Exercise

Exercise

1. Summarize the three-sphere model for systems management in your own words. Then use your own project experience or interview someone who recently completed an IT project, and list several business, technology, and organizational issues addressed during the project.

Which issues were most important to the project, and why? Summarize your answers in a short paper or presentation.

The three spheres of systems management are business, organization and technology issues

The business issues concentrate on the costs of the project on various stakeholders as well as the company which is undertaking the project . It also concentrates on the financial sense weather the project is feasible or not and weather the company should develop it in-house or purchase it off-the-shelf. Various issues like the cost of supporting the system and also the maintenance of the system. These issues also concentrate on the impact of the project on present and future customers of the company.

The organizational issues are the most important and also most difficult issues to work on and play an important role in managing projects. The people in the organization and other people involved in the project called the stakeholders should come to an definite understanding and work together and spend enough time with the project managers for the project to go on smoothly and meet the requirements and deadlines of the project. The project managers should work according to the political context and culture of the organization.

The technology issues concentrate on the kind of the technology should be adopted and weather it is accepted with the stakeholders and that technology adopted is familiar with the team members or they need to be trained. Is the present hardware and software is compatible with the technology or they are to be changed. And the way they impact internet access and LAN.

My experience of completing an information technology project has the business issues like making the survey about the feasibility of the new project execution. We arranged weekly meetings with all the stakeholders about the future course of the task.

In my experience I find organizational issues are the most important ones during the project as these issues keep tracking on the various key issues of the project like the technology adopted, selecting and training the team and selecting the hardware and software requirements that support the new system.

2. Apply the four frames of organizations to a possible project that involves the development of a new technology like mobile banking, online retail, or social media. Work with two other class members in a virtual environment on this exercise. Write a short paper or presentation that summarizes your analysis and opinions of how working virtually helped or hindered your results.

The four frames of the organizations are: Structural frame,Human resources frame, Political frame, and Symbolic frame.

All these four frames play a very important role for both the small project as well as for the long project. Small project has a timeline for few days with small budget and the large project requires longer time period project with big amount of investment. These four frames also plays a vital role for the successful completion of the project within the specified period of time. Every Project Manager (PM) should have clear understanding of these four frames to lead his/her team successfully. The person should know how to organize the team, understand the pros and cons of each team members, identify the strength and weaknesses of the team members, the relationship among team members as well as understand the external contractors.