2.
Logic modelling as applied in electronic commerce development
Logic models are a useful visual tool that can help outline the intended activities and results
of a program. They clarify program goals and objectives and help stakeholders and program
staff see how program inputs will lead to the overall strategic objective. The logic model also
provides a platform for discussing external factors that can affect a program’s success and
helps guide the creation of monitoring indicators.
3. Steps to Determine Project Feasibility
Step 1: Research the Business Drivers In most cases, your project is being driven by a
problem in the business. These problems are called “business drivers” and you need to have a
clear understanding of what they are, as part of your Feasibility Study. For instance, the
business driver might be that an IT system is outdated and is causing customer complaints, or
that two businesses need to merge because of an acquisition. Regardless of the business
driver, you need to get to the bottom of it so you fully understand the reasons why the project
has been kicked off. Find out why the business driver is important to the business, and why
it’s critical that the project delivers a solution to it within a specified timeframe. Then find
out what the impact will be to the business, if the project slips.
Step 2: Confirm the Alternative Solutions Now you have a clear understanding of the
business problem that the project addresses, you need to understand the alternative solutions
available. If it’s an IT system that is outdated, then your alternative solutions might include
redeveloping the existing system, replacing it or merging it with another system. Only with a
clear understanding of the alternative solutions to the business problem, can you progress
with the Feasibility Study.
Step 3: Determine the Feasibility you now need to identify the feasibility of each solution.
The question to ask of each alternative solution is “can we deliver it on time and under
budget?” To answer this question, you need to use a variety of methods to assess the
feasibility of each solution. Here are some examples of ways you can assess feasibility:
Research: Perform online research to see if other companies have implemented the same
solutions and how they got on.
Prototyping: Identify the part of the solution that has the highest risk, and then build a
sample of it to see if it’s possible to create.
Time-boxing: Complete some of the tasks in your project plan and measure how long it
took vs. planned. If you delivered it on time, then you know that your planning is quite
accurate.
Step 4: Choose a Preferred Solution with the feasibility of each alternative solution known,
the next step is to select a preferred solution to be delivered by your project. Choose the
solution that; is most feasible to implement, has the lowest risk, and you have the highest
confidence of delivering. You’ve now chosen a solution to a known business problem, and
you have a high degree of confidence that you can deliver that solution on time and under
budget, as part of the project.
Step 5: Reassess at a lower level it’s now time to take your chosen solution and reassess its
feasibility at a lower level. List all of the tasks that are needed to complete the solution. Then
run those tasks by your team to see how long they think it will take to complete them. Add all
of the tasks and timeframes to a project plan to see if you can do it all within the project
deadline. Then ask your team to identify the highest risk tasks and get them to investigate
them further to check that they are achievable.
4. Rapid Application Development (RAD) is a form of agile software development
methodology that prioritizes rapid prototype releases and iterations. Unlike the
Waterfall method, RAD emphasizes the use of software and user feedback over strict
planning and requirements recording.
Some of the key benefits and advantages of RAD are:
Enhanced flexibility and adaptability as developers can make adjustments quickly
during the development process.
Quick iterations that reduce development time and speed up delivery.
Prototyping Model is a software development model in which prototype is built, tested, and
reworked until an acceptable prototype is achieved. It also creates base to produce the final
system or software. It works best in scenarios where the project’s requirements are not known
in detail.
Joint Application Development
Joint application development (JAD) is a process originally meant for the development of
computer systems, but it can also be applicable to other types of development. It is an
approach for ensuring accuracy between the project scope definition and delivery, through
continuous collaboration with the stakeholders. These interactions form the core of the JAD
development process and lifecycle. It is a modern means of collecting and analysing
software requirements, which are discussed in a series of meetings and workshops between
the business and technical teams.
Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE)
Computer aided software engineering (CASE) is the implementation of computer
facilitated tools and methods in software development. CASE is used to ensure a high-quality
and defect-free software. CASE ensures a check-pointed and disciplined approach and helps
designers, developers, testers, managers and others to see the project milestones during
development.
5. PROJECT IDENTIFICATION
The key feature of this activity is recognizing that identifying candidate projects is something
that an organization should do on a regular basis, not just once each year. Further, when
examining projects for approval, it is vital to also examine the resource capacities and
capabilities available for assignment. It is futile to assign a major new project requiring
extensive discovery of business requirements if no business analysts are available. Project
Identification proceeds Project Initiation.
Before analysing project identification, keep in mind that identifying projects more regularly
may be easier if an organization implements project management tools.
PROJECT SELECTION
Project selection is the first important part of project portfolio management.
Who is responsible for the selection and review of projects?
The responsibility is with the leadership team of the organization. Typically, they establish
steering committee that overlooks the process of selecting projects, including project
monitoring, and directly reporting to the CEO – if the CEO is not a member of that steering
committee already.
The leading question is:
"How can we make sure that we are doing the right projects?"
PROJECT SELECTION AND REUSE AND ITS ROLE IN SOFTWARE DEVELOPM
This provides a competitive advantage for the company and helps to produce better quality
software and standardized software. Software reuse technique helps the company to reduce
the costs involved in software development and maintenance. By using it the software
developers can be moved from one project to the other project easily.
Reuse also decreases the development time because existing pieces of software was already
tested which results in the lower defects/errors with minimizing maintenance cost
.Typically, most often applied to object oriented and component-based development
.For example, consider an object class created to model a customer to a bank, the object
class customer contains both the data about customers and their bank amount details, so this
customer data (object class to customer data) can be reused while developing two different
type of applications i.e., saving account type and current type applications. In these ways the
reuse can be defined in terms of object oriented terminology.
Reuse of object classes Increases productivity Reduces defect intensity Reduces work load
and plan must be matched with company’s strategic business goals.