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    Cascade
    Cascade
    Cascade
    Ebook130 pages1 hour

    Cascade

    By "David" "Wright"

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    About this ebook

    Better practices for effective delivery of information systems in a multi-project environment. ©

    This book is written for people who work at companies that have an IT department to support their non-IT business, with may installed systems, a large backlog of IT changes, a number of projects in progress right now with unlikely target dates, IT staff who overworked and not too happy... you get the point.

    This does not have to be the case. "Cascade" shows you how to get out of the current mess and move your company's IT function to a well-managed, productive service, summarized in 13 "Better Practices".
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherXinXii
    Release dateDec 29, 2010
    ISBN9781435718531
    Cascade
    Author

    "David" "Wright"

    David Wright is a writer and teacher living on Canada’s majestic west coast. He has a lovely wife, two sparkling daughters and 50 published short stories in dozens of magazines including Neo-opsis, Martian Wave and Perihelion. David’s latest novels are available on Amazon and Smashwords. Visit his author website at davidwright812.wordpress.com.

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      Book preview

      Cascade - "David" "Wright"

      Cascade

      Better practices for effective delivery of information systems

      in a multi-project environment. ©

      David W. Wright

      XinXii-Edition

      I M P R I N T

      First Edition, 2008

      Copyright © 2008 by David Wright

      ISBN: 978-1-4357-1853-1

      E-Book-Herstellung und -Distribution

      www.xinxii.com

      Table of Contents

      FORWARD – How will we document this? Start with Principles.

      CHAPTER ONE – There is always more work to be done than people to do it.

      Current Projects

      The Backlog

      Results

      CHAPTER TWO – Projects change the business, so know the overall business first.

      CHAPTER THREE – Use architecture to describe the business, before and after projects.

      Data Model

      Functions / Processes

      CHAPTER FOUR– Pick the Right Projects for the Business

      IT Project Costs

      IT Project Benefits

      IT Project Cost-Benefit Analysis

      CHAPTER FIVE – Once a project is started, finish it.

      Divided Management

      Integrated Management

      CHAPTER SIX – Specialize EACH member of a team assigned to a project should do what they do best for the length of that project.

      Teams

      The Typical IT Project

      CHAPTER SEVEN - One Architect/Analyst can generate enough work for two Developers and one Tester, structure your project teams in this ratio.

      CHAPTER EIGHT - It’s the Deliverable (that matters), not the Task

      CHAPTER NINE - Leave a record of what you have done, so the project will not miss you if you leave...and Models are better than text

      Scope

      Requirements

      Code

      CHAPTER 10A - Partition large projects into 3 month phases, that is the longest period you can plan for without the chance of significant change to priorities, resourcing, etc.

      CHAPTER 10B – Within the three month phase, parcel work into two-week periods…

      CHAPTER 11 – Given many medium to small software Deliverables, use Architecture to manage and integrate the Deliverables into a complete system.

      CHAPTER 12 – Conclusion(s)

      Request For Feedback

      Dedicated to my family: 

      For sticking with me, despite having no idea what I do for a living.

      Kelso, to Kelso’s Dad: Did you make the graph?

      Kelso’s Dad: I wish!

      …from That 70’s Show 

      INTRODUCTION

      This book is written for people who work at companies that have an IT department to support their non-IT business. In comparison, this book is not written for people who work at IT companies, from Google on down to someone selling excel macros. The main reason is that I have not worked for an IT company and, although I have worked with many in customer-vendor relationships, I do not feel qualified to write about something I do not have experience with. However, even companies selling IT need some other IT to help run their business, so perhaps some of my experiences may overlap with theirs.

      Given that, let us consider the vast majority of companies that are making automobiles or serving hamburgers or providing investment advice or any and everything else. In those companies you will find a department/division filled with IT ‘professionals’: Programmers, Project Managers, Analysts, Testers, Implementers, Operators, and loads of other specialists like Database Administrators and Network Engineers. (I use professional in quotes because long-standing professions like lawyers and engineers like to protect the use of the word.)

      The name of this group has evolved generally to the ‘Information Technology Department’, or IT for short (no ‘D’ at the end); such past names as Data Processing or Management Information Systems seem to have faded away. As an acronym, IT is used interchangeably to name the department and describe the functional scope addressed by that department.

      So, as we speed through the first decade of the 21st century and on into the next, what is the common situation that these IT departments face?

      It probably includes an installed set of information systems that are used by the business to control and report on its operations. There is always more than just one system, and possibly hundreds, many doing the same work as many others. Some may be decades-old, a few may be recent and using fairly new technologies, with the implementations of the rest spread-out over the history of the department since that first ‘computing machine’ was purchased, with the wide range of development and operating technologies which that implies. (How along ago did you read that your mainframe computer was dead? Did it die? Not likely.) The still favourite term for describing this installed base is legacy systems.

      It probably includes a large back-log of requested changes to that installed base of systems, overlaid with a long list of problems/bugs in the systems that the business is currently ‘working around’ until they ever get fixed.

      It probably includes an IT Strategy that describes in glowing terms how the above two cases will be remedied by moving to some new method or tool or one enterprise system… if the budget and resources can ever be freed up from fixing and changing the current systems.

      It is probably overseen by a senior management group (or steering committee or review board) that is charged with deciding what IT work is approved and carried out. This group may be formal or informal, and may only be one person in the end, the CEO or someone he/she has delegated it to; since IT costs money, the CFO is a common choice.

      In this structure, the head of the IT department (CIO is the hot title, of course) plays a committee secretary and/or facilitator role, who is supposed to assist the rest of management in making their IT choices. This is a difficult role, as the rest of management has a split-view of IT, that most of it is a waste of time and money, except for the work each one wants for their own department/division.

      There are probably a large number of current projects being carried out, that no one can remember when they started and, even if some target date has been set, no reasonable expectation exists that they will end soon.

      It is peopled by a group of IT staff that has remained the same size in numbers, or has been reduced, while being charged with doing more work than ever: Work Smart, Not Hard, Do More With Less. Each person is probably assigned to many of those current projects, juggling the work and trying to determine what they should really be working on.

      The overall morale and effectiveness of this staff depends greatly on the skills of their immediate management and more senior managers who provide some level of inspiration; if not, morale plunges and turnover increases.

      Sound familiar? Then you have the same experiences as me, and I have written this book for you.

      The premise of this book is that the situation described above can change, but it is usually slow-going; or worse, there can be an immediate change when your department is outsourced. In the meantime, what can be done to be successful in your average IT department in your average company?²

      What has to be done is to deliver on all those change requests, and finish those current projects so you can start new ones (there will always be new ones). At risk of sounding like a psychedelic poster, this means accepting the things you can’t change and changing the things you can.

      What can’t you change right now?

      The installed base of legacy systems.

      The backlog of change requests and bugs (even if you do manage to deal with a lot of these things, there will be new ones come along to take their place; that is job security).

      Senior management’s’ conflicting priorities for IT.

      What can you change (or at least start to change?)

      The structuring and management of the IT projects.

      Overall management of staff by skills/specialties.

      Allocation of staff to the projects.

      What follows in the rest of this book is my prescription for this change, supported by some war stories, lessons learned, and lots of ideas to try. Even an ‘average’ company has some unique aspects, so maybe not everything in this book will work for everyone, but I hope to give you enough ideas that some will work. My own fervent belief is that visible success with IT projects

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