, information technology has long been integrated into the core of every business through managing and supporting its business operations. The information system department will going to be the organization’s most important areas. Information System people are treated as the most critical resources of the company. They can either help the company progress or be a failure to the organization. Thus, it is then very crucial for the company to take high attention on the center of the organization which holds its vital information. Since, information is a very significant data any organization has. The purpose and use of information systems in the beginning, is targeted towards reducing manual labor and increasing efficiency and thus reducing cost of doing business. In this case, the information system processes the essential elements of the company’s day-to-day business processes. In this side of the story, IT planning is somehow align with the Information Systems planning.

IT planning is the organized planning of IT infrastructure done at various levels of the organization. The topic of IT planning is very important for both planners and end users: End-users often do IT planning for their own units, and they also frequently participate in the corporate IT planning. This in turn determines what applications end users can deploy. Thus the future of every unit in the organization could be impacted by the IT infrastructure. These plans would help organizations to reach their business goals and to create competitive advantage.

For this reason, all of the plans of the organization should include not only the outside part of the business components of the company but also the internal structure of the organization as well as the factors comprising the Information Systems. The information systems uses technology to serve the organization in a more better view, the society where it is classified, to perform its mission and vision, to boost the economy and to achieve its goals and objectives through propelling business. Any organization could have a lot of reasons for keeping alive the information systems of the company. As we all know, every organization is striving hard to improve its competitive position in the global and local marketplace. Thus most organizations invest in information technology as it plays a critical supporting role in reaching the organization’s goals. Information Systems consists of the hardware, software and the people ware where any of the organization have. All of these basically support each other in order for the Information Systems aligned with the business processes.

If we are going to specifically look over the components of Information Systems, we could easily see the significance of each element towards each other. Moreover, in most business processes, there are lot of proprietary and open source software being introduced and used by companies that could further enhance the processing of information. Software that are especially made particularly for the certain tasks and programs for a company specialization. Naturally, software elements would not run without the hardware components. All the hardware components of the company are necessary tools for every individual who were using the resources essential for the transactions and business operations of an organization. Indeed, these hardware components are invested by the company to help them in processing large amount of data and will aid in producing more accurate and better outputs with less effort on the labor. Nevertheless, Information Systems would never be completed without the most important ingredient - the people ware or the human resources of the organization. Without them, the hardware and software specifications of any company will become useless for the fact that there will be no person in charge in operating these components for the business operations. The human resources, or the workforce as we kept on saying is the most critical resource of the organization. And as with the information system is concern, these IT people are treated as highly significant beings because all the crucial information about the business of the company is being processed in the information system department which is manned by people who are hands-on to the functionalities of the system.

Since we already mentioned that the information system involves many procedures and functions, it is likely important to engross the organization with Information System Plan or the so-called IS Plan. This is where the classifying, processing, managing, and controlling of the data inputs to yield the necessary output of the business operations. In most companies, it is in the Information Systems department where able to carry out the mission and vision of the company as a whole, and later on each and every subdivisions of it should align with the business strategy. This is where the business plan and information systems plan naturally align. Where all the core processes of the company, or the business plan always inclined with their IS Plan.

The nature of relationship between the business plan and the information systems plan is basically relative to business and Information Technology. Usually, the information system is aligned with the business plans of the organization. Let’s take the Davao Light and Power Company Information System Department as an example: in every suggestions or proposal they have to made for a new system or programs, they would always take the side of the top management who were the business owners. They are not in the right place to easily decide for the company. Thus, with the signal of the higher rank people, that would be the time where they can eventually proceed to their plan. With this the information systems plan always relates to the business plan of any company. The information system is in charge of doing these procedures that is why the IS plan should not be far from the overall business plan of the company. The IT people will be the support group for any operations that needed to be prepare.

Also, because of the technological advance brought by the rapid changes of our generation, the business strategies of the owners were being affected and need to be taken care of. The top management should also look up to how these new trends of technologies will provide betterment for the organization as a whole. Apart from that concerns the company should also consider on how to acquire and manage the firm’s hardware and software assets, and other mediating factors affecting the information technology and the organization. Without intensive business plan and integrated Information System plan, the programs and systems being develop would not be possibly directly implemented and gain beneficial results for the business. The kinds of information systems like the operational, management, and strategic level serves the groups of operational managers, data workers, middle and senior managers. As we can see, these people are also the same persons setting out the company’s vision, mission, goals, and objectives.

In overall reflection, I can say that the continuous use of information technology in business strategies will help achieve competitive advantage of the organization in the society. This is because Information Systems enlightens any organizations in taking responsibility together and sharing the knowledge across business divisions and improving competency towards global marketplace. Information systems aid in automating the manual parts of the businesses, giving efficient and accurate results in processing information. When the manual system adopt threats to security and reliability of the information due to data redundancy, the computerized system can speed up, and give accurate, more reliable outputs which could then be utilized not just by one functional area in the company but to all that is concerned with the information being processed.

These made me realized that both the business plan and IS plan are always been correlated to each other. Because as business strategies being outputted to business plan carry out the outside level of the company while IS plan is concerned with the information system and the company’s core issues.

References:
http://managementhelp.org/plan_dec/bus_plan/bus_plan.htm
http://www.investorwords.com/630/business_plan.html
Feurer, R., et al., “Aligning Strategies, Processes, and IT:
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/nhsitrc/it_planning/index.html

Ten Years after...

noreply@blogger.com (☻MaGZ☻) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 07:18:00 +0000

10 YEARS FROM NOW...

What will I be ten years from now? What do I want to be? What should I do in my life? What are my goals, my dreams and my ambitions in the future? These are just few questions that we frequently asked towards ourselves. In my nineteen years of existence here in this world, I seldom ask myself what is my real worth as a person, asking myself what was really my purpose. Now I ask myself, am I doing the right things in attaining these aspirations and dreams I have in life? Or as an IT student, am I worthy to be called as an IT professional someday. I’ve stayed at the University of Southeastern Philippines for almost four years now, and until now I’m still confuse of what will be the future me ten years from now. Honestly, until now I’m still on the stage of confusion. I’m sure all of us who were enrolled in Bachelor of Information Technology were having a hard time especially with the standard education our University is giving. That’s why; I’m still on the level of acquiring experiences and knowledge for me to be called as a worthy IT Professional someday. Let’s see, 2011 comes, the year of my graduation. All of us will be aspiring of getting the good job where we can apply all the knowledge we have gained in 5 years in college. From the emerging technology trends arrive, more opportunities have been also presented to us. Exposing us from the different skills and jobs regarding Information Technology World.

In a fast changing environment we have now, I can never tell what field am I going to adopt ten years from now. A lot of opportunities are being offered and presented in today’s generation, so with this I must say that ten years from now, I want to own an IT company that will cater and render services that will provide IT solutions. And also a company that will have an expertise with management consulting, technology services that would help clients leverage next generation networks to achieve high performance. Maybe that time, using our industry knowledge, service-offering expertise and technology capabilities, we can identify new business and technology trends and develop solutions to help clients around the world. This is really an unreachable dream to that an individual like me could have. But I can say if I would have the ability to plan my future well, I will probably reach my goals and will be successful IT Professional sooner or later. Every decision must come from a plan, a plan that will guide my way in attaining all my goals and aspirations in life. That would be the time strategic planning goes in my way.

As what our discussion in Management Information System last Monday, it is really important to plan the things that you will do every time you decide. Planning is really significant in everyone’s life because it give us a choice what to do and what not to do in the first place. Personally, I want to plan everything that I would be encountering throughout my journey to the end. It is never been easy facing all the trials and failure. That’s why I have learned that we should not plan to fail nor fail to plan. I also believe that having faith with one’s self could help me motivate on whatever output I could attain in the future. Since there is no permanent in this world, I can never avoid the changes that will come and go. So part of the plan is to be flexible on making decisions and steps within my plan. I will prepare myself in order to achieve triumph and to improve my performance in the end of the day. Also, establishing priorities is one of the things that I will never forget since I am aspiring in an industry that consists of the World’s best. The reality of our current generation market requires people to become more strategic and proactive in planning and managing their careers. It will never be easy but I think with these strategies I would like to follow, I can say that little by little, my dreams will come into reality.

Finish my degree

This is what am I dreaming of for my whole life now. Finishing my degree of Bachelor of Science in Information Technology especially here in the University of Southeastern Philippines. I guess this is very first key in order to reach out those dreams I have always in mind. This time it will not only runs through my mind but eventually be a reality. It is not that easy, but as what I have always heard, proper planning is one of the initial move I should do in order to manage all my remaining time here with all the subjects, requirements and school documents we are going to have before leaving the realm of the University. After all these sufferings and hardships, it is such a great victory when you receive your diploma and at last make your parents proud. Also, when I finish my degree soon, all the learning’s and knowledge I have acquired will be my weapon in facing the real world and starting my own career as an IT professional.

Controlling my own destiny

At the very beginning, what am I right now is not because my parents or my friends like this course for me. But, because I take control of my own career planning for my personal goals and objectives I want to achieve. We should find the perfect fit for what we are passionate about. This is the first thing we should do, to evaluate and reevaluate where we want our career to go This is a dynamic process that requires sensitivity to trends in my chosen and related fields as well as the ability to take advantage of opportunities and challenges that will occur as time passes. Being proactive in identifying career goals is the one we should never forget for whatever you decide is already final. As they say, “touch, move!”. Basically, regretting will never been an issue here because on the first place, I’ve already decide what would be my future be the moment I enter the pillars of the University of Southeastern Philippines under the Institute of Computing.

