Abstract
This thesis is about the formulation of a structured sequence of events using a
multimethodology approach to facilitate the intervention and subsequent
management, of key factors contributing to the failure of management information
system development projects undertaken in the financial services industry1.
Furthermore, a clear distinction is made between information system development
projects undertaken within the ambit of the broader development context of
‘information technology’, as opposed to information system development projects
undertaken within the ambit of the financial services industry, the latter, the focus
of this thesis.
The formulation of the structured sequence of events serving as mitigating factors,
was mooted specifically as a result of known failure factors of management
information systems development projects undertaken in the financial services
industry. In terms of this research, these factors fall into two mainstream
categories2, namely:
Ø The quality of business requirement functional specifications.
Ø Change to business requirement functional specifications, while the latter is
still in the process of being developed.
From the field research undertaken for this thesis both locally and abroad, the
analogy was drawn that the above two factors are normally juxtaposed,
contributing to multi-faceted impacts to information system development project
lifecycles. Key impacts point to not only the escalation of previously approved
budgets, but also to extended timelines and already mapped processes. The
research shows that these two entities would typically lead to an executive call for
rework of not only the business case, but also of the processes supporting the
whole development. This could invariable culminate in the termination of the
project or culminate in extensive recoding and process changes, which in turn
would lead to the requirement for extensive change management initiatives.
Alternatively, the additional rework could result in benefits harvesting from the
initiative to be delayed or severely impacted. This statement is made with the
clear caveat, that should the rework result in end user effectiveness being
significantly boosted as a result of the required rework, to the extent that the ratio
of operating profit over the benefit life span of the system to total development
cost be raised, it would undoubtedly quantify such rework.
The structured sequence of events serving as mitigating factors to facilitate the
intervention and subsequent management of key factors contributing to the failure
of management information system development projects are formulated from
selected key elements of the following system methodologies namely:
Ø The ‘Capability Maturity Model’, which Herbsleb et al.5 defines as ‘a
reference model for appraising software process maturity and a normative
model for helping software organizations progress along an evolutionary path
from ad hoc, chaotic processes to mature disciplined software’.
Ø The ‘Balanced Scorecard’, which Kaplan & Norton6 defines as ‘a management
system that can motivate breakthrough improvements in such critical areas as
product, process, customer, and market development’.
A multimethodology approach will be deployed in the formulation of the
mitigating factors from the above listed systems methodologies, underpinned by
the concept ‘system’. This then would be further enhanced by the author’s own
contributions gleaned from experience spanning some 34 years in systems
development for the financial services industry, both locally and abroad.
These mitigating factors will come into play at two specific levels of a typical
information technology project lifecycle namely:
Ø At the formulation of business requirement functional specifications.
Ø During the development and testing stages, which are typically associated
with change in the systems development lifecycle.
Using a multimethodology approach, the interrelationship of the various core
entities, gleaned from the above listed system methodologies, ultimately
supporting the structured sequence of events serving as mitigating factors are
graphically depicted below. In addition, the mitigating factors are positioned to
reflect their potential position in a typical systems development life cycle 7,
commonly associated with information system development for the financial
services industry.
The purpose of this thesis is then to determine if a set of mitigating factors
can be developed from a structured sequence of events using a
multimethodology approach to facilitate the intervention and subsequent
management of key factors contributing to the failure of management
information systems development undertaken in the financial services
industry. Furthermore, the thesis proposes that the structured set of
mitigating factors be incorporated as an alternative methodology within the
ambit of the greater information technology project management life cycle
for all project initiatives in the financial services industry.
Prof. N. Lessing