A business plan is a formal statement of a set of business goals, the reasons why they are believed attainable, and the plan for reaching those goals. It may also contain background information about the organization or team attempting to reach those goals.
The business goals may be defined for for-profit or for non-profit organizations. For-profit business plans typically focus on financial goals, such as profit or creation of wealth. Non-profit and government agency business plans tend to focus on organizational mission which is the basis for their governmental status or their non-profit, tax-exempt status, respectively—although non-profits may also focus on optimizing revenue. In non-profit organizations, creative tensions may develop in the effort to balance mission with "margin" (or revenue). Business plans may also target changes in perception and branding by the customer, client, tax-payer, or larger community. A business plan having changes in perception and branding as its primary goals is called a marketing plan.
Business plans may be internally or externally focused. Externally focused plans target goals that are important to external stakeholders, particularly financial stakeholders. They typically have detailed information about the organization or team attempting to reach the goals. With for-profit entities, external stakeholders include investors and customers. External stake-holders of non-profits include donors and the clients of the non-profit's services. For government agencies, external stakeholders include tax-payers, higher-level government agencies, and international lending bodies such as the IMF, the World Bank, various economic agencies of the UN, and development banks.
Internally focused business plans target intermediate goals required to reach the external goals. They may cover the development of a new product, a new service, a new IT system, a restructuring of finance, the refurbishing of a factory or a restructuring of the organization. An internal business plan is often developed in conjunction with a balanced scorecard or a list of critical success factors. This allows success of the plan to be measured using non-financial measures. Business plans that identify and target internal goals, but provide only general guidance on how they will be met are called strategic plans.
Operational plans describe the goals of an internal organization, working group or department. Project plans, sometimes known as project frameworks, describe the goals of a particular project. They may also address the project's place within the organization's larger strategic goals.
Business plans are decision-making tools. There is no fixed content for a business plan. Rather the content and format of the business plan is determined by the goals and audience. A business plan should contain whatever information is needed to decide whether or not to pursue a goal.
For example, a business plan for a non-profit might discuss the fit between the business plan and the organization’s mission. Banks are quite concerned about defaults, so a business plan for a bank loan will build a convincing case for the organization’s ability to repay the loan. Venture capitalists are primarily concerned about initial investment, feasibility, and exit valuation. A business plan for a project requiring equity financing will need to explain why current resources, upcoming growth opportunities, and sustainable competitive advantage will lead to a high exit valuation.
Preparing a business plan draws on a wide range of knowledge from many different business disciplines: finance, human resource management, intellectual property management, supply chain management, operations management, and marketing, among others. It can be helpful to view the business plan as a collection of sub-plans, one for each of the main business disciplines.
"... a good business plan can help to make a good business credible, understandable, and attractive to someone who is unfamiliar with the business. Writing a good business plan can’t guarantee success, but it can go a long way toward reducing the odds of failure."
Presentation formats
The format of a business plan depends on its presentation context. It is not uncommon for businesses, especially start-ups to have three or four formats for the same business plan:
• an "elevator pitch" - a three minute summary of the business plan's executive summary. This is often used as a teaser to awaken the interest of potential funders, customers, or strategic partners.
• an oral presentation - a hopefully entertaining slide show and oral narrative that is meant to trigger discussion and interest potential investors in reading the written presentation. The content of the presentation is usually limited to the executive summary and a few key graphs showing financial trends and key decision making benchmarks. If a new product is being proposed and time permits, a demonstration of the product may also be included.
• a written presentation for external stakeholders - a detailed, well written, and pleasingly formatted plan targeted at external stakeholders.
• an internal operational plan - a detailed plan describing planning details that are needed by management but may not be of interest to external stakeholders. Such plans have a somewhat higher degree of candor and informality than the version targeted at external stakeholders.
Typical structure for a business plan for a start up venture
• cover page and table of contents
• executive summary
• business description
• business environment analysis
• industry background
• competitive analysis
• market analysis
• marketing plan
• operations plan
• management summary
• financial plan
• attachments and milestones
Revisiting the business plan
Cost overruns and revenue shortfalls
Cost and revenue estimates are central to any business plan for deciding the viability of the planned venture. But costs are often underestimated and revenues overestimated resulting in later cost overruns, revenue shortfalls, and possibly non-viability. During the dot-com bubble 1997-2001 this was a problem for many technology start-ups. However, the problem is not limited to technology or the private sector; public works projects also routinely suffer from cost overruns and/or revenue shortfalls. The main causes of cost overruns and revenue shortfalls are optimism bias and strategic misrepresentation.[9][10] Reference class forecasting has been developed to reduce the risks of cost overruns and revenue shortfalls.