Identifying the specific skills

It is not necessarily that after we graduate good job with a high salary will automatically comes in front of us. Since we were starting, we would not ignore the fact that we should work with whoever will be training us. Example our supervisor, human resource staff, or other senior staff to identify specific training or education required to reach our career goals. Many organizations offer such training and education to employees who wish to advance. Trainings are such a good learning experience so that someday a lot of opportunities will knock on our door because we have a lot of knowledge and familiarity than the other competent. With proper training and determination, I’m sure later on I could work and collaborate with the World’s best.
Collaborate with the World’s Best

As I have said in the previous paragraph, working with the World’s best in the field of Information Technology is a great help and strategy in order to improve everyone’s ability. It is not that you were not the smart as they do and you frequently avoid people who were definitely excel in the field that you are in control with. Because as what I have learned in one of the seminar I have attended, these people are the one who could motivate us to work hard and can be our inspiration in all the things we are doing. Their superior capacity could challenge us that if they could do it, why cannot we? So, it just simple, all of us have equal skills and power that God has given. It is only that we differ on how we nurture all these abilities in order for us to be successful in life.

Positive thinking

I guess being positive is such a good attitude towards one’s goal. It keeps yourself being motivated for what you are aiming for. It can help me to fulfill my dreams and could really empower me to the very best I can be. Sometimes, we can never avoid frustrations in life especially when you opt to have many priorities in life that would literally confused us with life, making it a difficult concept to grasp the attitude of being a positive thinker. Positive thinking is a good strategy to practice in order not to limit all my beliefs and thoughts that would directly prolong my despair whenever I feel pressured. Since negative thoughts are very contagious and could affect my life very much, leaving me to live a life of unhappiness and disillusionment. I would never allow these negative thoughts to have a power to consume me with depression and misery. Conversely, I would like to adopt totally positive thinking since it is really a powerful emotion, it would really help me to attract what I really want and will offer me a great outlook in life. I would like to start a day of letting go of my limiting viewpoint, believing with myself that I could do what others can do too. This strategy could help me embrace a positive outlook for reaching my goals and assessing each of it and identify the reasons behind this. It would give me the sanity of stress free environment that could develop myself and eventually replace all the thoughts of having been failed again. I know it will not have a 100% changes to me. However, working in a job of being optimistic could possibly ease the hardships of facing every trial we were expecting within this journey of life.

Maintaining a life of positive discipline and surround I with other optimist, will seriously encroaching my happiness. Treating ones’ self is also a good thing. As they say, don't say anything to yourself you wouldn't say to others. Be mindful that what you think and believe about yourself will ultimately create your reality. Your thoughts affect your feelings, which in turn affect your behavior. Remember to smile more: it will help you to feel more positive.
Challenge yourself to identify all the positive things you do in the day and don't focus and dwell on minor challenges and setbacks that may have occurred. There is no such thing as failure; only experiences from which to learn and therefore the opportunity for personal growth and development.
Therefore, positive thinking will improve my confidence and self-esteem.

Building positive and trusting relationships among your coworkers.

Let’s say that I could easily adopt a life of living with positive discipline already. Meaning having a good relationship with your coworkers is a significant thing that should not be forget. Example, in the company that I will be owning soon, it does not mean that if I’m the owner I should be the one only deciding for the company’s sake. Since I will be working with many people, treating them equally and with heart should always be a priority. They are the people where we entrust the company’s information. They are working hard to make the company progress in its highest level. So it just right to give them importance so that in return the working relationship with each other would help everyone to be on top.

I’ve almost give up just in studying at a University where standard education is being provided and competition is in high risk. And just imagining that after graduation is much more challenges is awaiting, I could really feel the pressure rushing throughout me. It is another journey of my life that I should face. But having just a strong faith with our God Almighty, and just focusing with the things I am really passionate about, I know in myself that despite of these things, a great future will be heading towards me.

Information Environment

noreply@blogger.com (☻MaGZ☻) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:40:00 +0000

INFORMATION ENVIRONMENT

Today, solutions to environmental challenges are aided by an arsenal of information and knowledge systems that were unavailable for most of the last 30 years when environmental management was predicated on “command and control” mechanisms such as remediation of specific sites or compliance with, and enforcement of, end-of-pipe emissions requirements and standards. As knowledge about the causes of environmental ills has grown, so too has the number of options on how to handle them and the development of collaborations and partnerships aimed at harnessing the growing incentive-based approaches to environmental protection. As additional information technologies and knowledge management techniques evolve, environmental considerations will join other areas of strategic importance to industry.

Information technologies are unique not just because of their growing use in decision-making and knowledge management systems, important as that is. Their use has also yielded significant improvements in the efficiency of energy and materials use. This has contributed to economic expansion without the increases in environmental impacts that would have resulted had the efficiency improvements not occurred. Advances in information technology are likely to continue to provide opportunities for the development of improved and new products and services
An information environment can be characterized as the set of networks or online services that support publishing and use of information and learning resources. There probably isn’t a perfect information environment but we can only make use of these systems to their fullest potential.

An information systems environment is an area in which information systems professionals apply management systems and technology skills professionally in an organization. An environment does not and cannot constitute a single, focused knowledge area such as applications in mathematics, art, technology, law, statistics, or desktop publishing. Instead, an environment represents an ecosystem in which information systems are employed. The environment surrounds and impacts the systems and technologies that support it and whose inputs, processes or outputs are closely intertwined with their information system.

Since we are talking about information system environment, let me show some myths associating with information environment.

Myths of the IT Profession

1. IT professionals possess a complete disregard for business concerns.

2. Once you join the ranks of IT, you’ll work in solitary confinement for the rest of your life, living only for weekend sci fi movie or video/on-line game marathons.

3. You must have a computer science degree to get a job in IT.

4. If you don’t understand acronym-speak, don’t even think of conversing with an IT professional.

5. All IT professionals are techie gear-heads with little interest in anything outside of technology.

With these myths of IT profession, let’s throw it on through the role of IT professionals in these information environments.

Demystifying the Techie

1. IT is a challenge in organizing people, solving issues and problems through better process and organization.

2. The tech professionals role is hardly solitary nor is it confined to IT or submerged in a world of arcane acronyms. Emphasis is on business-focused problem solving.

3. The role entails tech professionals who are multifaceted, possessing a diversity of experience and skills.

4. The more one exercises both sides of the brain, the better positioned is the tech professional. Therefore, immersing in hobbies outside technology is ideal.

5. The ideal tech professional is one who can take abstract thoughts about what people are trying to achieve, where they want the business to go, and turn those thoughts into viable processes and solutions.

Probably, the most important characteristic of an information environment is interaction. An environment does not consist of only one being. It is an internetwork, an interweaving thread of digital resources. Therefore, this kind of environment should not be made rigid and one-sided. I think that an ideal information environment should be one that does not only allow the users to access and view digital information but also should allow them to modify the information. In my point of view, information or knowledge is not a stable thing.

Many changes and new discoveries are being made and an effective information environment should be able to address these changes and inform the users about them. For an environment to be interactive, it is necessary that it allows the users to share information via digital means. This process is similar to peer-to-peer communication or online file-sharing. Of course, it should be made sure that information exchanged is true and valid.

So the mere fact that interaction is such an important key in information environment, the categories of IT skills could be connected for a fact that having such capabilities is linked with interacting with different people.

These are some IT skill categories to be chosen from:

IT Skill Categories

1. BUSINESS OPERATIONS- providing strategy, policy, operational planning and execution of work processes for the company as it relates to IT.

2. DATABASE DEVELOPMENT and ADMINISTRATION – designing, maintaining, and using files to store customer and business information. It is generally working with a database management software, finding ways to organize and store information, setting up computer databases for companies, and finding ways to

3. DIGITAL MEDIA - managing digital projects from conception to delivery, including: preparing, costing and writing proposals for clients managing the pitch process to appoint an agency to undertake detailed specification, design, development and delivery proactively managing agencies and other stakeholders evaluating project outcomes.

4. PROGRAMMING/ SOFTWARE ENGINEERING designing, creating and maintaining software. It also involves analyzing,
designing, developing, testing and maintaining computer and Internet- based applications.

5. ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS ANALYSIS and INTEGRATION- overseeing the installation of necessary software, programming of databases and configuration of networks to allow efficient and secure transactions among computer systems.

6. TECHNICAL WRITING- communicating technical (specialized) information in appropriate form to an appropriate audience. A few examples of the documents created by technical writers are technical manuals, detailed specifications, online help, web content, and training manuals.

7. SECURITY and COMPLIANCE ensuring that systems, services, processes and information are demonstrably secure and compliant to the satisfaction of the range of supervising entities to which the company is accountable

8. NETWORK DESIGN and ADMINISTRATION devising a plan that allows a business or organization to use a network to further its goals. It focuses on designing, installing, and supporting an organization's network and Internet capabilities,
daily on site support, maintaining network hardware and software, and developing network security.

9. TECHNICAL SUPPORT – providing assistance with hardware or software operation and application problems. In general, technical support attempts to help the user solve specific problems with a product - rather than providing training, customization, or other support services.

10.WEB DEVELOPMENT and ADMINISTRATION developing a web site for the World Wide Web or an intranet. It usually refers only to the non-design aspects of building web sites such as writing markup and coding. Web development can range from developing the simplest static single page of plain text to the most complex web-based Internet applications, electronic businesses, or social network services.

As presented, among the IT skill categories, I should say that I would like to be on NETWORKING DESIGN and ADMINISTRATION. For we all know that in this generation technology is in fast paced. Thus, giving people the privileged to use the innovation brought by these new emerging technologies. So in this sense, working in such environment where I can design my own network and eventually devise a plan that will develop in an organization that could use a network and further its goals. Since it focuses on designing, installing,
and supporting an organization's network, my role with be essential in site support with the internet capabilities,
daily.

The network hardware and software should always be stable and maintained. Well, it is already mentioned that with these roles that I must performed surrounded with this environment, the network security should be dealt also. It is always an issue because in this kind of environment, processing large amount of data is always the matter. These data are such significant and confidential information that the surroundings that apportioned in an organization. Securing these information must not be disregarded.

My role with this upbringing will be very important for a reason that business and IT are two different fields that should go hand in hand together.

