Information System Plan

Creating an Information System Plan

(CRISPLAN) , is a process that
comprises
many
steps
like
determining of goals, strategies and
information analysis.
IS Plan is derived from organizational
strategic plan which includes the
goals, objectives and structure of
information systems.

Goals
Strateg
ies

IS
Solution
s

NOT DONE

Usual
Practice

Informati
on
Analysis

DONE

Implementa
tion Plan

Information Systems Planning

Information systems planning is an orderly means of assessing

the information needs of an organization and defining the
information systems, databases, and technologies that will best
satisfy those needs(Carlson et al., 1989; Luftman, 2004; Parker
and Benson, 1989; Segars and Grover, 1999).

This means that during ISP you (or, more likely, senior IS
managers responsible for the IS plan) must model current and
future organization informational needs and develop strategies
and project plans to migrate the current information systems
and technologies to their desired future state.
ISP is a top-down process that takes into account the outside
forcesindustry, economic, relative size, geographic region,
and so onthat are critical to the success of the firm.

This means that ISP must look at information systems and

technologies in terms of how they help the business achieve its
objectives defined during corporate strategic planning.

The three key activities of this modeling

process are represented

Figure: Information systems planning is a

Key activities of ISP

Like corporate strategic planning, ISP is a three-step process in

which the first step is to assess current IS-related assets
human resources, data, processes, and technologies.

Next, target blueprints of these resources are developed. These

blueprints reflect the desired future state of resources needed
by the organization to reach its objectives as defined during
strategic planning.

Finally, a series of scheduled projects is defined to help move

the organization from its current to its future desired state.

For example, a project may focus on reconfiguration of a

telecommunications network to speed data communications or
it may restructure work and data flows between business
areas. Projects can include not only the development of new
information systems or the modification of existing ones, but
also the acquisition and management of new systems,

Relationship of Corporate Strategic

Planning & Information System
Planning

Figure: Parallel activities of corporate strategic planning and

information systems planning

ISP methodologies
Methodologies such as Business Systems Planning (BSP)
and Information Engineering (IE) have been developed
to support the ISP process most contain the following
three key activities:
1. Describe the current situation.
The most widely used approach for describing the
current organizational situation is generically referred
to as top-down planning. Top-down planning
attempts to gain a broad understanding of the
informational needs of the entire organization.
The approach begins by conducting an extensive
analysis of the organizations mission, objectives, and
strategy
and
determining
the
information
requirements needed to meet each objective. This
approach to ISP implies by its name a high-level

 A bottom-up planning approach requires the

identification
of
business
problems
and
opportunities that are used to define projects.
Using the bottom-up approach for creating IS plans
can be faster and less costly than using the topdown approach and also has the advantage of
identifying pressing organizational problems.
Yet, the bottom-up approach often fails to view the
informational needs of the entire organization. This
can result in the creation of disparate information
systems and databases that are redundant or not
easily integrated without substantial rework.

The process of describing the current situation begins by

selecting a planning team that includes executives
chartered to model the existing situation.

To gain this understanding, the team will need to review

corporate documents; interview managers, executives, and
customers; and conduct detailed reviews of competitors,
markets, products, and finances.

The type of information that must be collected to represent

the current situation includes the identification of all
organizational locations, units, functions, processes, data
(or data entities), and information systems.

After creating these lists, a series of matrices can be

developed to cross reference various elements of the
organization. The types of matrices typically developed
include 1) Location-to-Function 2) Location-to-Unit 3) Unitto-Function, etc.

SP Methodology
2. Describing the target situation, trends, and constraints.
After describing the current situation, the next step in the ISP
process is to define the target situation that reflects the
desired future state of the organization. This means that the
target situation consists of the desired state of the locations,
units, functions, processes, data, and information systems

To create the target situation, planners must first edit their

initial lists and record the desired locations, units, functions,
processes, data, and information systems within the
constraints and trends of the organization
environment (e.g., time, resources, technological evolution,
competition, and so on). Next, matrices are updated to relate
information in a manner consistent with the desired future
state. Planners then focus on the differences between the
current and future lists and matrices to identify projects and
transition strategies.

