Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
SIS project, the Technical Lead expressed concerns about the ability of his staff to
engage with stakeholders:
The title here is Programmer-Analyst. In this environment they're really more program-
mer than analyst. That's because they've worked for the university supporting the legacy
systems
So they didn't really have an opportunity to understand the whole business pro-
cess through and through
...
So they're somewhere along their learning curve and they're
able to be effective programmers if we can point them in the right direction and figure out
enough of the specs so that they can run with it.
...
Even within the development team, communication breakdowns occurred fre-
quently. In some cases, developers initiated changes to the systems, but never
communicated those to other members of the project team. As one participant noted:
We found out that one of the schools had submitted a change and the technical team did the
change, but no one ever told us about it. So we went out to do the training and they said,
'Wait that's supposed to have changed.' Well, it had changed, but we never knew it.
-
SIS
Trainer
While communications issues were less prevalent on the IPSI project, some
challenges were discernible. In working with the partner agencies, the BSI team
encountered some differences in the interpretation of the project scope:
In the RFP it says, 'The incident report and the arrest report.' It specifically states, 'Incident
Report, Arrest Report.' However the sheriff's office was one of these anchor tenants and in
one of the meetings came and said, 'Oh, by Incident Report I meant the Incident Package.'
I was thinking, 'What does that mean?' It's about fifteen reports. I looked at the project
manager. I said, “We'll see what we can do. We'll talk about it.” So right now we've added
a supplemental report. - BSI Development Manager
Overall, by comparing observations of this analysis with the previous field
study
[21]
, it appears that challenges based in the communications skills of project
participants were less prevalent than anticipated.
5.7 Expectations Management
The necessity of managing expectations was repeatedly discussed in both projects.
In the SIS project, several observed that requests for customization would be essen-
tially limitless, if they were not tightly managed. Indeed, the project's Technical
Lead noted that he perceived minimizing customization as his primary task.
Accomplishing this objective required an open exchange:
He [the SIS Technical Lead] is very low key. If someone wanted this major customization,
he would say, 'Do you really need it? This could take a month of work. I'd have to take
the programmers off whatever to do this.' So he didn't just say 'No,' but he had to set
expectations.
-
SIS Development Consultant
A very similar pattern emerged on the IPSI project, with the BSI Project Manager
seeking to limit changes to the existing platform, while still acknowledging the
desires of other agencies. In one example, the Project Manager reflected upon his
approach to minimizing the concerns of one of the partner agencies by delaying the
discussion of an issue that was likely to arise:
Search WWH ::
Custom Search