Analysis/Feasibility

The analysis or feasibility phase determines that the project has been thoroughly assessed and deemed economically or strategically feasible to continue. If the analysis weighs against the projects success, the project is discontinued or returned to executives for further discussions. It is highly recommended that projects be analyzed before commencing to the next phase of the project life cycle or methodology.

Strategy Planning

Every company needs to have a system for deciding on and formulating the necessity and priority of launching any project or product. Whether a new design or new release of software, the strategists need to plan within the framework of the business model. The strategy planning would allow decisions about launching additional projects to support a priority project or delaying certain projects to favor a more important projects getting to market.

Feasibility Assessment

Before committing time and resources to any development, it may be necessary to establish the need for the project. Sometimes, its not feasible to commit the organization to even attempt the project because it simply duplicates another effort or costs too much to gain a successful foothold in the marketplace. Additionally, the technical feasibility of the project may be unknown, and without performing a proper feasibility study of the technology, the project would result in negative cost and schedule delays.

System Analysis

After the project is launched, it becomes vitally important to establish client requirements to start designing the eventual system or product. At this stage, the project team should use techniques to fully understand what the project should deliver.

Design/Development

On any project methodology, one of the key phases is the design or development phase. The phase represents the solution build. Key staff such as designers, architects, or engineers develop a solution based on either partial or full user requirements. This design will form the basic building blocks from which the project team will work.

Deployment/Execution

After the project has been built, tested, and proven to work as designed and specified, the project is ready for

installation or rollout. It is during this phase that the product or system is finally assembled and installed. In addition to simply implementing a system, users must be trained.

Testing

This phase indicates the formal testing of the solution. Testing can be done either incrementally or at the end of a development phase if following a waterfall approach.

Quality Assurance

In the quality assurance phase, the solution is validated and tested against the initial specifications of the project.

Training/Education

Before any system or project is fully deployed, users need to be identified and trained. This phase may involve establishing the training requirements for the project and generating either the necessary training courses or documentation.

Rollout/Implementation/Deployment

This phase is the delivery of the solution within the client organization. The rollout takes effect when the system is ready to be installed either in a series of small increments or as a fullblown deployment. During this phase, it is crucial to have an implementation plan and schedule to assist with the details of rolling out the project to the client.

Maintenance/Support/Operations

After the project has been finalized and the product launched, it is considered operational or in production. Therefore, the product must now be maintained. Many products need constant updates or changes. For example, after a new software is launched, it is likely that some updates will be needed. Therefore, the project needs to address exactly how postproject changes will be handled and executed. Considerations such as how incremental changes will be implemented must be resolved. On many other projects, fulfillment and restocking of vital spare parts including the vendors support are crucial in making this project a success. (Methodology support is discussed in Chapter 6.) In this phase, the organization or client introduces operational support for the project once completed. Tasks such as arranging help desk support, service level agreements, and monitoring and diagnostics are performed in this phase.

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The Importance of it Methodologies

As many industries use information technology and focus on the development of software, it is appropriate to describe the IT environment to explain why different methodologies are needed for different things. For example, many construction companies that use the standard waterfall methodology are today using IT methodologies such as RAD to bring in their predictive and heavy schedules more quickly than before. And it appears to be working successfully.

With almost all IT projects today, we typically encounter any one of the following scenarios in which we need to adopt a development methodology. An IT project may consist of three core tiers:

Graphics User Interface tier (front-end). Usually done by visual development languages using tools such as Visual Studio.NET, Java.

Application middle tier. Usually addressed by a business-centric methodology.

Database tier (back-end). Usually accessing one or many databases to retrieve data or information, using tools such as SQL, Java, or object components.

The same development cannot be used for each tier. For example, you are tasked with an IT project in which you have to use only the top layer the front-end then you need to consider your specific development options. They may be application specific. The same applies for the other two tiers.

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