3. Developing a transition strategy and plans.

Once the creation of the current and target situations is
complete, a detailed transition strategy and plan are
developed by the IS planning team. This plan should be
very comprehensive, reflecting broad, long-range issues in
addition to providing sufficient detail to guide all levels of
management concerning what needs doing, how, when,
and by whom in the organization.

The components of a typical information systems plan

are outlined as:

Characteristics of IS plan

The IS plan is typically a very comprehensive document

that looks at both short- and long-term organizational
development
needs.
The
shortand
long
term
developmental needs identified in the plan are typically
expressed as a series of projects.

Projects from the long-term plan tend to build a foundation

for later projects.

Projects from the short-term plan consist of specific steps to

fill the gap between current and desired systems or
respond to dynamic business conditions.

The top-down (or plan-driven) projects join a set of bottomup or needs-driven projects submitted as system service
requests from managers to form the short-term systems
development

Nolan Stages Model

Richard Nolan (1974) defined a
framework for IS planning, known as
Nolan stage model.
It has identified four stages of
information system growth
1. Initiation Stage
2. Expansion Stage
3. Formalization Stage
4. Maturity Stage

Stages of Nolans Growth

Model

Methodologies for establishing the

essential information requirements
To

develop an effective information systems plan, the

organization must have a clear understanding of both its
long- and short-term information requirements.

Two principal methodologies for establishing the essential

information requirements of the organization as a whole are
a) enterprise analysis (Business System Planning) and
b) Critical Success Factors.
Enterprise analysis (also called business systems
planning) argues that the firms information requirements
can be understood only by examining the entire organization
in terms of organizational units, functions, processes, and
data elements.
Enterprise analysis can help identify the key entities and
attributes of the organizations data.

Methodology for BSP

The central method used in the enterprise analysis
or BSP approach is
To take a large sample of managers and ask them
how they use information, where they get their
information, what their objectives are, how they
make decisions, and what their data needs are.
The results of this large survey of managers are
aggregated into subunits, functions, processes,
and data matrices.
Output of a typical enterprise analysis shows what
information is required to support a particular
process, which processes create the data, and
which use them.

Enterprise Analysis ( or BSP)

Weakness of Enterprise Analysis ( or BSP)
It produces an enormous amount of data that is
expensive to collect and difficult to analyze.
The
questions
frequently
focus
not
on
managements critical objectives and where
information is needed but rather on what existing
information is used.
The result is a tendency to automate whatever
exists.
But in many instances, entirely new approaches
to how business is conducted are needed, and
these needs are not addressed.

Enterprise Analysis ( or BSP)

The final BSP plan describes an overall information
system architecture as well as installation schedule
of individual systems.
Steps are:
Gain top management commitment
Prepare for study
Conduct the meeting
Define the business process
Define the data classes.
Analyze current business and systems relationships.
Interview leading executives.
Reduce and organize interview data.
Develop recommendation and action plan.
Report results

Strategic Analysis Or Critical Success

Factors(CSF)
The strategic analysis, or critical success
factors, approach argues that an organizations
information requirements are determined by a
small number of critical success factors (CSFs)
of managers.
If these goals can be attained, success of the firm or
organization is assured.
CSFs are shaped by the industry, the firm, the
manager, and the broader environment.
New information systems should focus on providing
information that helps the firm meet these goals.

Critical Success Factors

It

interprets the objectives, tactics and

operational activities in terms of key information
needs of an organization and its managers and
strengths and weaknesses of the existing system.

The principal method used in CSF analysis is

personal interviewsthree or four with a
number of top managers identifying their goals
and the resulting CSFs. These personal CSFs are
aggregated to develop a picture of the firms
CSFs. Then systems are built to deliver
information on these CSFs.