Upon working in a company, some things should be consider because I know for a fact that living in a real life situation is not living alone. Thus, it is always inside a group and dealing with them is much essential. Thinking that you are to deal with different people with unique personality and skills. We should find time to mingle with them in order to be a productive and efficient worker. In such time that I would face the real world, there are a lot of factors and challenges that I will be reflecting of. These are the things that could be a factor in our role to those information system environments. The principles of information organization and representation are one of the factors. I have to know all these things so that I can perform my role effectively.

There are many principles of information organization and I think it differs in every organization. But there are three common principles that I need to consider.

These three principles of knowledge organization that I have known are knowledge needs to be organized for communities. Designing tools to support the organization of knowledge, guiding principle must be that of user orientation and predominant usage.

And lastly, standardization and networking provide infrastructures, which facilitate effective and efficient access to information and documents. The notion of information representation and organization traditionally means creating catalogs and indexes for publications of any kind. It includes the description of the attributes of a document and the representation of its intellectual content. Today the library catalog is no longer a tool for its own collection for the library visitors; it has become a network node that users can visit from anywhere in the world via a computer connected to the Web information space that is being used for e-publishing, e-businesses, and e-commerce. These principles, if properly used will help me to become even more effective in my job. The knowledge needs to be organized for communities is essential because I have as what I've said, I have to get involve with people because I will not work with myself alone, I have to deal with managers, stockholders, business associates, and every individuals who compose the organization or company.

Designing tools to support the organization of knowledge and guiding principle must be also considered especially for the kind of job that I have, to design and develop company data analysis and report solutions. This includes the ability to design front ends and interfaces. I must possess a talent in doing so. I have to make sure that the design I made is acceptable to the user and every individual who will take a glance unto it will surely understand. And finally, the last principle talks about standardization and networking provide infrastructures, which facilitate effective and efficient access to information and document. This principle generally talks about the demonstration and sharing of expertise and perspectives in relation to the organization of knowledge. If one wants to associate these principles into just a few words, they can use communities, user orientation and standardization and networking, respectively. I do believe that these principles of information organization will help to fulfill my role so that I will become an effective business intelligence analyst.

However, I also believed that it is not an easy task. I mean, there a lot of challenges that I had to face in performing this role. And I know that this is just natural. I mean in our every action, challenges always accompany us, not to bring us down but to make us strong so that next time around, we will become more effective. First and for most is the competition. We are all aware that competition is one of the most common problems in a job knowing that everybody’s aiming to become the best.

Maybe I can address this by making sure that I am really competent. Even when I am a fresh graduate, I had a lot of learning’s because I already practice even before I graduated. Also, another problem is that technology is changing. I mean, what we had right now is nothing to what we are going to have in the following years.

Technology changes so fast I had to keep myself in touch. I mean, I have to be always updated so that I will not find it hard to deal with other competing companies. Another challenge is if there exist someone who can perform better than I do. Maybe in this case, I had to humbly accept this and realize that each is given different talents and ability. What makes sense is the fact that we use this talent and we help hand in hand for the benefit of the company. We had different strengths and limitations and it's all right as long as we are giving our best in everything we did. My inexperience can also influence on how am I going to perform my role yet I know this can be handled well if I am just willing to learn and improve myself.

There are countless numbers of information environments present in the world today. With the fast development of technology, various information environments have grown so big that they are able to span the whole world. We should not be outdated with the latest trend that being produce with the fast paced innovation fetch with this kind of generation.

Y4IT experience

noreply@blogger.com (☻MaGZ☻) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:40:00 +0000

Y4IT 2009

It was a great experience to be a delegate of this year's biggest IT event on the country. The Y4IT 2009, philippine youth congress in information technology (september 8-11) held simulateneously at UP Theater, UP Film Institute and UP Bahay ng Alumni, located all at UP Diliman Campus. It was our last day in UP Diliman today. A lot of new things have been introduced to us. Interesting topics have been presented for us all delegates that we could possibly used someday. I am very open to share all the things that I have acquired during this 4 day IT convention. The event was full of interesting and educational topics. Also great prizes are given by the generous sponsors. We really enjoyed this wonderful experience that could only happened once.

..to be continued..

follow these link for additonal infos:

http://y4it.up.edu.ph/y4it09.html
http://y4it.up.edu.ph/y4it09_files/y4it09_text.gif

IN-SOURCE or OUTSOURCE?

noreply@blogger.com (☻MaGZ☻) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 11:08:00 +0000

IN-SOURCE or OUTSOURCE?

If given the chance to be invited to attend a seminar-workshop on information systems planning with some of the faculty members. I would really think hard on what right decision should be made regarding this issue. Well it’s quite confusing because there’s no wrong if a company will in source or outsource. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Let me first define in sourcing and outsourcing and compared them.

What is Outsourcing?

Outsourcing is subcontracting a process, such as product design or manufacturing, to a third-party company. The decision to outsource is often made in the interest of lowering cost or making better use of time and energy costs, redirecting or conserving energy directed at the competencies of a particular business, or to make more efficient use of land, labor, capital, (information) technology and resources Outsourcing became part of the business lexicon during the 1980s. It is essentially a division of labor. Out sourcing in the information technology field has two meanings One is to commission the development of an application to another organization, usually a company that specializes in the development of this type of application. The other is to hire the services of another company to manage all or parts of the services that otherwise would be rendered by an IT unit of the organization. The latter concept might not include development of new applications.

What is In-sourcing?

The opposite of outsourcing can be defined as in-sourcing. When an organization delegates its work to another entity, which is internal yet not a part of the organization, it is termed as in-sourcing. The internal entity will usually have a specialized team who will be proficient in the providing the required services. Organizations sometimes opt for in-sourcing because it enables them to maintain a better control of what they outsource. In-sourcing has also come to be defined as transferring work from one organization to another organization which is located within the same country. In-sourcing can also mean an organization building a new business center or facility which would specialize in a particular service or product. In-sourcing can also mean an organization building a new business center or facility which would specialize in a particular service or product.

As of now, IT in-sourcing, or bringing previously outsourced IT functions back in-house, is on the rise, according to experts. There is a lot of factors that should be considered in order to decide well. One of those is the global economic recession, IT outsourcing scandals, and the potential cost savings of decreasing the number of outsourced contracts. Companies are even pulling back some outsourced functions because they have found they don’t offer the speed and control that in-sourcing does. Even though there are advantages outsourcing could do, such as less capital expenditure. For example, by outsourcing information technology requirements, a company does not have to buy expensive hardware and software. Less management headache. For example, by outsourcing business process such as accounting, a company no longer has to hire and manage accounting personnel, focus on core competencies. And lastly outsourcing non-core related processes will allow a business to focus more on its core competencies and strengths, giving it a competitive advantage, however, there are some advantages outsourcing has like these Less managerial control, it may be harder to manage the outsourcing service provider as compared to managing your own employees. Outsourcing company goes out of business. If your outsourcing service provide goes bankrupt or out of business, your company will have to quickly transition to a new service provider or take the process back in-house. May be more expensive. Sometimes it is cheaper to keep a process in-house as compared to outsourcing. And lastly would be security and confidentiality issues. If your company is outsourcing business processes such as payroll, confidential information such as salary will be known to the outsourcing service provider. But still we can never deny that disadvantages of off shoring have a lot of effects to a company. Especially on the issue about the security. It is the most important thing in an organization, having confidentiality in any of their files and information.

So if they would ask me about my stand, I would rather go with in-sourcing. The reason is to consider the information's confidentiality. Choosing personnel within a company can assure the company's operations and process kept secret because nowadays, it is very hard to find trustworthy personnel. Also, with regard to expertise, we know that there are lots of skilled IT professionals who are working in our University, so why we need to get people outside the institution and not working within the University wherein we already have people who can make or perform that particular job. Another that we should consider about our University is the financial status we are facing right now. We can never be sure if this time, our University could afford on outsourcing software packages for the information systems functions of the school. And it is better to check our resources and allocate solutions that would suit our financial capabilities.

As what have said awhile ago in-sourcing, aside from being cheaper, is more secured than outsourcing. Though outsourcing can provide better competition that makes it a little cheaper, it would not outweigh the advantages given by in-sourcing. It would be easier for our University since they would just hire and manage their own staff. Also through in-sourcing the University could have hands-on control through the development life cycle of their projects. Instead of relinquishing control to an outsourcing firm who does not understand the University’s project as they do, In-Source allows their knowledge and direction to more effectively impact the development process of the information systems functions of the school.

Since outsourcing deals with venturing from outside the company or even outside the Philippines, in-sourcing is much preferable because it eliminates vendor risk and vendor management costs. The University would never mind on dealing with long term contract with other company. It just simple contract between their own staff and would definitely reduced need for ongoing renegotiation. And it is nice to hear that the University would retain full control of the process and the quality of the output. True, in-sourcing assures the University’s information security and integrity and much more ensured. There will be less irregularities and faster data compilation can be done because the person who is gathering it works is within the University, thus he knows how the company functions and what is its exact needs than a person outside the University.

Let us say that the University asked me about the Enrollment System, if it is right to outsource than to in-source. For me the school had a bunch of skilled programmers who can actually do the job better that anyone outside. The reasons would the person who will design and maintain the system is just only within the University so he/she knows better ideas on what to do. He is definitely familiar with the flow like outside contacts could not, he can easily figure out solutions whenever there are problems arising and know the best thing to do. As I always say, the University can lessen the cost if they will hire person inside, this is very important especially in the case of the University right now where they just implemented the budget cost-cutting. Because as they said so, we had a lot of competent IT staff and faculty that could handle the development of the Information System in the University. So why not hire them and let them do the work. The person inside can always do better, they can get ideas outside, and they can develop what they have. Also when the University opt to chose in sourcing, the people they hire would easily observed what the University needs since they are part of the organization. Also, they can suggest new things for the best of the systems that they made. Therefore will have better control over its development and functions.

