Lindayen, Kent A.

BSA 4-2

IT SOURCING

Sourcing Strategy

A sourcing strategy establishes the roadmap for services, hardware, and software contracts. It is

important to have a sourcing strategy to avoid conflicting contracts. The sourcing strategy should

align to the organization’s overall strategy and IT strategy. Alignment of business process outsourcing

and IT outsourcing are also critical to avoid conflicting contract terms. For example, conflicts

can arise when IT is outsourcing services (horizontal) to a third party and an organization wants

to slice off a business segment, location, or process across an IT service (vertical).

Software Acquisition Process

The software acquisition process should include the identification and analysis of alternative
solutions that are each compared with the established business requirements. In general, the acquisition
process consists of the following:

 Defining the information and system requirements

 Identifying various alternatives
 Performing a feasibility analysis
 Conducting a risk analysis
 Defining ergonomic requirements
 Carrying out the selection process
 Procuring the selected software
 Completing fi nal acceptance

Defining the Information and System Requirements

System requirements describe the needs or objectives of the system. They define the problem

to be solved, business and system goals, system processes to be accomplished, and the deliverables and

expectations for the system. It includes defining the information being given to the system to process,

the information to be processed within the system, and the information expected out of the system.

Each should be clearly defined so that later gaps in requirements and expectations are avoided.

Information and system requirements can be captured by interviews, deriving requirements

from existing systems, identifying characteristics from related system, and discovering them from
a prototype or pilot system. Generally, gathering requirements is accomplished by

 Interviewing the management to understand their expectations for the system as well as to

understand the business context within the industry and the company itself

 Interviewing those expected to use the information produced by the system as well as those

expected to produce the information input into the system

 Reviewing related paper and electronic forms and reports

 Observing related business processes
 Meeting with IT management and support staff regarding their expectations and constraints

for implementing and supporting the system

 Researching other companies in a related industry, of similar company size, and with a similar

technical environment to identify best practices and lessons learned

Prototypes and Rapid Application Development

In general, prototyping information systems design includes the transformation of the user’s basic

requirements into a working model, the revision and enhancement of the model, and the decision

to accept the model as the fi nal simulation of the actual system to be built. The model should

show how the design would work in real life and provide insight into why the design is successful.

The prototype can facilitate interaction between the users, system analysts, and the auditor.