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System development
System development is expensive and takes longer than expected to complete
Without ascertaining the difference between the Project Plan (business improvement plan) and the Execution Plan (execution plan)
The tragedy that leads to Run (development)I told you.
Another factor is the “wall of the message game”.
There are no unnecessary documents or design documents for system development that runs the shortest distance at the fastest speed.
Because there is a team where everyone involved is on the same page.
System development pitfalls
Part 1 Wall of the message game
As the scale of the project grows, the number of stakeholders and participants increases.
When it comes to system development, there are cases where visible deliverables are not necessarily completed.
Even though I invested a lot of money and spent a lot of time on it, I ended up with something different from what I originally requested.
I've also seen examples of receiving scolding.
As I wrote at the beginning of this page,As the number of related parties and participants increases, a wall of "message game" is created at the system development site.
"Information Systems Department, A's instructions are this."
"It seems that I have a different opinion from the B manager of the sales department..."
"Perhaps that's what you meant when you said it?"
“During that meeting, if I remember correctly, Executive Director C was instructed to do so.”
“Then, is this program source okay?”
In this way, a spiral of hypotheses calling for hypotheses is born everywhere, such as a message game among customers and a message game between system developers.
Part 2 What is the division of roles?
As the scale of the project grows, the number of stakeholders and participants increases. Of course, it is necessary to divide each role,"Projects that use the terms "divided work" and "team work" interchangeably are very dangerous..
What is shared work?
The work is divided into different forms, such as "This work is for Mr. A, this work is for Mr. B."
They are divided by department or section, or by type of job, such as sales work up to this point and engineering work from here on.Each division of work exists in a formal unity.
What is teamwork
"This role is Mr. A, this role is Mr. B," and divide the roles of work.
When you divide roles, each part exists in a state of being organically connected to each other, rather than being a self-contained individual part.
It's not a question of which is better, but in advanced system development sites, not only developers but also customers play roles, and each of them combines "divided work" and "team work". This "divided work" and "team work" are called "role division", but if "team work" is vaguely divided, it will become a pile of development corrections later.
Part 3 The purpose of system development is "business design."
This is the biggest pitfall that is easy to fall into while proceeding with system development.
For both developers and clients, the longer the development period is, the more the system development becomes the goal.
“It takes longer than originally expected.”
"Additional budget was needed for system development"
The biggest reason for these is that we forget the Project Plan (business improvement plan) and focus only on the Execution Plan.
While overlooking the whole, while correcting the trajectory so that the site of system development does not deviate from the goal, when it is time to attack (during development and programming), we will attack at once and reduce costs in a short-term decisive battle. I believe that this is business design and the direction of system development.
Success story
Here are some of the cases where we entrusted system development to our company.
Exchange control system born from the voice of the field
■ Customer issues
A request from a customer who wanted to systematize foreign exchange forwarding operations, which had been handled by telephone and email until now.
"Because the experience factor is strong in forward exchange reservations, we can't leave everything up to the system..."
"There are too many exchange reservation and settlement (settlement) systems, and I don't know which one is the best."
"In the end, it's safe to do manual work with Excel.world"
“The communication (done) with the bank is done over the phone while looking at the market price, so it’s hard to work on reconciliation.”
in short
The client's trade department created a management ledger in Excel so as not to generate marginal gains and losses by combining the same manners and procedures that have been used for decades, as well as unique "experience values". Although we keep an eye on the rate every day, it will be difficult to expand transactions further unless we improve the efficiency of our operations, but we do not want to change our operations as much as possible! It was a request.
■ Solution approach
In the case of this case, commercial package software cannot cover it,It is a prerequisite that the existing operation is not disrupted, and is a necessary conditionwas.
Therefore, the Execution Plan becomes "efficiency of exchange operations".
Run Control (development management) has become "Construction of Exchange Control System".
The scope of foreign exchange management is wide and seems like a big project, but it is essentially a system for improving operational efficiency. a fully procedural processWe entered Run (development) with a design that does not touch the process of turning it on IT and turning it on experience values.
■Delivery date
In short, the points required of the system are
・Promote smooth communication, including with banks.
・Create a database of work history.
It was these two points. (Actually, there were many more detailed requests.)
If you organize it like this, I see. You can see that it is far from what you want to achieve with commercial exchange software.
It took 4.5 months from business analysis to the introduction of the new system (project completion).
