Issues Investigated for the Project of Developing and Implementing Information System

To manage a project, the involvement and consideration of ideas of all stakeholders are essential that helps to maintain the standards and help to achieve the goals and objectives. Project management refers to practices of planning, executing, monitoring, controlling and closing the specific success criteria in the specified time (Todorovi? Petrovi?, D. ?., Mihi?, Obradovi?, & Bushuyev, 2015). The report will provide information related to project management activities and plan to develop the information system for Virgin Atlantic airline. The organization has started the business on 22 June 1984 and now it is operating the business across the globe. The current fleet size of the organization is 47 and offering services at 33 destinations. The report will provide brief information for issues investigated in the project plan for managing and completing the tasks, the methodology that used for implementing the project and risks that have faced during the project. Moreover, the report will discuss the project outcome and offer recommendations for further improvement. In the end, the report will make critical reflection relating own learning in both personal and professional context.

Virgin Atlantic airline organization is looking to expand the business and improvement in the customer services. Therefore, management has decided to develop and implement the information system that could support to manage the 24*7 services using online technology.  Following are the key issues that investigated for the project of developing and implementing information system:

Client needs:   For every project management task, it is essential to understand and manage the needs of the client. For the particular project of Virgin Atlantic airline, the management is looking for an integrated information system that could help to collect information about employees, customer and other stakeholders (Joslin, & Müller, 2015). In addition to this, issues related to security and changes in the technology trends are also having a negative impact on analyzing and finalizing the needs of the client to develop a project plan.

Uses: The organization is going to invest huge amount for development of information system, at the initial stage the management is facing issues related to determining the usability of the management information system within the organization (Binder, 2016). The information system gets fail due to lack of user interface and knowledge related to utilization of the features in the regular working environment.

Negotiation:  The negotiation plays a critical role in accepting and defining the cost of the overall project. The negotiation skills of project team member need to be high quality as they could explain each point to the client and develop the agreement for project development focusing on the legal and ethical aspects (Hornstein, 2015). For managing this issue the management has applied the Measurable Organizational Value (MOV) concept.

Planning for Developing and Implementing Information System

The planning for developing and implementing the information system for Virgin Atlantic airline is as follows:

Objectives

 The objectives of the project for Virgin Atlantic airline are listed below:

• To increase the collection and analysis of information
• To make faster and accurate decisions
• To improve communication with staff and customers
• To develop future strategies considering database   

Scope: 

The scope of the project is to develop an integrated information system for Virgin Atlantic airline which helps the management in decision making and minimizing the time to respond. The scope of the project needs to be accepted by all stakeholders that help to maintain the flow in the project. However, some changes arise in scope due to technical changes, lack of clarity and disengagement of stakeholders (Kerzner, & Kerzner, 2017). These changes affect the cost and time of the project.

Following resources will be required for managing the project for Virgin Atlantic airline to meet the objectives:  

Table 1: Resources

To manage the project successfully the development of Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is essential. The WBS is helpful for dividing the large activities into small phases that help the manager to increase the monitoring and progress of the project focusing on the quality and standards that are required (Heagney, 2016). The major activities of this project involve initiation, planning, development, implementation, and changes as well as closing. The manager has divided these activities into small segments for better arrangement of resources and maintaining the progress as per the determined manner. Moreover, the manager has divided these major tasks into small activities.

The initiation of the project will involve the analysis of requirements, meeting with stakeholders, risk identification and scope management. The planning activity involves design specification, development, human resources, and fund planning. Apart from that, the development stage involves the technical work, training, designing, and testing of the system (Sharon, & Dori, 2015). The manager will have special concern over the implementation stage as the integration of the information system with existing tools of Virgin is important to get the desired results. This stag will involve deployment, checking of compliance, functioning, and monitoring of the outcome for Virgin Atlantic airline. In the end, the changes and the closing stage will involve analysis of changes, re-design, testing, and implementation.

For developing and implementing the integrated information system for Virgin Atlantic airline, the project team has applied the waterfall methodology. For developing the software and designing the application, this kind of methodology is majorly used as these projects are large and involve various types of risks. Hence, consideration of each phase in a specific manner is essential, and Waterfall model helps to achieve the goals. Following are the key steps used by applying the Waterfall methodology:

Resources Required

Preliminary analysis:  In this phase of methodology, the manager of Virgin Atlantic project has done the review of requirements of the client, what are the alternatives for the project and what is the current status of information management system within the organization (Mahadevan, Kettinger, & Meservy, 2015). This was a critical part of feasibility analysis of project which involves consideration of technical, economic and legal feasibility. This analysis has helped to start the project with precise specifications.  

