home

About this Space
This page is a collaborative space set up by Andrew Churches (Kristin School, NZ), Madeleine Brookes (Western Academy of Beijing) and Julie Lindsay (Beijing BISS). It is accessable to anyone but to be able to edit the space you must be a member of the space. It is a collaborative resource between higher level ITGS (Information Technology in a Global Society) classes. The members of the community create and structure the content of this space. Teachers are invited to become organisers of the space and they in turn can invite their students to become members of the spaces.

Teachers

 * ITGS teachers - please request to join this space. We will make you an organiser so you can join your students. Please encourage students to use their real names; it is preferable if students include their school name. For example, HarryB_WAB. This faciliates open and honest communication and collaboration. Members of this space who use TXT style membership names will be removed from the space.
 * Concepts/Terms: For each of the concepts/terms listed in the guide (and copied below), you can create a new page using the concept template or you can improve any pages.
 * Teachers: please make any additional pages as you see fit.
 * Teachers must keep track of their students' activity to ensure that content is accurate and appropriate and **are also responsible for validating the information entered.**

Students

 * Please encourage your teacher to join this space so that they can give you edit rights. You can then help improve this site.
 * It is preferable if you include your school name. For example, HarryB_WAB. This faciliates open and honest communication and collaboration. Members of this space who use TXT style membership names will be removed from the space.
 * You are also **also responsible for citing the information you entered.**

Introduction
This topic builds on the concepts introduced in “Introduction to project management” and provides students with a more in-depth understanding of the development of IT systems. Most organizations, at some stage in their development, require the introduction of a new IT system as well as the maintenance and eventual retirement of their current systems. The ability of the organization to manage this change can determine the future viability of the organization.

Students should consider the interrelationship between stakeholders, IT systems, data, processes and policies, which provides the framework for the different project management approaches needed in order to accomplish the specified task. For example, students should research real examples of the role of IT professionals who maintain legacy or develop new IT systems, to reinforce the theoretical concepts addressed in this topic.

Possible scenarios
Students may take the development of their internal assessment as a starting point for the application of the theoretical and practical aspects of this topic. This may take the form of producing a Gantt chart to indicate the stages in the development of the solution, on the agreed date, or how differing methodologies may lead to variations in the completion of tasks.

Other scenarios may include a city government that wishes to introduce an improved IT system to provide a more secure and effective method of record keeping in its public libraries. This would include the replacement of the storage area network (SAN) to accommodate the increased amount of data requiring archiving, along with the need to provide a disaster recovery system.

=IT concepts to address in this topic :=

Information systems, people and teams

 * The role and need for IT in organizations
 * Organizational IT policies
 * IT personnel and organizational structure: for example, information system (IS) managers, support staff, network manager, database administrator
 * Development personnel: for example, manager, programmer, analyst, project manager

The system development life cycle (SDLC)

 * Analysis of current situation
 * Organizational requirements
 * Methods of data collection: questionnaires, interviews, observation, literature searches
 * Feasibility study
 * Identification of possible IT solutions
 * Requirements specification
 * Justification of preferred IT solution
 * Project plan (who, why, what, when and how part of the project)
 * Project goals, scope and constraints, such as financial, time, technical, human-resource-related, risks, communication, procurement, quality
 * Project initiation document
 * Design consideration
 * Inputs, data structure, processes, outputs, user interface
 * Prototyping
 * Development of the IT solution
 * Initial testing, alpha testing
 * Quality assurance and quality control
 * Implementation
 * Training and support of staff, documentation to support the new IT system
 * Changeover methods: direct, phased and parallel running
 * Beta testing
 * Maintenance
 * Phase out

Project management issues

 * Need for project management
 * Development methodologies: agile development and waterfall development
 * Project management methodologies: for example, PRINCE2 (projects in controlled environments 2), SSADM (structured systems analysis and design method), PMBoK (project management body of knowledge), CMMI (capability maturity model integration)
 * Iteration
 * Time constraints, tasks, resources and milestones; Gantt and Pert charts
 * Modelling systems: for example, entities, entity relationship diagrams (ERD), data flow diagrams
 * Maintenance of legacy systems
 * System support: for example, internal support, maintenance contract
 * Incident management and escalation