It is more for the University to make use of their own resources. Like I said, if there is any problem that the Information System would be facing or something went wrong, they could easily communicate and contact their programmers. It is better that way, giving them more time to analyze and solve the problem that outsourcing cannot address easily. Someday, we would be IT professionals soon. And with this, we all know that the main concern of a system would have a better security and integrity. It does not mean if we pay so much attention the security of an Information System means of taking for granted about its quality.

I always mentioned this, but again, the University has a lot of its resources especially when it comes to skilled faculty and staff. As one of the top University in Mindanao, the University offers towering standards of education when it comes to Information System thus giving an idea of why not use these key people for the best.

References:
http://www.wikipedia.org
http://www.ictstandards.com

SONA 2009

noreply@blogger.com (☻MaGZ☻) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 12:10:00 +0000

As what I have heard about a 9 pages SONA of the President last month, these are the things that I think areas that could be related to ICT.

I’ve got some excerpt down here from the SONA of the President.

“In technical education and skills training, we have invested three times that of three previous administrations combined. Narito si Jennifer Silbor, isa sa sampung milyong trainee. Natuto siya ng medical transcription. Now, as an independent contractor and lecturer for transcriptions in Davao, kumikita siya ng P18,000 bawat buwan. Good job, Jennifer.”

-From the previous SONA, the President also mentioned about this technical education and skills training that the Malacañang have been working on. Let’s accept the fact that not all people are given the chance to study much higher education in Colleges and University. So with this technical education and skills training they are offering, a lot of unprivileged people will be having a chance to prove their selves. These programs is very applicable especially to those out of school youth. Not to underestimate them, but I think through these programs, a lot of them would have great opportunities. To have a job and earn much enable them to help their families. Even though they are not a degree holder, still equal chance are given, especially to those highly skilled people such as Jennifer, a medical transcriptionist of Davao City.

“Kung noong nakaraan, lumakas ang electronics, today we are creating wealth by developing the BPO and tourism sectors as additional engines of growth. Electronics and other manufactured exports rise and fall in accordance with the state of the world economy. But BPO remains resilient. With earnings of $6 billion and employment of 600,000, the BPO phenomenon speaks eloquently of our competitiveness and productivity. Let us have a Department of ICT.”

-This is such a great news to us, to have a Department of Information and Communications Technology. Thus, recognizing the great potential of ICT to create wealth for the country and the need to form a permanent entity that would promote the utilization of information and communications technology, and effectively coordinate and implement national and local ICT services. Department of Information and Communications Technology is important ,"For instance, the Digital Village project which will enable rural farmers to use the Internet to access information on prices of goods, land records, weather forecasts, local government database and other agricultural knowledge support - thereby boosting their agriculture productivity - has been dragging on for years. This is largely due to the lack of coordination among agencies with ICT functions," Sen. Ed Angara said in an interview. As stated, ICT is one of the frontier fields that will dominate the world - how we work, study and conduct business. That’s why it is such a great lost for us if we will be left out in the field of ICT. Since BPO have been mentioned on President’s SONA, a lot of hope for the people have been opened. Especially, to the people who are unemployed right now. Great chances are given by developing BPO’s and tourism sectors in the country. Business process outsourcing enhances the flexibility of an organization in different ways. Thus, helping a lot of Filipinos obtained job here and abroad.

“Sa telecommunications naman, inatasan ko ang Telecommunications Commission na kumilos na tungkol sa mga sumbong na dropped calls at mga nawawalang load sa cellphone. We need to amend the Commonwealth-era Public Service Law. And we need to do it now.”

-I think this one was once such an irritating problem especially for many cellular phone users. If the government could have a quick solution with this, there will no longer complaints about stolen load. As for today, Philippines is one of the most populated Cellular phone users. Used as means of communication, whether rich or poor, are using mobile phones. If cellphone loads are always stolen, it will become harder for the people to communicate. So this is a right track for the government to amend a new law about this matter. Helping people to have a clear communication with their loved ones, no matter how far.

Again, I just hope that all these things are properly implemented in order to bring improvement in every Filipinos life.

IT Consultant

noreply@blogger.com (☻MaGZ☻) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 11:44:00 +0000

Given the chance to be hired as an IT consultant of the University of Southeastern Philippines, I would gladly do all my best to cater all the needs that the institution require.

So the issue here is about the improvement of the internet connectivity in the University. There are a lot of things that should be considered and must be look over to in order to satisfy what the University wanted to improve to.

The first thing that I could do is asked them about the problems they are encountering. Then analyze the problem well and present different factors that well though – out to.

The following are the things I would likely want to suggests:

Upgrading of Computers/ Hardware – before being hired as an IT consultant, I’ve been a student of the University for four years. And let’s face it, the computer units are not that upgraded in order to cater the needs of the students. The University should also pay attention to their computer laboratories. Obviously, there is a lot of hardware problems. They should allocate budget first for new computers before thinking of the problem about the internet connectivity. Even if the connection of the internet has speed up, but still the computer cannot keep up with it due to faulty and old devices, the internet connection will still be suffering for being so slow. The advancement of the computer units may be one reason to help the internet connectivity be stable. They should boost the computer speed or at least try to purchase a high-speed computers in order not to suffer with slow internet connection. Since the University have been cutting of the cost giving limited budget all over the institution, I would still suggest that if they could have at least a portion of the computer units to be improved. And also upgrade the problematic hardware so that the computers can be used comfortably by the student. With this, I can say that the improvement of the internet connectivity will not be impossible.

Software – A suggestion is already made about the hardware matter in the University, so let’s take a look about the software. The University should use software that would not allocate so much in the computer’s memory. They should select the application that will be use, applications that are light and could not affect the processing of data. There are a lot of software that could be used to speed up the loading and somehow make the internet connection faster.

Wireless Fidelity – A wireless data Internet technology that lets people connect to the Internet at high speeds through their personal or hand-held devices without needing to use cables. It has always been an issue to the University about the secured wireless fidelity connection. And to think that all the students are paying for it and have the privileged of using it, so the questions is why should prohibit the students in accessing the wireless fidelity connection. I could suggest that having the wireless fidelity to be public is one great moved for the internet connection to be faster. Wireless Fidelity has a lot of advantages. Wireless networks are easy to set up and inexpensive. They're also unobtrusive. Also If they decided to open the wireless fidelity to the public, why not just open a new internet connection provided for wireless fidelity. As I have read, if the internet connection of wireless fidelity and wired connection is shared, wireless fidelity will be useless, for there will be a tendency that the wireless fidelity connection will be as slow as dial-up connection or even worse. Wireless Fidelity has a lot of advantages. Wireless networks are easy to set up and inexpensive. They're also unobtrusive.

Network type to be use - The selection of a network type is one of the first major decisions to be made in setting up a network. Once constructed, a network type can be very difficult and expensive to change later, so it is a decision that should be made correctly the first time. Consideration must be paid to the needs of your organization right now, as well as the future of the network. Knowing more about the basic communications methods utilized by a network gives you a greater understanding the hardware involved and the problems that it may be subject to. Network communications problems can be very difficult to troubleshoot—even more so when you are unaware of what is actually going on inside the network medium. Since each type of wiring has a different bandwidth, cost, and interference limitations. the cable selected will connect to a NIC (Network Interface Card) in a computer or device that will allow it to access the network. The cables used to create a network varies, and it is important to consider all options in determining which type of cabling is best for any networking situation. As far as I know, the University have been using UTP cables and fiber-optic cables. This fact confuses me, because if they wanted the internet connection to be more faster, why not shift to a better option. Even though by far the most popular LAN cabling is Twisted Pair. Especially the University are under budget constraints and want a simple installation. But still the LAN requires a high level of security or data integrity or need to transmit data over long distances at high speeds, twisted pair should not be used. Like use totally the fiber – optic cable. Although expensive, fiber optic cabling is the choice for very high speed, high-capacity data transmission. In this type of cabling, optical fibers are used to carry digital data signals in the form of modulated light pulses. Since no electrical signals are being transmitted, a fiber-optic network is very secure. With this, another problem could be solve. I assumed that the University have great Engineering and Network Administrator people that could be tapped about this matter.

Network Topology – Topology is the design for the physical layout of a network. A Technology Coordinator needs to understand topology in order to create the school (and district’s) network components based on budget. Since we are talking about the medium to be used for the network connection, let me also examine the network topology the University currently using. Assuming, network topology is one factor of having a slow connection, I must suggest that they should use Star Topology. Especially that the whole University is a Local Area Network or LAN. Star Topology should be use because in a Star topology, all devices are connected to a central hub. The hub moves signals from any node and passes it along to all the other nodes in the network. Hubs do not filter or route data. They simply join nodes together. Star is the most common today since enables the network to remain stable, even when one cabling connection fails. If the hub fails however, the network will lose connection. It is easy to install and wire. Star Topology has no disruptions to the network then connecting or removing devices. And it is easy to detect faults and to remove parts.

Bandwidth – Bandwidth includes the range within a band of frequencies or wavelengths as well as the amount of data that can be transmitted in a fixed amount of time. Like the highway system, bandwidth is designed to carry network traffic. The wider the highway, the more traffic that can be carried. Just like the highway system, however, bandwidth is only a potential. Since bandwidth is a measure of potential speed as well as potential data that can be carried, there can be bottlenecks in networks that increase the overall time traffic takes to get from one place to another. As an IT consultant, I would wanted to know first what must the reason why the University is encountering slow internet connection. And I’ve discovered that one reason is about the filtered distribution among the networks connection in the University. One thing that could solve this is to increase the bandwidth. I also knew that the University have already increased the bandwidth, still there’s no effect. Even if the University keep on increasing the bandwidth, if it is not properly allocated, nothing will happen. The University should allocate bandwidth properly depending on the usage. Probably, with this, the tasks require the most bandwidth can be suitably attended to. While the information and tasks that not necessarily need high bandwidth can also be attended to at the same time.

