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564 Part Four Building and Managing Systems

FIGURE 14.2 MANAGEMENT CONTROL OF SYSTEMS PROJECTS

Each level of management in the hierarchy is responsible for specific aspects of systems projects, and
this structure helps give priority to the most important systems projects for the organization.

The project team is supervised by a project management group composed of
information systems managers and end-user managers responsible for oversee-
ing several specific information systems projects. The project team is directly
responsible for the individual systems project. It consists of systems analysts,
specialists from the relevant end-user business areas, application programmers,
and perhaps database specialists. The mix of skills and the size of the project
team depend on the specific nature of the system solution.

LINKING SYSTEMS PROJECTS TO THE BUSINESS PLAN

In order to identify the information systems projects that will deliver the most
business value, organizations need to develop an information systems plan
that supports their overall business plan and in which strategic systems are
incorporated into top-level planning. The plan serves as a road map indicating
the direction of systems development (the purpose of the plan), the rationale,
the current systems/situation, new developments to consider, the management
strategy, the implementation plan, and the budget (see Table 14.1).
The plan contains a statement of corporate goals and specifies how informa-
tion technology will support the attainment of those goals. The report shows
how general goals will be achieved by specific systems projects. It identifies
specific target dates and milestones that can be used later to evaluate the plan’s
progress in terms of how many objectives were actually attained in the time
frame specified in the plan. The plan indicates the key management decisions
concerning hardware acquisition; telecommunications; centralization/decen-
tralization of authority, data, and hardware; and required organizational change.
Organizational changes are also usually described, including management

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