System analysis: By undertaking this step of project management, the manager has analyzed one or two systems considering the input of various stakeholders. This approach has helped to determine the specific requirements of the new integrated information system for Virgin Atlantic. For example, the manager has interviewed the stakeholders and gain understanding related to current issues and future needs to meet their business objectives (Mahapatra, & Goswami, 2015).

System design: According to this phase of Waterfall methodology, the manager has offered the document of system requirements to the designer team with technical details and standards that requested by the management of Virgin Atlantic. This document has helped the designer team to translate the business requirements into a technical approach. Moreover, the design team has focused on the interface, database, data input and output that desired from the information system.

Programming: The coding of the project has done at the programming phase. In this stage, the technical team has developed the integrated information system for the company by considering the design and requirements of decision making, maintaining communication with employees and customer to offer better services as well as minimization of time and internal cost (Elsayed Alharbi, AlNamlah, & Saba, 2015). The technical team has managed coding accordingly in programming to increase the compliance and functioning of the system.

Testing: This is an important part of the methodology for developing system software. In this phase, the project manager and technical team have applied the series of structural test for analyzing the effectiveness of the system. First, the team has tested the individual part of code errors and bugs in information system and then initiated the full system analysis to ensure the error-free output (Dhir, Kumar, & Singh, 2019). Finally, the user-acceptance test was applied for evaluating the standards and quality of the software.

Implementation: In this phase of system development, the project team has implemented the tested information system by integrating the components of existing software of Virgin Atlantic organization. Moreover, the technical team has provided training to the employees for utilizing the functions to utilize it as per the professional approach and manage their operations (Chari, & Agrawal, 2018).

Waterfall Methodology for Developing Software

Maintenance: This is the final phase of methodology in which the project manager and technical team has fixed the reported bugs and noted the future requirements for encouraging the effectiveness of information system.

The major highlights of the project involve consideration of ISO standard for developing and testing of the information system as project team has applied the ISO/IEC TS 25011: 2017 standards. Moreover, the project team has considered the Total Quality Management approach for ensuring the outcome desired by the Virgin Atlantic to manage the customer services and internal decision making. 

The project team has faced the following issues in the development and implementation of the project:

Setting the goals:

The designer team has faced issue related to determining the goals for developing the information system. It was a large project and requires detail analysis of issues and evaluation of existing functions of the company to develop the system (Chari, & Agrawal, 2017). The team has conduct meetings and analyzed different systems for feasibility analysis to understand the critical outcome and set the goals. It has consumed a lot of time.

User interface:

The system was designed and developed for the company as employees could access and analyze information and make the decisions faster and reliable manners. The development of easy user interface was the difficult part for the programmer to deal with (Kerzner, 2018). Moreover, the designing team has also faced issues related to the security to block unauthorized access.

The project management team has designed and implemented the information system successfully by considering the needs of Virgin Atlantic. The management team has focused on every aspect of the project to meet the satisfaction level of the client and applied the appropriate standards. In addition to this, the project team has offered training to the employees to manage the functions of the system as they could access the query of customer and response of team members to resolve the issues faster.

To improve the project management, it is recommended to team members to analyze the requirements of the client in a comprehensive manner which is essential to develop a clear scope. The changes in scope influence the cost and time of delivering the project. Moreover, the testing of the element at each stage of system development is required to develop an error-free information system that supports in the decision making of the client (Martinelli, & Milosevic, 2016). The development of a contingency plan is also essential for managing the issues and achieving the objectives professional manner.

Major Highlights of the Project

The intervention is required for evaluating compliance and functionality of the information system as the regular modification in technology is changing the acceptance level and creating new requirements for utilizing the system (Sequeira, & Lopes, 2015). The project team needs to consider the future state of the information system while developing and testing.

By undertaking the project for Virgin Atlantic airline, I have gained knowledge related to the development of scope, analysis of requirements and negotiation with the client. This knowledge will help me in future planning and communication with the client related to project management. However, I have learned about the application of waterfall model for system development, but lack of professional understanding of project standards and quality management approach has affected the work. I will work on these aspects to improve the effectiveness in project management and achievement of goals. Moreover, the learning from the project has enhanced my communication, analytical and decision making skills which will be beneficial in the personal context.

Conclusion 

From the report, it has carried out that, project management included steps like planning, implementing, monitoring and closing of the project. The report has developed a plan for managing project activities for developing an integrated information system for Virgin Atlantic airline and defined the scope and resources required for managing the activities. Moreover, the report has developed WBS which provides information about activities of the project. The report has also discussed Waterfall methodology application to achieve the objectives and manage the issues like defining goals and developing better user-interface. Apart from that, the report has provided recommendations to improve the project management planning and analyze issues.

References

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