DNS Setting - Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participants. Most importantly, it translates domain names meaningful to humans into the numerical (binary) identifiers associated with networking equipment for the purpose of locating and addressing these devices worldwide. An often used analogy to explain the Domain Name System is that it serves as the "phone book" for the Internet by translating human-friendly computer hostnames into IP addresses. For example, www.example.com translates to 208.77.188.166. Also the DNS has a software updates: many anti-virus and commercial software now use the DNS system to store version numbers of the latest software updates so client computers do not need to connect to the update servers every time. For these type of applications, the cache time of the DNS records are usually shorter. So if the DNS Setting is managed well, these would also a little help for a faster internet connection.

Computer Virus – is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without the permission or knowledge of the owner. The term "virus" is also commonly but erroneously used to refer to other types of malware, adware, and spyware programs that do not have the reproductive ability. A true virus can only spread from one computer to another (in some form of executable code) when its host is taken to the target computer; for instance because a user sent it over a network or the Internet, or carried it on a removable medium such as a floppy disk, CD, DVD, or USB drive. Viruses can increase their chances of spreading to other computers by infecting files on a network file system or a file system that is accessed by another computer. Most personal computers are now connected to the Internet and to local area networks, facilitating the spread of malicious code. Today's viruses may also take advantage of network services such as the World Wide Web, e-mail, Instant Messaging, and file sharing systems to spread. Thus, computer viruses can physically affect the performance of the computer and its processes and also the internet connectivity within a network. Resulting it to a slower connection and even worse. So as a solution, the University should install appropriate anti-virus software in all its computer units. Even for an expert, removing a computer virus can be a difficult task without the help of computer virus removal tools. Some computer viruses and other unwanted software, such as spyware, even reinstall themselves after the viruses have been detected and removed. Fortunately, by updating the computer and by using antivirus tools, you can help permanently remove unwanted software. To help avoid viruses, it's essential that you keep your computer current with the latest updates and antivirus tools, stay informed about recent threats, and that you follow a few basic rules when you surf the Internet, download files, and open attachments. Having an adequate protection for the computer is the most important thing.

People ware – we are done with the proper things and the factors that the University should consider in order to address all the problems they are encountering with regards to slow internet connectivity. So the last would be for the people who were involved with the said problem. The people are main key in order for all the good plans of improving the University’s performance in terms of internet connectivity. They should all be properly oriented about the properly usage of the internet or the computer, be it as faculty, student or staff. Even if we can already solve the problems regarding the slow internet connectivity, if the people would be the cause of delay, then all the efforts will be literally useless.

Once and for all, this is a University. We all belong to a one institution. So we should all cooperate and do all our responsibility to address all the problems that the University have been going through.

References:

http://www.yourdictionary.com/finance/wireless-fidelity

http://ide.ed.psu.edu/itsc/portfolio/itscKristinH/aect/areas/1media/1_16.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org

http://fcit.usf.edu/Network/chap5/chap5.htm

BARRIERS on IT/IS Implementation

noreply@blogger.com (☻MaGZ☻) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 05:14:00 +0000

BARRIERS on IT/IS implementation

Organizations are as alike and unique as human beings. Similarly, group processes can be as straightforward or as complex as the individuals who make up the organization. It is vital to successfully launching a new program that the leaders understand the strengths, weaknesses, and eccentricity of the organization or system in which they operate. So in an organization, it is always a must to anticipate barriers to implementation so that you can develop strategies to minimize their impact or avoid them altogether.

We already had visit number of companies for our previous assignments. Thus, giving us many opportunities to learned not just for the sake of subject compliance but also for our personal knowledge that we could acquire towards company visitation. Previously, our group have already a personal encounter with the Columbia Computer Center Davao and Davao Light Power Company. During our appointment with them, a lot of questions have been raised for them to answer. So let me identify and discuss some of their barriers on IT/IS implementation. From the prior interview we had made, the barriers for IT/IS implementation was not directly converse among us but since the risk about IS/IT change have talked about, I guess it relates to the barriers with IT/IS implementation. Since we are talking about the barriers, I would like to classify those things to several sectors that could be consider as a barrier. As what I observed, the following are the classifications of barriers during the IS/IT implementation of every company. The human resource quandary, communication problems, operational, technical, environmental, financial, hardware and software difficulties. These are just few of the barriers for IT/IS implementation that I would be discussing.

We could never deny the fact that when new innovations are being presented to every the employees of certain organizations, it would give a hard time for those employee to adjust and adopt with the latest technology that they will be using. They are all reluctant to accept the reality of changes. This is what we called the Human and Organizational resistance. It could really be a great barrier because as part of the organization, human resource is one thing that every company should consider. If you could not cooperate with these particular changes or innovations, you would only bring your organization to a great failure or even yourself a barrier for a successful IT/IS implementation.

Basically, if you belong to an organization, communication with each other is solely significant. You should work as one team and always establish a team work in order to address the needs with IT/IS implementation. So if you lack of communication and interaction, this would become a barrier towards a great plan for IT/IS implementation.

In technical point of view, the need for modern information systems resources are one thing that an organization should consider in IT/IS implementation. So if an organization have limited resources this would result to a failure of IT/IS implementation, developing and the implementation of the system may be inefficient than expected.

Lack of expertise between the people in your organization with the information being process could also be a barrier. A general lack of education and information about both technology and programs is such a problem. Considering that the people have limited organizational intelligence toward the IT/IS implementation, a lot of obstacle would be an outcome.

Also in developing systems, data collection and data management is the most complex part in the entire process of IT/IS implementation, leaving an impression that this could be a barrier. It is the most complicated yet important piece for an IT/IS implementation because it let us know about the whole system, what it is all about and what is it scope and limitations. Since we are talking about limitations, the problem about time could be an issue. The situation of having a limited time for IT/IS implementation could affect the developing process and the output of the system itself. Also the time factor for limited collection and updating of the information for the method of completion. This sometimes indicates the unrealistic time frames that every system is considering.

Talking about this whole thing of IT/IS implementation, we would always consider the financial aspect that we would be encountering in the entire process. These include budget restrictions limiting the overall expenditure on the strategy, financial restrictions on specific hardware and software, and limitations on the flexibility with which revenues can be used to finance the full range of IT/IS implementation. It is always a barrier for it gives us a channel to acquire certain resources that an organization needs.

If we would have a limited resources as what I have discussed a while ago, the monetary capabilities of an organization would become a barrier. If the organization could not secure a sufficient funding for such project implementation, it would closely end up to a very regretting decision for the organization to develop a new system. When we are talking about the funds and cost of the implementation, the strategic planning would also be a factor. If certain organization lacks of current information for planning and developing these technology, it would be just waste of time and effort for them to come up with new ideas in IT/IS implementation.

Since planning have been mentioned, all organizations have always a goal and purpose for setting up the idea of presenting a new system to be develop and implemented. Then, if in the first place their goals are too ambitious for the resources that are available within them, the planning is still useless. In an organization, the conflict between employees are always present. Especially if you have a partnership with other companies. Unclear goals and purposes would always be a barrier.

The overlapping missions among the involved organizations is such a difficult thing to mull over. So far the public or private partnerships between organization have proved to be unsuccessful. Lets discuss about the hardware and software difficulties that we could encounter during IT/IS implementation. If the availability of the said hardware and software doesn’t meet the desire equipments, it would directly came up with an idea of failure of implementation and development of the system. The lack of step by step procedure within the organization is such a problem that would always been taking care of so that it would not be a barrier for the preparation of the enhancement of their IS.

Final Na!

noreply@blogger.com (☻MaGZ☻) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 07:25:00 +0000

YELLOW MINIX for the 2nd-4th year CS Studs..

PINK DRAGONFLY for 1st year IT and CS Studs..

GREEN NEMESIS for 2nd-4th year IT Studs..

Well this is the final shirt and color design for our ICEAN Festival '09! Since we are divided into three teams, the color of the logo will only alter in every shirt. The team names were derived from the Networking Operating Systems we have researched..

Comments are accepted.ü

Davao ICT Summit '09

noreply@blogger.com (☻MaGZ☻) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 06:36:00 +0000

It was just Thursday last week, August 6, 2009 when we were informed about the 2- Day Davao ICT Summit held on Davao Convention Center along F. Torres St. We were glad of course since our class will be suspended again. Just kidding! Seriously, it was another opportunity for us USEP- IC Students and also a privileged to be invited in this kind of event. So we scheduled ourselves on August 7, 2009, day 2 of the Davao ICT Summit.

We arrived at the venue around 1:30 pm in the afternoon. There are already a lot of people all over the place. Our group have entered the Room A which tackled TESDA’s Career Profiling YP4SC:Skills Bridging for Davaoenos. It was really funny all along since we didn't know the topic that will be going to discuss in Room A and as we discovered, it was raelly not related to us because the seminar is intended particularly to 4th year High School Students. Still, we had learned something and enjoyed the day full of fun and insights.

ICEAN TSHIRT DESIGN

noreply@blogger.com (☻MaGZ☻) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 08:13:00 +0000

Please choose what color you most prefer for our ICEAN Shirt '09.

Thanks!

COMMDAP Experience.....

noreply@blogger.com (☻MaGZ☻) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:54:00 +0000

COMMDAP 2009

Computer Manufacturers Distributors and Dealers Association of the Philippines (COMDDAP) have stage their annual event in Apo View Hotel Davao last July 2 – 4, 2009. COMDDAP is an association of the country's top information technology businesses. Its primary objective is to promote the sustainable development of the of the country's information technology industry through voluntary collaboration of its member companies. It is the goal of COMDDAP to be able to provide its members general views and updates from different sectors - private and government, and highly regarded individuals to further uplift the morale and knowledge of its organization. The annual COMDDAP endeavor encourages its participants to launch their products and services, as well as hold seminars with a variety of topics in the areas of technology, trends, applications, and information management.