■Points of Project Management (Branch Point to Success)
This is a case where "teamwork" = "division of roles", which I wrote at the beginning of this page, worked very smoothly.Programming and screen development are "divided work on the development side", ``the scope of business impact'' and ``it is a team work with the customer to decide how much IT will handle''..
■ Cost/effect
private
* 80% of the development budget originally assumed by the customer, completed on schedule.
■ Environment used
Customer's physical server, salesforce.com Platformm, EAI setting, VBA
20-month Big Project! Construction of an electronic application system
■ Customer issues
Introduction of middleware that can be used on a large scale in customer sections
A business process that has been used to create many types of business applications and documents.
The request was for IT support to streamline these processes themselves.
"We need a check function for the rule of confirming that process A has been completed and proceeding to process B."
"The application documents required when starting the process of A and the application documents required when starting the process of B are required separately."
"The people involved in A have no way of knowing how far B's process has progressed.”
in short
The client's business administration department emphasizes governance and compliance, but is also required to improve on-site work, and wants to create a system that can see the whole picture.
It was a request.
■ Solution approach
In this case, the element of "reform" is stronger than "improvement", and it is a long-term big project that is business-oriented rather than IT-oriented.
The point is"Sharing the Pre-Project Plan and Strengthening Governance"was.
The key point here is the approach to resolution.
(1) As a project manager, design the optimal goal and obtain agreement with the customer.
(2) Value that does not exist now)
For example, elements such as "must" and "more" that governance must be strengthened more than now
Please understand that it may be an addition rather than a reduction in on-site work man-hours.
(3) On top of that, we will propose multiple proposals to support efficiency using IT and strengthen the evidence management system, and improve ROI (return on investment)
Excellent proposal and delivery dateto be agreed with the customer.
By following these three steps, while deciding the area of system development, we will consider the overall architecture (creation of blueprints) and programming for optimization according to the business and process.
Run Control (development management) has become "Construction of Exchange Control System".
Exchange control has a wide scope and seems like a big project, but it is essentially a system for improving operational efficiency. a fully procedural processWe entered Run (development) with a design that does not touch the process of turning it on IT and turning it on experience values. It was a difficult request to pay attention to all the three pitfalls I wrote above, but it was also a very educational request.
■Deadline For such a big project, we prepare multiple Execution Plans themselves.
(1) The task of building a foundation for an overall overview (so-called server design)
(2) Assuming that the infrastructure building tasks in (1) proceed as planned, multiple application development plans will be carried out at the same time.
(3) Regarding the delivery date, so-called “phased release””. in short
Delivery of the foundation that supports the whole
Delivery of middleware that supports applications running on the platform
Delivery of applications that run on middleware
In this way, it took more than 20 months to get all of the initial designs working without any problems.
■Points of Project Management (Branch Point to Success)
As I wrote in the text, the bigger the project, the more you need to pay attention to three pitfalls. In particular, when it comes to "dividing roles," if each individual does not approach it with a sense of professionalism, it will affect the entire project. The biggest factor in the turning point to success is that not only the system development company but also the customer participated with a sense of ownership.
In addition, in terms of branching points to systemic success,
(Although it was quite unreasonable) I managed to develop multiple applications at the same time. That is a big factor.
for example
"Systematization related to work A"
Two projects: "systematization related to work B"
Developing at the same time is not difficult at all. It is good to develop and deliver each as an independent application.
However, in this case, we want to simultaneously improve and reform "overall process management" and "partial optimization"!
This is the customer's need.
Therefore
Rather than providing IT support for individual tasks
Based on the overall design
"The application work at the start of the process of AI want to improve the application work at the start of the B process at the same level"or
"I overlooked the wholeThen why are you late? and where are the bottlenecks in the overall process? "such as
It was necessary to be aware of complex elements when developing individual applications.
In addition to standardizing the programming language, the coding method, data structure, and batch processing that accurately processes a large number of jobs and does not interfere with daily operations. . . .
It was a depressing job just thinking about it. . .
However, as a result, we were able to dramatically reduce the so-called running costs, such as error detection after system operation, minor repairs, and additional functions.
■ Cost/effect
Undisclosed (It was a big project of 100 million units)
*The initial development budget was 100.3% of the customer's assumption, and the project was completed on schedule.
■ Environment used
customer usePhysical server, virtual server, ⇒ integrated into salesforce platform
EAI cooperation with 7 subsystems
12 new applications created (salesforce API, Web<css>, including backup environment)
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