Week 50 (30.3.08)

Learn - IT System Development Methodologies

3 types:

1) Waterfall
Advantage: Sequential steps, upfront analysis and decision making
Disadvantage: Difficult to back up to previous step

2) Iterative
Advantage: Prototype based, faster to market, phase approach eg every 3 months, 6 months, not exposing risk to the whole population entirely before rollout
Disadvantage: Resulting system can be fragile or nonscalable

3) Hybrid
Start with Iterative, Move to Waterfall when appropriate
Can have advantages of both methods

IT Project & Application - 5 steps

1) Analysis - determine what user wants
2) Design - determine technical specification
3) Development - writing code and configuring package
4) Test - unit test and assembly test (or user acceptance test)
5) Deploy - provide training & address change management

Unlearn

Did not realize the importance role when I was involved in the User Acceptance Test. After learning from this chapter, I realized that if, I am as a user, did not happy or accept the application as what i needed, then I should not sign off during the User Acceptance Test despite whatever reason given to me.

Relearn

In order to get employees "Buy-In", in my opinion, "Hybrid" model would be a better approach for a business project application because when started with "Iterative", IT would be able to build something quickly and get user to deploy quickly and feedback. With this phase approach by doing small steps, the success will then be decided whether to deploy entirely to the whole population.

Therefore, subsequently, my role as a manager to teamwork with IT in providing the training and address change, will be easier and time shortened for people to accept and take new changes. This will cut down the time for "Valley of Despair" of individual to accept new change and get everyone to align to the business goals.