Is It Strategy

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

This essay is about how IS/IT strategy for an SME - the pros and cons of using BCCD as a strategy development methodology. BCCD has been specifically developed for small and medium-sized enterprises and for departments in larger enterprises, to enable the development of an IS/IT strategy which is driven by the business imperatives of the enterprise. In order to manage information systems and information technology (IS/IT) strategically, it is helpful to understand how the role of technology-based information systems has evolved in organisations. While organisations today want to develop a more 'strategic' approach to managing IS/IT, many have probably arrived at their current situation as a result of various short-term 'tactical' decisions regarding IS/IT.

BCCD also focus and deliverables intended to deliver pragmatic IS/IT strategy focussed on business needs, they helps identify key requirements for improving overall performance of enterprise, they provides understanding of value and relevance of current uses of IS/IT, it also helps identify principal opportunities and priorities for investment in IS/IT and gives rationale for commitment to action plans for implementation

BCCD is designed for small to medium enterprises (SMEs) to deliver integrated business and IS/IT Strategies are Time and cost efficient, Recognises changing environment, Provides structured, approach to (inter alia), Setting goals, Identifying critical success factors, necessary processes, Prioritising IS/IT-based change projects to support processes, Combines practical and academic techniques, Process Quality Management, Business Process Re-engineering (BPR), IS/IT Strategy.

Its effectiveness has been proved by its use in hundreds of major enterprises throughout the world and in virtually all private and public industry sectors. PQM has been adapted and extended using the latest thinking on IS/IT Strategy and Business Process Re-engineering to provide a simple and powerful way to develop IS/IT strategy based firmly on business requirements for small and medium-sized enterprises.

But pro/con advantages and disadvantages will be if team members come really late at work it will affect the organisation work and it will go really slow and if the organisation team members come early and one of the members don't turn up because they sick then the members of the organisation got double of work to do.

The other IS/IT Strategy methodology I found is a Dynamic Systems Development Methodology incorporating prototyping is most effective here in clarifying needs and options, and building components and applications. Speed, flexibility and complexity all lead to problems of controlling the development, and a DSDM combine's time boxing and deliverables/version management to avoid subsequent expensive rework or maintenance.

Continuity in terms of the development team, both business and IT members, will be critical to managing the evolving knowledge in an environment that will not encourage accurate documentation, adherence to standards or the best in quality-control processes. Those standards should not be ignored, but business expediency will have to overrule technical idealism in many cases, especially if adherence could extend the development time and perhaps miss the business opportunities.

The advantages and disadvantages will be, this will also argue for the use of integrated development environments employing Rapid Application Development (RAD) tools. The initial analysis and design can be performed using automated tools that would then produce code, which, though not particularly efficient, will at least be very quickly developed and enable changes to be identified and implemented rapidly. The speed of development of the application is on balance more important than its cost of operation, but high performance, especially if the system is used by customers, could be a critical success factor. Eventually, these applications will probably become key operational, when they may need to be reimplemented in order to make them more efficient and less costly in their operation. Interconnect ability, often via middleware rather than full integration, may be the initial goal, in order to assess the value of the strategic system while protecting the installed base of key operational systems. And Acceptance of the DSDM philosophy before starting work, the decision making powers of users and developers inside the development team, the commitment of senior user management to provide significant enduser involvement, incremental deliveries. Easy access by developers to end-users, the stability of the team, the development team skills, the size of the development team, a supportive commercial relationship, the development technology. (Ward and peppard 2002)

As we compare the two Strategy that is BCCD and Dynamic Systems Development.

Dynamic systems development Methodologies in today's professional work environment are means of guiding people, resources and processes in a defined and repeatable manner. The more people are researching methods, the more clearly common patterns emerge which are becoming a guide to develop new methodologies. The Dynamic Systems Development Method is a framework which embodies much of the current knowledge about project management, (ifi.uzh.ch). DSDM is rooted in the software development community, but the meeting of software development, process engineering and hence business development projects has changed the DSDM framework to become a general framework for complex problem solving tasks. But BCCD has been specifically developed for small and medium-sized enterprises and for departments in larger enterprises, to enable the development of an IS/IT strategy which is driven by the business imperatives of the enterprise.

After completing the BCCD methodology it is evident that employing this strategy only benefits businesses that are financially stable and gain market share. To achieve these desired results, companies follow simple steps and link them to their business direction and mission statement which raise the need of employing IT systems only if the long term adds value to the business and the profit gain. But the DSDM framework is a straight forward framework based on best practices to start implementing a project structure, its strengths being simplicity, extendibility, proven in the past but not claiming to be the solution to all kind of projects. The fact that the very authors of DSDM issue a warning concerning the single-minded use of DSDM where it does not suite the purpose provides much more credibility to the concept then many other similar methodologies.

Bibliography & References