Actually, COMMDAP is not new to me anymore because we have already experienced going to their event two years ago during our second year in college. Honestly, it was really a remarkable experienced since it was held at the Davao Convention. Like this year, a lot of Computer Manufacturers and other industries have joined and presented their latest innovations. We also met a lot of people. Not just ordinary people, but big bosses of some companies.

This year I’ve been informed of COMMDAP by some streamers around the Quirino street of Davao City. But this time it will be held on one of the best hotel in the city, the Apo View Hotel Davao. At first thought, this event will be having an admission fee and obviously we cannot afford it. But later this month, Sir RSG have posted it in our group that we are encouraged to join the said event. A lot of us have been confused on how to register since the sessions had limited seats only. Eventually, all of us interested students, have successfully registered to our chosen schedules. I’ve chose to register on July 2, 2009 with the following sessions: The ERIC Dealer Management System - Jupiter Systems, Inc., The HP Thin Client - Nexus Technologies, Inc. and Open Source For Business Applications - Spinweb Productions, Inc.

July 2 came and all of us were very excited. It’s not just that about the COMMDAP, but some of us were enthuse for this is the first time they would enter the Apo View Hotel Davao. Funny but true. Anyways, when we arrived there, we went to the registration booth and given a student registered sticker. As I saw the Grand Ballroom, the place were filled with different latest technology. Various booths with their assorted offering to the public are all over the place. We have took pictures in every booths. Captured everything that presented to us for free. Almost USEPIANS are in the crowd, falling in line on some booths that giving away freebies. One of that is the sandbox.com.ph. where we registered ourselves and got free slings and bags.

When 1pm came, we headed toward the Vanda function room where the first session that afternoon will be held. But we still waited for a while since the speaker for the Tech Talk we have registered that time is not around. Around 1:30 pm The ERIC Dealer Management System - Jupiter Systems, Inc. Tech Talk started. The speaker have prepared a presentation where he imparted a lot of their management features and services. As he have said, The ERIC Dealer Management System(ERIC DMS) is an end-to-end software solution for automotive sales parts and service businesses. ERIC DMS covers full range of dealer activities for Customer prospecting and vehicle services. Honestly, I’m really sleepy with the first session. It’s not that the speaker doesn’t give us interesting inputs, but maybe because we cannot really relate ourselves to his presentation. On the first place, it talk about cars and we don’t have that now either. Though, we have learned new things and hoping that someday we could purchase some systems to their company and used it for our business someday.

After that, it was The HP Thin Client - Nexus Technologies, Inc have then stage their latest merchandise to us. We have been awaken since the speaker talk so fast and lively. Then he began presenting the HP Thin Client to us. Actually, it is my first time to know about HP Thin Client. As he introduces to us, HP Thin Client have definitely much advantages to the other computing models. As I remembered, HP Thin Client typically runs on Linux, Windows CE and Windows Xpe. HP Thin Client offers higher level on data security when it comes to the hardware and software. Also higher level of reliability. It is a computer device without a Hard Drives, CD-ROMs and floppy disks. With the HP thin client computing model, your vulnerability to virus attack on the thin client system is significantly less than a standard Windows PC. This means that thin client users will experience significantly less downtime due to security vulnerabilities than PC users. In addition, since no user data resides on a thin client, there is no risk of user data loss on the thin client. Finally, if a thin client’s image is compromised or corrupted, recovery time is typically measured in minutes instead of hours.

Additionally, the HP thin client computing model utilizes PC blades and/or servers located in a data center. You can protect and monitor centrally-managed, data center resources more easily with antivirus and firewall tools. You can correct and recover compromised thin client resources faster and cheaper than distributed PC resources. In the event of a virus attack or other security issue, the HP thin client computing model offers significantly shorter recovery time when contrasted with the traditional desktop model. If a thin client’s image is compromised or corrupted, recovery time is typically measured in minutes instead of hours. Recovery usually involves a power cycle (1 minute), patch (5 minutes), or re-image (15 minutes) of the system. This is substantially less time than the typical two hours it takes to re-image a PC or the multiple hours that you can spend rebuilding and recovering a user’s data and environment. As HP Thin clients have been explained to us, everyone have been amazed brought by this innovation. Though HP Thin Client has a Thin Design., still offered powerful performance and flexible configurations.

But what really give more thrill to us that moment is the freebies and prizes awaiting for us. Microsoft T- shirt I guess, optical mouse, three 2Gb USB flash drives and an 8Gb USB Flash drive. Then after the presentation, questions from them have been thrown to the audience who were very eager to win that time. Fortunately, almost all of the prizes have been won by the USEPIANS.

The last Tech Talk we had is about the Open Source For Business Applications - Spinweb Productions, Inc. Honestly, I was not able to start the Tech Talk since we’ve been having a good time roaming around the Grand Ballroom. Taking pictures or even availing the free internet access that instance. But still we are able to attend the last part and got even a chocolate as a prize even if I’m not included in the winners. Lolz

To sum it all, the whole COMMDAP experience is a remarkable one. There are a lot of things imparted to us by the different speakers. Who heartily shared their knowledge to us and introduces us to the latest innovations the world has to offer.

References:
http://www.comddap.org/aboutus.htm
http://www.nexusgroup.com.ph/

Risk Associated with Business IT/IS change?

noreply@blogger.com (☻MaGZ☻) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:45:00 +0000

DAVAO LIGHT AND POWER COMPANY

Regarding the Assignment 2 which tackle about the risks associated with business and IS/IT change, we considered the Davao Light and Power Company as our adopted organization. Davao Light and Power Company is the third largest privately owned electric utility in the Philippines. One of the country's top 300 corporations, it is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Aboitiz Group of Companies' investment arm, Aboitiz Equity Ventures, Inc. It holds the franchise for distributing electric power to Davao City, the largest city in the world in terms of land area, as well as Panabo City and the municipalities of Carmen, Dujali, and Sto. Tomas in Davao del Norte. On September 29, 2000, the franchise was renewed for another 25 years by virtue of Republic Act 8960.

It was just this Wednesday, July 8, 2009, when Davao Light and Power Company texted us and confirmed that we could conduct a three hour interview with them.

It was scheduled on July 9, 2009, Thursday, yesterday actually. There were five of us in our group and four from the other group who were given the chance by them. They gave us a very warm welcome and headed toward their Conference room to be our venue for the presentation they have prepared and fro the proper interview. Our interviewee is part of the Information System Department (ISD), one of the department that composes their Information Services Group (ISG).

Anyways, he first showed us a presentation illustrating their Management Information System. He also presented the development of some of the hardware and the systems being used for the data processing of the company. It was from 1978 when they started to evolve from a lower level of systems until they have came up there new system for the present usage. He illustrated that the Electronics Data Processing building have been using the Nova 2 Data General Corporation Computer for handing out the data, with the features of process data 3oo lines per minute, 64 kb and 3 CRT.

From then on, they transfer to NCR Century 201. They used it form 1978 – 1983. Unlike to NOVA 2, it process much data for 3000 lines per minute, 128 kb, 2x655 5 mb Disk drive and 2x657 96 mb Disk drive. Then on 1983 – 1994, the Electronics Data Processing building, was been changed to a department and manage the data using the IBM Mainframe 4331 and 4361. Their primary programming language that time is the COBOL or the COmmon Business-Oriented Language. Until such time the growth of the company have reached its highest peak, clipper has been introduced to them.

Clipper is a computer programming language that is used to create software programs that originally operated primarily under DOS. Although it is a powerful general-purpose programming language, it was primarily used to create database/business programs. For the past few years, the Davao Light and Power Company have been in the business. Not only the systems but also the structure of their Organization have gone through changes also.

Changes have been made in order to enhance the performance of their database, which is the one responsible for storing all the data being process in the company. With the existence of technology, a lot of things have been discovered and instituted to them. These particular things have been amended of course for the benefit of their company. Well, if we talk about alteration and changes, we can never let go of risks associated with it. Especially in the business, risks have been considered also.

As we asked our interviewee, about the risks associated with business and IS/IT change in their company, he then started to list some risk they have encountered so far.

1. Comparison of the new system to the old one - He gave us an example of the situation which happened in 2005. That time the programming language they have been using is the clipper. But they just observed that every month their system always crash. He described the clipper as a not robust for their database. Because of this, they begun using the Oracle as their foremost database management system up to this present. Although Oracle, have given them much easier tasks as its processed data more faster than the clipper, still there’s lacking to. The users of the databases have been commenting sometimes about the new one, that the old one is more great. Lot of comparisons have arises. In this situation, adopting new system is not that easy even if it do more great works than the previous one.

2. Financial - Adjusting to the latest changes made have been an issue and also a risk. We can never deny that financial aspect is always a factor when newborn technology pioneered in an organization. They will always considered the cost of the product that will be using.

3. Piracy – this kind of situation is not already new to them. It is about their employee being pirated by other companies. The setting is, the employees have just limited knowledge of some programming language. But as technology grows, their expertise should widen also. That’s why they decide to learn these things also. Once the other company knew about this, that this particular man is good with this, they immediately offer a new job with an immense salary. As usual, no man can be reluctant with this kind of offer. Then with this changes, the risk of being pirated could never been denied.

4. Security – this are the risk associated with the vulnerability of the system, information and networks. Risk of intrusions and connectivity to other vulnerable systems risk associated with the evolution of credible threats.

5. Organizational and change management – this is the risk associated with organizational, agency or government- wide cultural resistance to change and standardization; risk associated with bypassing or lack of use improper use or adherence to new systems and processes because of organizational structure and culture; inadequate training planning.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org
www.davaolight.com

Green Campus Computing

noreply@blogger.com (☻MaGZ☻) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 03:21:00 +0000

Act Green! Think Green!

Green Computing used is the positive (or least negative) relationship between the physical computer and its impact to the environments in which it moves through during its journey from cradle to grave. I've heard about it last year when the third year students introduced it during our Acquaintance Party. The advocacy is just easy. There are steps that we could tag along in order to be a real advocate. However, if these steps are not used on the right track, it's still useless. So, I have three Sites down here that I believe a Green Campus Computing advocate also.

