A business model is a comprehensive description of business requirements. It shows how the company works by describing the activities, organization structure, information- and decision processes etc. A business model is divided into business objects.
The business objects are the parts that create the company. Business objects could be people, products, services, policies, relationships, etc. You can use Entity Relationship Diagrams or hierarchical diagrams to display business objects.
Business requirements describe the needs of a company to function now and in the future. They are the foundation of an IT project. Before starting it, you should do a business analyze to find out the requirements of the business. The information captured for the analyze can be gathered by surveys and/or by documentation available within the company.
Information in the business analyze :
| Company size and expected growth |
| Geographical locations |
| Organization structure (company organization, management model, customers, vendors, partners, etc.) |
| Processes (workflow, information, decision making, product life cycles, change management, etc.) Data Flow Diagrams can be used to visualize processes. |
| Acquisitions/reorganization plans |
| Security requirements |
| Laws and regulations |
| Availability requirements |
Within a project documentation is one of the major aspects. It acts as a kind of roadmap and a kind of contract between the various parties within a project. Always ensure that it documentation is readable for the target audience, so watch out when using technical jargon. The following types of documents can be used in an IT project :
| Administrative documents. These documents contain the goal, scope and objectives of the project. It also contains a time plan with the phases within the project and the milestones, a list of required resources (people and their roles in the project, hardware, locations, etc.) and the budget. |
| Deployment
documents. These documents describe the current IT infrastructure
(hardware, software, users, sites, network topology, policies, etc),
how the new project will integrate in the current environment (what
changes are made to the current infrastructure), the gap between the
current and the new environment (actions needed to migrate to the new
environment), a capacity plan (the load that is
expected on the new system like minimal, maximal and average usage), a
problem escalation plan, a test plan and an
assessment of risks (risks the could affect the plan and the chance that
they might appear). A pilot plan with an evaluation report is also part of
a deployment plan. A capacity plan is used to set which hardware is needed to provide users the right performance. It contains items like server speed, cabling etc. For good future measurement create a baseline that indicates normal usage of a system. A risk assessment looks at possible problems that might occur during a project, the chance that they appear, the impact, the owner of the risk, a contingency plan and a resolve date. |
| Functional specification. These documents describe (in detail) the features that are deployed within the project. |
| Communication plan. This documents describes the way communication takes place during the project. |
| Training plan. This document describes how people will be educated for the new environment. |
Within an IT project, a project team consists of various roles that are based on the skills of the team members. Each role is filled in by one or more team members and one team member can also play more than one role. IT project roles are :
| IT Management/Sponsor. The IT management is the interface between the business and the project team. They handle the business case, the budget and set the priorities. |
| Project management. The project manager is responsible for offering a solution to a business problem and coordinates the civilities within the project. |
| Development and design. This role creates the IT solution. |
| Technical experts. |
| Testing. This person creates the test environments and predicts into which kind of problems the project can run. |
| Documentation. |
| Training. This role determines the education level that is required for the end user, what additional skills are required and the training materials that are needed. |
| Logistics. |
Within a project it is important to set priorities. This can be done via a tradeoff matrix that is based on features, schedule and resources which are always related in a project. You can look at each item and decide if it is important to stay on schedule, stay on budget (resources) or if it is acceptable to delay it (tradeoff) . This leads to the following matrix :
| Optimize | Constrain | Accept tradeoff | |
| Features | |||
| Schedule | |||
| Resources |
TCO involve all costs that are related to an IS/IT information system during its lifetime. When migrating to a new system, issues to take into consideration are :
| Required hardware upgrades. | ||||||
| Required software upgrades. | ||||||
| Compatibility tests. (hard- and software) | ||||||
| Labor hours. (internal, external)
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| (planned) downtime. (productivity loss during installation) |
Attributes that contribute to the ROI of a Windows 2000 migration are :
| Consolidation. Applications and services can run on less servers. This will reduce hardware and maintenance costs. |
| Stability. Less dowtime, less 'lost' data, less helpdesk calls. |
| Functionality. Increased productivity. |
| Manageability. Remote software distribution, (Application, (OS) upgrades), remote manageability of clients (group policies) and servers (terminal server). |
| Active directory. |
| Improved security. |
An IT project involves the following steps :
| Information
gathering and identification
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| Analyses
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| Design
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| Implementation
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| Evaluation/Revision
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Last update: 27 March 2002
