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The importance of having a strategic plan as an organization
The importance of having a strategic plan as an organization
Achieving organizational goals
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System Development Life Cycle
Introduction
Achieving organizational objectives or improving on them is typically a combination of strategic planning, tactical planning and some form of change management (Starke & Sexty, 1992, p.97-99). Goals must be defined (strategic planning); courses of action adopted and implemented (tactical planning) and ultimately reinforced, introduced or replace an existing system within the work environment (change). Firms have conducted such planning in all core business units such as Marketing, Finance, Human Resources and IT in the hopes that the aforementioned strategies translate into some degree of competitive advantage.
The process within IT to achieve objectives or improve operations can be accomplished through The Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Through a series of processes or steps as prescribed by the SDLC methodology, a firm can find the answers to a business situation and thereby improve operations and hopefully attain a competitive advantage. This paper will address the importance of the Systems Development Life Cycle Methodology to organizations.
SDLC and Benefits
The SDLC is a problem-solving process which through a series of steps helps produce a new computer information system. Each step from system planning, system analysis, system design, system implementation and to system maintenance conducted in sequence should provide the answers to a problem or opportunity (Farah, 2006). An example may be a user which employs an order system may sense a problem with that system because customers may complain that orders are late or being lost. The SDLC through the steps previously mentioned would help correct and improve the system and operations of the order entry process (real life situation at KCI Medical Canada-Vancouver office). In this example, the system planning phase determines whether a new order entry process should be developed. The system analysis phase helps the analyst study the current system in place (order taken over the phone and input to an excel spreadsheet) and determines what shortcomings the new system must overcome (why are orders lost or delivery of product so late?) to ensure smooth operations within the order entry process. During the next stage, system design, the analyst specifies how the new system will operate. This is followed by the implementation phase where programs are acquired and tested to accommodate the new order entry process. Finally the system maintenance phase reviews the new order entry system to ensure smooth operations and modifications as needed.
Strategic planning is crucial for the success of all business endeavors. Analyzing currents trends in technology, consumer markets, competition, and the workforce can play a pivotal part in whether or not the organization can survive. Overtime, strategic planning strategies must be modified in order to compensate for changes in the industry. Goals and strategic planning often necessitate change to ensure that the organization is performing at peak level, while offering the most beneficial and quality services to consumers.
SDLC( Software Development Life Cycle) , is a process used by the software industry to design, develop and test high quality software .The SDLC aim to produce good quality software that meets or exceeds the user’s expectation and reaches completion within time and cost estimates.
Once an organization develops a mission statement, the next step in strategic planning is to align the company’s goals. The goals for a business should reflect the vision and mission of an organization, as well as assist in achieving the overall purpose of the company. Establishing organizational goals promotes the business’ mission and specifies the focus in which staff members should implement in day to day operations.
Many organizations have developed written statements known as Mission and vision statements, which support employee performance and motivation strengthening the organizations culture and helping reach goals. Some organizations promote high performance restructuring by dedicating the introduction of a team approach to work structuring, and high skill variety and feedback on performance, which results in job characteristics and improved satisfaction. Organizations nowadays are forced to pay extra attention to their employees’ needs and customers’ needs by means of employee recognition, goal alignment and work force engagement. For teams to be engaged and effective, members must feel appreciated, and believe in their leaders (Dixion & Hart, 2010). Organizational culture obtained with Path-goal theory is equivalently important because appropriate culture is required to sustain or facilitate established high performance efforts. With high employee performance and goal alignment organizations use management by objective (MBO) an integrative approach for management that supports the attainment of customer satisfaction through wide variety of tools and procedures that the end result will be higher quality of goods and services achieving business excellence (Evans J
The Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) consists of phases used in developing a piece of software. It is the plan of how to develop and maintain software, and when necessary, replace that software. In 2007 during my hospital’s transition to a new software system, I was fortunate enough to be included in the process. I did not get involved until the implementation phase, but from then on, until now, I remain very active in the process. I decided to highlight the Waterfall Model of SDLC. The Waterfall Model is a “sequential development process” with each phase continuing in a line (McGonigle and Mastrian, 2012, p. 205).