University of Colorado, Environmental Center
http://ecenter.colorado.edu/energy/projects/green_computing.html

In this site they have introduced a book for more Green Computing Guide. As we all know, technology have arises to its higher level at this moment. So, computers have been present for so many years to campuses and Universities in order to do a more efficient and accurate job. But, have we think of the disadvantage brought by these technology? In this site they have showed us the Computer Operating Costs, Energy Efficient Computing, and other Green Computing Practices. They have shared many concepts, but let me just quote the things from their site that I think could help us to have a more greener environment.

Screen savers save no energy

If screen saver images appear on your monitor for more than 5 minutes, you are wasting energy! Screen saver programs may save the phosphors in your monitor screen, but this is not really a concern with newer monitors, especially LCD screens. And they do not save any energy. A screen saver that displays moving images causes your monitor to consume as much as electricity as it does when in active use. These screen saver programs also involve system interaction with your CPU that results in additional energy consumption. A blank screen saver is slightly better but even that only reduces monitor energy consumption by a few percent.

So if we could adopt this on our University, especially on our Computer Laboratories, we could definitely save more energy and electricity which I believe, a great problem that our University is facing right now. With this simple move, we could greatly contribute to a low power consumption campaign.

When not in use, turn off the juice
This is the most basic energy conservation strategy for any type of equipment. Consider the following:

* Turn off your computer and/or peripherals when they are not in use. Turning on and off will not harm the equipment.
* Don’t run computers continuously unless they are in use continuously.
* Turn off at night and on weekends
* Look for ways to reduce the amount of time your computer is on without adversely affecting your productivity.

A very basic thing that we should always remember. Obviously, we the user of these devices have the sole responsibility to turn it off especially when not in use. Not just computers, also the lights and other appliances in the University, should not be forgotten to be switch off when they are not in use in order to conserve more energy. The employees or even the students should turn off the entire computer system (CPU, monitor and printer) or at least the monitor and printer when going out for lunch or will be out of office for a meeting or an errand. If we would just follow it, little by little, the University would learned from these and we're hoping that this could be implemented wisely.

Reducing Paper Waste
Rather than creating a paperless office, computer use has vastly increased paper consumption and paper waste. Here are some suggestions for reducing waste:

* Print as little as possible. Review and modify documents on the screen and use print preview. Minimize the number of hard copies and paper drafts you make. Instead of printing, save information to disks.
* Recycle waste paper.
* Buy and use recycled paper in your printers and copiers. From an environmental point of view, the best recycled paper is 100 percent post consumer recycled content.

Paper usage is really a great part of our University. Especially, during enrollment and even in the day to day basis, paper is very important. But why not recycle and reused paper? It could minimize waste and decrease paper consumption throughout the University.

CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY
http://campustechnology.com/articles/2006/08/where-green-and-it-meet.aspx

One of the article on this site entitled Where Green and IT Meet By Linda L. Briggs, caught my attention. She featured some interesting facts about U.S. colleges and Universities. On how much they spend each year on energy and estimates the average PC wastes up to 400 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. With this, they have discovered that IT people is not that particular when it comes to energy preservation. Although the cost of energy is soaring and computers are voracious energy consumers on campus, many in IT know very little about what their school is doing to save energy. That’s partly because most energy dollars don’t come out of the typical IT budget. The energy it takes to run PCs and servers across campus generally belongs to the facilities side, and is regarded as a set cost of doing business.

Computers are playing a growing role in energy management, as schools rely on sophisticated computerized energy management systems that rival the complexity of mission-critical systems on campus. Adopting a strategic approach to energy management, especially as new buildings are planned or retrofitted, can lower a university’s energy bills by 30 percent or more, according to figures from the government’s Energy Star Web site. Computerized energy management systems, also called building automation systems or direct digital control systems, offer software and hardware specifically for measuring and controlling energy consumption.

This strategy could be apply to our University if and only if many staff, especially the IT personalities would initiate. Though, it would cost that much, but still we will not regret it. As far as I know, Energy management systems are typically connected with different systems across the campus to collect data on everything from room temperatures, CO2 levels, and occupancy rates, to the energy used by soda machines and exit signs. The IT people could be a great help for they have the role for helping to select, install, and manage these complex systems. If this be pursue, hopefully in the near future, a lot of savings on the University overall budget can be acquired. Which we can never denied that it could ultimately benefits everyone.

http://www.edtechmag.com/higher/september-october-2007/seeing-green.html

On this site, I've found another article which promotes a greener environment. "Seeing Green" Adelphi University finds seven ways to save power by Nancy A. Feldman.

The following are the things that we should do so we can profit along the way.

Spend Now, Save Later

You spend roughly 50 cents on energy for every dollar of computer hardware, according to analyst firm IDC. And this figure is expected to increase to 71 cents over the next four years. So if you have the budget for new equipment, these tips can save you money in the long run — and reduce your carbon footprint to boot.

* Power down all electronic equipment when not in use.
* Don’t use screen savers — they consume 28 percent more energy than sleep mode.
* Run updates during the day to avoid leaving PCs on overnight.
* Set printers to sleep mode. They return to active status quickly when new print jobs are submitted.
* Buy Energy Star-compliant products. Americans saved $12 billion last year through the Energy Star program.
* Consider notebooks over desktops wherever feasible. They use up to 90 percent less energy.
* Replace CRTs with LCDs; they use one-half to two-thirds of the energy.
* Consider an all-in-one rather than separate fax, printer and copier. All-in-ones save on electricity and space, and reduce equipment heat emissions.
* Enhance the energy efficiency of your storage infrastructure by using consolidation, storage tie ring, single-instance archiving, snapshot and cloning technology.
Sources: HP, EMC and IDC

As we can see, those listed above are the fundamental ways that we could perform in order for our University to save more, in electricity, space and even reduce equipment heat emissions. Though they are basic, if neither of us will initiate in doing these things, still we can never progress. Let's start on switching off all the electronic equipments especially when not in use. You can take a giant step toward environmentally responsible or “green” computing by conserving energy with your computer. But green computing involves other important steps as well. Again, if we would just support it all the way no more doubts that our University would be one of the prime advocate of Green Campus Computing.

It is up to us to keep our campus, our workplace, our home and Earth green. We are all accountable for our one and only planet Earth.

References:

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2006/08/where-green-and-it-meet.aspx
http://www.edtechmag.com/higher/september-october-2007/seeing-green.html
http://ecenter.colorado.edu/energy/projects/green_computing.html

2010 POLL AUTOMATION

noreply@blogger.com (☻MaGZ☻) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 02:26:00 +0000

2010 POLL AUTOMATION

When the issue about poll automation have been brought up many news and articles have been written, discussing about this whole thing. A lot of questions have made up to people’s mind, Would this automated election could eliminate possible cheaters? Would it help us, the people votes to be worth it as a citizen of the Republic of the Philippines? These are just few issues and queries embodied by the preparation of the 2010 Poll automation.

As few of us know, it has been seventeen years since the first initiatives to automate Philippine elections. The effort has spanned three administrations (Presidents Fidel Ramos, Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo) and five national elections (not counting barangay elections and the ARMM gubernatorial elections). But still nothing have been implemented because of some uncertain circumstances. Now, there is another attempt of pursuing this Automated Election for 2010. It was on January 7, this year when the Commission on Elections (Comelec) submits a P13.9 billion-budget for the automation of the 2010 elections to the DBM.

From March 5 to June 9 of 2009, a lot of activities have been worked on to be able to perform this much awaited Poll Automation in 2010. These includes the passing of the Senate of P11.3 billion-supplemental budget for the automation of the 2010 elections, obtaining of bid documents from Commission on Elections (Comelec) for the automation of the 2010 elections of the eleven prospective bidders which in the scanning of the documents only seven bidders passed. Also when Pres. Arroyo signs RA 9295 which allocates funds for the automation of the elections, the public bidding organized by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and all other process they have to encounter in order for the election process to reach a higher level in terms of credibility and technology. After all those procedures they have undergone, only one bidder have the chance to lead all of us to a clean and honest election process as a lot of people believe. This is the Netherlands-based Smartmatic and its Filipino partner Total Information Management (TIM).

But, later this month numerous reports have been stated that the automation of the 2010 elections was placed in jeopardy after the Filipino partner of the technology consortium that won the bidding for the project backed out, which is the Total Information Management (TIM),announced by The Commission on Elections Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Jose Melo. Some officials of Total Information Management Corp. (TIM) informed him that they were withdrawing from their partnership with Dutch firm Smartmatic International. According to Commission on Elections (Comelec), Chairman Jose Melo, there are some irreconcilable differences between the two companies. Allegedly issues also came out that there are some people in the administration or politicians who were manipulating the Filipino partner in order to back-out. Also, the issue about the financial arises, whether which of the two would get the much higher profit with these future automated election. By then, loads of people have been frustrated upon hearing the news. The hope of having much cleaner procedures for the most mission critical election for our country have just gone. However, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) assures the people that they would settle this mess.

So, just this morning July 4, 2009 in the Philippine Star, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Jose Melo has announced that “Were able to iron out their differences over the control of funds for the P11.2-billion poll automation project. We were able to thresh out everything. Everything seems to be on track again after one week of suspense and apprehension that we will be reverting to the manual system. We are back with automation”.

On my own perspective, Poll automation in the 2010 elections is good because we have to keep abreast with trends in modernization. However, considering that it’s the first time we are attempting this technology, we can expect some problems to transpire and this will again compel the government to shell out several more millions. Its success can only be gauged by implementation and seeing its results. It’s a tremendous boost to our obsolete vote-counting system and would ultimately improve our unreliable election process. But still we can never be assured that it’s automated, so we are free from election fraud. Machines can cheat more efficiently than people, if so programmed.