Critical Success Factors

Strength of CSF:
The strength of the CSF method is that it produces
less data to analyze than does enterprise analysis.
Only top managers are interviewed, and the
questions focus on a small number of CSFs rather
than requiring a broad inquiry into what information
is used in the organization.
This method explicitly asks managers to examine
their environments and consider how their analyses
of them shapes their information needs.
It is especially suitable for top management and for
the development of decision-support systems (DSS)
and executive support systems (ESS). Unlike
enterprise analysis, the CSF method focuses
organizational attention on how information should
be handled.

Critical Success Factors

Weakness of CSF:
The methods primary weakness is that the aggregation
process and the analysis of the data are art forms.
There is no particularly rigorous way in which individual
CSFs can be aggregated into a clear company pattern.
Second, interviewees (and interviewers) often become
confused when distinguishing between individual and
organizational CSFs.
These types of CSFs are not necessarily the same. What
may be considered critical to a manager may not be
important for the organization as a whole. This method
is clearly biased toward top managers, although it could
be extended to elicit ideas for promising new systems
from lower-level members of the organization

Method of developing CSFs in an

organization

Figure: Using CSFs to develop systems.

Risks in Information System

Risk is the potential harm that may arise from
some current process or from some future event.
Risk is present in every aspect of our lives and
many different disciplines focus on risk as it
applies to them.
From
the
IT
security
perspective,
risk
management is the process of understanding and
responding to factors that may lead to a failure in
the confidentiality, integrity or availability of an
information system

Risks in Information
System
IT security risk is the harm to a process or the
related
information
resulting
from
some
purposeful or accidental event that negatively
impacts the process or the related information.

Risk Management Information Systems

(RMIS) are typically computerized systems that
assist in consolidating property values, claims,
policy, and exposure information and provide the
tracking and management reporting capabilities
to enable you to monitor and control your overall
cost of risk.

The management of risk data and

information is key to the success of
any risk management effort regardless
of an organization's size or industry
sector. Risk management information
systems/services (RMIS) are used to
support expert advice and costeffective
information
management
solutions around key processes such
as:
Risk identification and assessment
Risk control
Risk financing

Resource Requirements for

Information System
Hardware & Capacity Planning
The process of determining what type of hardware
& software configuration is required to meet
application needs adequately is called as capacity
planning.
It focus on:
Capacity Planning Factors
Assessing Your Application Performance Objectives
Hardware Tuning
Network performance
Related Information

Software Needs
Computer software is divided into two parts:
1. Application Software- like MS word, C, C+
+
2. System Software DOS, Windows
Application Software
3. General Purpose Application Programs
4. Application Specific Programs
System Software
5. System Management Programs
6. System Development Programs

Procurement
The act of obtaining or buying goods or services.
Process includes preparation and processing of
demand as well as end receipt and approval of
payment.
It
involves:
Purchase
planning,
determination,
development
The process of acquisition of goods or services
required as raw material (direct procurement) or for
operational purposes (indirect procurement) for a
company or a person can be called procurement. The
procurement process not only involves the purchasing
of commodities but also quality and quantity checks

Procurement Options
Procurement can be defined as the
purchase of merchandise or services at
the optimum possible total cost in the
correct amount and quality. These good
and services are also purchased at the
correct time and location for the express
gain or use of government, company,
business, or individuals by signing a
contract

Make or Buy Decision

The make-or-buy decision must be
investigated in the broader
perspective of available facilities.
The alternatives are:
(1) leaving facilities idle
(2) buying the parts and renting out
idle facilities
(3) buying the parts and using
unused facilities for other products

When dealing with a make vs. buy

decision, there are four numbers you
need to know:

Your volume
The fixed costs associated with making
(e.g., the tooling that must be bought)
The per-unit direct costs of making
The per-unit landed cost from a
supplier
So, you plug these numbers into a
couple of formulas:

Outsourcing as an option
CTB = V * LC and CTM = FC + (PUDC * V)
Where,
CTB = Cost To Buy
V = Volume
LC = Supplier's Per Unit Landed Cost
CTM = Cost To Make
FC = Fixed Costs (of making)
PUDC = Per Unit Direct Cost (of making)
If CTM exceeds CTB, then it is more financially desirable to buy. If CTB
exceeds CTM, the opposite is true..