It is a step of defining the goals of the projects and the results are aimed at reaching certain levels of productivity of customer satisfaction. The second stage is measure, and it is the stage of collecting data and facts and evaluating current operational performance. The third stage is analyze with the purpose of developing methods and theories that will best suit the solving of the problem; it is also a stage of detecting cause-and-effect ties of the processes. The fourth stage is improve, it is aimed at generating ideas for reaching the desired process improvement. Finally, there is the control stage that is about monitoring the operations to find out whether the process of improvement is smooth and the problems were solved (Meredith & Shafer,
Improve decision making on customers and sales orders based on the information provided by the new system.
The goal of organizational change management is to create a prosperous work environment through strategic change and applying those changes through the people side of management. Organizational change management is a branch of handling the outcome and strategies of new business processes, changes in organizational structure or cultural changes within a company. There are multiple components in understanding the techniques and goals of Organizational change management. The first part discussed will be on setting goals for an organization as it can be a complex process because if aimed too high, the goals will most likely not be attained and performance will deteriorate.
The lack of success at Omega, Inc. rested in the hands of an incompetent sales staff who were not informed of the company’s mission statement and goals. The staff received limited training on the jobs they were to perform. Omega was faced with the challenge of getting the employees to achieve their sales quotas. According to (Aguinis, 2007), “There are two important prerequisites required before a performance management system is implemented: knowledge of the organization’s mission and strategic goals and knowledge of the job in question.” The benefit of superior knowledge of the organization combined with clear and agreed upon mission and strategic goals of their unit would afford employees the opportunity to make contributions that will have a positive impact on the organization as a whole. In addition, one must possess the knowledge of the job in question to execute the tasks necessary to be done and how they should be done. This knowledge is obtained through a job analysis. Omega failed to implement strategic planning throughout all the franchises. According to Aguinis (2007), “Strategic planning allows an organizati...
Once plans have been developed, an organization must address how management will be accomplishing be those plans. This involves operational plans that must flow from strategy; specify resource, time issues, and commitment of human resources. Operational plans at the lower - levels of the organization, have a shorter time horizon, and are narrower in scope (Bateman, Snell 2003 p.113). A good example of this is Wal-Mart's main strategic goal. It is to provide quality merchandise at an affordable low cost to consumers. Its operational goals focus on efficient logistics requiring technology and inventory management systems to help reduce costs so it can be passed on to the customer. Operational plans are derived from a tactical plan and are aimed at achieving one or more operational goals (Bateman, Snell 2003 p.113).
Within the analysis phase a set of goals are needed within the domain. From this there are three perspectives which are taken; the object model the Ronald LeRoi Burback (1998) states “dynamic model, and a functional model. The object model represents the artifacts of the system. The dynamic model represents the interaction between these artifacts represented as events, states, and transitions. The functional model represents the methods of the system from the perspective of data flow.” After the analysis phase the system design phase takes place. Here the system is sub-categorized and appointed tasks and persistent data storage is established, also within this phase the architecture is formed. Lastly the object design phase starts and is where the implementation plan is established and algorithms and object classes are also
In past few years, companies and industries of various sizes have become aware that they need to improve business processes such as product development, order fulfilment, planning, distribution, and customer service. So everybody is now focusing on doing process improvement or redesigning.
An organisation’s mission is the back bone of all strategic decisions; the mission will have an influence on all activities performed within the organisation, because if they aren’t achieving their mission an organisation is failing. The long term strategic goals of an organisation should directly aim to achieve their mission and these goals are what performance can be measured off. Without specific goals attempting to measure performance is pointless, and identifying who or what the main focus of these goals is the key to optimisation.
During this stage the systems analyst will investigate how the current system works and what needs to be improved. This involves finding out whether a new computer system is needed at all and exactly what it will be used for.
Effectively integrating information technology (IT) into an organization’s business processes is critical if the organization wants to increase productivity and remain profitable. IT includes items such as the systems software, application software, computer hardware, and the networks and databases that help manage the organization’s information. When implementing quality standards and processes that are forever changing in the IT world, organizations must balance these changes while continuing to rapidly implement new systems technologies in order to stay competitive.