As far as I know, it is still manual in terms of selecting the candidates, we just need to shade the circle of our choice and let the machines do the counting and tallying. Though poll automation will make counting votes quicker, I still have my doubts if the powers-that-be would not hack computer programs come year 2010. For the human virus will surely destroy the genuine purpose of automation. Cheaters will always find a way to hack the machine.

On the positive side, I could say that this is a welcome news for the Filipinos, the majority of voters expect the machines to deliver the goods. If not, we would be in a lot more trouble than before. The Commission on Elections should ensure that no sleight of hand will occur. The technical people of the Commission on Elections should work side by side with the supplier, from delivery period to actual operation during the elections. If these things are met, then we are in for a new age in election history. I believe that everybody has been eager for this moment to come because it will now bail us out of the globally laughable Jurassic electoral system that has been toyed with by politicians in the Philippine election playground for many years now, exploiting its weaknesses by using all sorts of immoral, unethical and even criminal methods.

Now that we have this poll automation for the next elections and thereafter, I only hope that the criminally-inclined will not tinker with it and render it ineffective to come out with true election results. If programmed and used honestly, this new system will push back to history the oft-repeated complaint by losing politicians, “Dinaya ako.” After so many decades of manual vote counting, we will at last have an honest-to-goodness automated poll count. Yes, let’s give the Commission on Elections and the winning bidder a chance to prove their worth in 2010. Otherwise, we would be staying true to our tag as “the nation of crabs”. Poll automation is a welcome change in the upcoming 2010 election. With this the Filipinos we’re hoping for a cleaner and transparent counting of votes. Let’s just pray that in the end this long journey for the poll automation will be successful.

References:
http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=483573&publicationSubCategoryId=63
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/features/07/01/09/timeline-long-road-poll-automation
Philippine Daily Inquirer

What an Ambush Interview.

noreply@blogger.com (☻MaGZ☻) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 04:01:00 +0000

Columbia Computer Center Davao, Inc.

Yesterday there are four of us who seek for a company to be interview as a basis for our Assignment. Fortunately, we headed to Columbia Computer Center Davao, Inc,. with our interviewee (name withheld for confidentiality), Manager of the Marketing Development Mindanao Area.

Provided by their website, this is their Company Profile.

Columbia Computer Center Davao, Inc., one of the pioneers in the computer industry of Davao City, started its operation in 1982 as a video center. It is located at City Triangle Building, CM Recto St. corner Roxas Avenue, Davao City. Due to a promising opportunity in the computer business, investments in this industry was also tried and later concentrated in this field. Currently, they have four (4) branches in the Mindanao area. At present, they carry most of the IT leaders\' brand name in the market such as ACER,COMPAQ, HEWLETT PACKARD, CANON, EPSON, MICROSOFT, INTEL, A-OPEN, 3M, LOGITECH, APC, MGE PULSAR, 3COM, SEAGATE, ASUS, MICROSTAR, JETWAY, CALIDAD, KRONE,AMP, LIKOM, EXPRESS and other peripherals & accessories.

Columbia Computer Center Davao, Inc. offers sales, repairs, rentals, networking installation and other services to our customers. They cater wholesale distribution of complete range of computer products, which covers PC System, peripherals, accessories and components. They are also engaged in direct sales providing computing solutions to manage large corporate accounts, government agencies and educational institutions as well as small medium sized companies. The company also provides services to our clientele to support all the products purchased under Columbia Computer Center Davao, Inc.

The following are the best practices they have introduced to us:

Mind Your Own Business (MYOB)- this is the software or program used by the Columbia Computer Center for the control of their inventory and sales. With this software, they manually check all of the things needed for the inventory and could automatically report on sales and debtors. Also, the sales ledger are centralized with this. As our interviewee expanded, all their inventory are already generated in the software. Once, a product have been sold, it’s just inputted in the Mind Your Own Business software, it will already generate a report on the sales of their company. It would also show all the expenses and the accounts left throughout the day. The profit and loss statement to be exact.

Biometrics - refers to methods for uniquely recognizing humans based upon one or more intrinsic physical or behavioral traits. It is used for the log in and log out of the employee. On their case, the thumb mark or the finger prints of their employee are the basis in order to have their daily time record (DTR). In short, biometrics is used by the Columbia Computer Center to record their attendance automatically. It is automated so they will no longer utilize the traditional way of getting the Daily Time record by using the Bundy clock. With this, the moment the employee subject his thumb mark to the machine and enter his distinct code, it will mechanically reflect on their DTR. Throughout the day, it will record their number of hours and days they had.

Closed-circuit television or the (CCTV) – is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors. It differs from broadcast television in that the signal is not openly transmitted, though it may employ point to point wireless links. Columbia Computer Center Davao, Inc,. being the main office in the Mindanao area, are monitoring their other branches with the help of the Closed-circuit television or the CCTV. They could monitor all of their employees in their other branches such as in Butuan City, Cagayan de Oro City and General Santos City. With this, they could always see on what are happening in these branches and can accessed them anytime. Also, this could help them supervise these branches without any hassle on going on that far places. In just one click, all their worries about their other branches could be answered with the aid of the Closed-circuit television or the CCTV. This is via the internet, so Columbia Computer Center Davao, Inc., admits that for now they are all Internet dependent.

Networking Installations – they are proud to say that this is one of their best practices because it is not only their technician who knows this job, but almost eighty percent of their employees are capable of doing networking jobs. Meaning, any of them could be tap in the center whenever there are client or costumers need a help about networking installations. As they say, almost of them are skilled and trained regarding on networking.

Top Provider of Hardware / Software - At present, they carry most of the IT leaders' brand name in the market such as ACER,COMPAQ, HEWLETT PACKARD, CANON, EPSON, MICROSOFT, INTEL, A-OPEN, 3M, LOGITECH, APC, MGE PULSAR, 3COM, SEAGATE, ASUS, MICROSTAR, JETWAY, CALIDAD, KRONE,AMP, LIKOM, EXPRESS and other peripherals & accessories. With this many institutions and agencies are having a partnership with them regarding of any matters. Such as networking installation, repairs, rentals and cater wholesale distribution of complete range of computer products, which covers PC System, peripherals, accessories and components in the City. As one of the top provide in the City with these materials, Columbia Computer Center Davao, Inc., provides computing solutions to manage large corporate accounts, government agencies and educational institutions as well as small medium sized companies. Included on their list in the institution sector is the Ateneo de Davao University. While on the government side is the City Hall and 911 Center. Proudly saying also that they are the no. 1 partner of the PLDT in Davao City in terms of all their services. The Lapanday Foods, Davao Light Power Company, Davao City Water District and also San Miguel Beer are also among of their clients.

Management Information System Department (MIS Department) – when we asked them if they have this department on their organization, they answered no. For them, having a Management Information System Department (MIS Department)becomes redundant. Why? it is because almost eighty percent of their employee knows all the job within the company. It means that what the manager knows, also the utility boy knows too and vice versa. It doesn’t matter on what position they have when it comes to work distribution. As long as you have admitted in their company, within 2 months, you are already skilled and could almost do everything related to the company. As they call themselves, “DALTANS = dala tanan”, all of them are all around. Still they have the hierarchy of the organizational chart.

Reference:
Wikipedia.com
columbia.com.ph

LMIS vs. MIS

noreply@blogger.com (☻MaGZ☻) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:52:00 +0000

The question now is, do we agree if Management Information System(MIS) is change to Leadership Management Information System(LMIS)?

As the webopedia.com defines, MIS refers broadly to a computer-based system that provides managers with the tools for organizing, evaluating and efficiently running their departments. In order to provide past, present and prediction information, an MIS can include software that helps in decision making, data resources such as databases, the hardware resources of a system, decision support systems, people management and project management applications, and any computerized processes that enable the department to run efficiently.

Try to think of this, if we talk about Management it simply means of managing of time,work or anything that could be managed or even people. The term Management could basically give a right to the Managers to have power over their subordinates. They might take advantage to this power to control their people. We don't like to play as puppets well in fact we could do better with our chosen field if we are just guided with proper supervision.

That's why we opt to choose Leadership Management Information System as a description for our subject if given the chance. Because as we review this definition given by the wikipedia.org, Leadership has been described as the “process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task”. So in an organization, people may be lead and guided properly in order to excel in their assigned tasked. They must not be manage nor control because all of us have our right to work independently on how we are lead and molded by our leaders.

But still, it depends to the people on how they understand the word Management. I'm just stating a fair opinion to this issue that I would latter analyze as we go on through the semester.

References:
webopedia.com

Mintzberg's Managerial Roles

noreply@blogger.com (☻MaGZ☻) — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 14:08:00 +0000

As what I have read on some articles, Mintzberg's Managerial Roles are divided into three sections, namely, the interpersonal, informational, and decision roles.

Mintzberg then identified ten separate roles in managerial work, each role defined as an organized collection of behaviors belonging to an identifiable function or position out of these three sections.

1. FIGUREHEAD: the manager performs ceremonial and symbolic duties as head of the organization.

2. LEADER: fosters a proper work atmosphere and motivates and develops subordinates.

3. LIAISON: develops and maintains a network of external contacts to gather information.

4. MONITOR: gathers internal and external information relevant to the organization.

5. DISSEMINATOR: transmits factual and value based information to subordinates.

6. SPOKESPERSON: communicates to the outside world on performance and policies.

7. ENTREPRENEUR: designs and initiates change in the organization.

8. DISTURBANCE HANDLER: deals with unexpected events and operational breakdowns.

9. RESOURCE ALLOCATOR: controls and authorizes the use of organizational resources.

10. NEGOTIATOR: participates in negotiation activities with other organizations and individuals.

Although, individual capabilities of a person had a great effect on the implementation of each role, still it's the organization who determines the need of the particular roles for what the Manager assessed for an individual.

References:
http://www.provenmodels.com/88/ten-managerial-roles/mintzberg