Question

ABC Company is a big company with complex business. There are only some information system modules applied in the company now. The managers find its information systems are far from enough. Therefore, they are planning to build a big information system to support all the other operations. The system is expected to be integrated with the existing information systems and it would need a huge budget. The managers need to choose one system development method for the new information system.

a) What method do you recommend to the managers? (10 marks)

b) Explain why you recommend the above method. (20 marks)

c) Is there any other method? Explain its process and the situation when to adopt this method.

Answer 1

For development an integrated system, which can capture the information of all functions of the company and can help in better decision making, I would prefer the agile methodology. This is a more preferable methodology as it follows an iterative process to gradually develop requirements and then design and develop a prototype, tests out its function and then go back to improve the prototype to include more functionality. This helps in rapid development and due to the strong feedback process, helps organizations to develop a product which is more aligned to the requirements and the overall change management process is also smoother and takes less time.

The main reasons for suggesting this process are:
1) Iterative design and development process helps in getting better feedback and rapid design and development of the end product

2) Helps in making the change management process faster and smoother because of the continual feedback mechanism in place

3) Another important reason is that it helps to incrementally grow the product by adding functionalities once the basic product is tested in a live scenario and thus helps in issues related to interfacing and module management.

Another alternative method to implement this system design is through a traditional waterfall model. In this model, there is no iteration and the functional & design requirements are frozen at start of the project. Then, the project starts with designing of the system as per these requirements and the development of the system also proceeds accordingly. The most important thing here is that there is little scope for iterative system design and building. So the requirements have to be frozen at the start only and thus this kind of system design philosophy can only succeed when the functional requirements are very clear and the end users have good clarity on the design of the product which they would need to fulfill their requirements.