Legal and liability issues
Disclosure requirements
An externally targeted business plan should list all legal concerns and financial liabilities that might negatively affect investors. Depending on the amount of funds being raised and the audience to whom the plan is presented, failure to do this may have severe legal consequences.
Limitations on content and audience
Non disclosure agreements (NDAs) with third parties, non-compete agreements, conflicts of interest, privacy concerns, and the protection of one's trade secrets may severely limit the audience to which one might show the business plan. Alternatively, they may require each party receiving the business plan to sign a contract accepting special clauses and conditions.
This situation is complicated by the fact that many venture capitalists will refuse to sign an NDA before looking at a business plan, lest it put them in the untenable position of looking at two independently developed look-alike business plans, both claiming originality. In such situations one may need to develop two versions of the business plan: a stripped down plan that can be used to develop a relationship and a detail plan that is only shown when investors have sufficient interest and trust to sign an NDA.
Open business plans
Traditionally business plans have been highly confidential and quite limited in audience. The business plan itself is generally regarded as secret. However the emergence of free software and open source has opened the model and made the notion of an open business plan possible.
An Open Business Plan is a business plan with unlimited audience. The business plan is typically web published and made available to all.
In the free software and open source business model, trade secrets, copyright and patents can no longer be used as effective locking mechanisms to provide sustainable advantages to a particular business and therefore a secret business plan is less relevant in those models.
While the origin of the Open Business Plan model is in the free software and Libre services arena, the concept is likely applicable to other domains.
Uses
Venture capital
• Business plan contests - provides a way for venture capitals to find promising projects
• Venture capital assessment of business plans - focus on qualitative factors such as team.
Public offerings
• In a public offering, potential investors can evaluate perspectives of issuing company
Within corporations
Fundraising
Fundraising is the primary purpose for many business plans, since they are related to the inherent probable success/failure of the company risk.
Total quality management
For more details on this topic, see Total quality management.
Total quality management (TQM) is a business management strategy aimed at embedding awareness of quality in all organizational processes. TQM has been widely used in manufacturing, education, call centers, government, and service industries, as well as NASA space and science programs.
Management by objective
For more details on this topic, see Management by objectives.
Management by objectives (MBO) is a process of agreeing upon objectives within an organization so that management and employees agree to the objectives and understand what they are in the organization.
Strategic planning
For more details on this topic, see strategic planning.
Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people. Various business analysis techniques can be used in strategic planning, including SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats ) and PEST analysis (Political, Economic, Social, and Technological analysis) or STEER analysis involving Socio-cultural, Technological, Economic, Ecological, and Regulatory factors and EPISTELS (Environment, Political, Informative, Social, Technological, Economic, Legal and Spiritual)
Characteristics of a Quality ISP
A quality ISP must exhibit five distinct characteristics before it is useful. These five are presented in the table that follows.
Timely
The ISP must be timely. An ISP that is created long after it is needed is useless. In almost all cases, it makes no sense to take longer to plan work than to perform the work planned.
Useable
The ISP must be useable. It must be so for all the projects as well as for each project. The ISP should exist in sections that once adopted can be parceled out to project managers and immediately started.
Maintainable
The ISP must be maintainable. New business opportunities, new computers, business mergers, etc. all affect the ISP. The ISP must support quick changes to the estimates, technologies employed, and possibly even to the fundamental project sequences. Once these changes are accomplished, the new ISP should be just a few computer program executions away.
Quality
While the ISP must be a quality product, no ISP is ever perfect on the first try. As the ISP is executed, the metrics employed to derive the individual project estimates become refined as a consequence of new hardware technologies, code generators, techniques, or faster working staff. As these changes occur, their effects should be installable into the data that supports ISP computation. In short, the ISP is a living document. It should be updated with every technology event, and certainly no less often than quarterly.
Reproducible
The ISP must be reproducible. That is, when its development activities are performed by any other staff, the ISP produced should essentially be the same. The ISP should not significantly vary by staff assigned.
Whenever a proposal for the development of an ISP is created it must be assessed against these five characteristics. If any fail or not addressed in an optimum way, the entire set of funds for the development of an ISP is risked.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_plan
http://www.tdan.com/view-articles/5262
Singapore_Pics
Monday, December 21, 2009
System Analyst as a project manager
Systems Analyst
A Day in the life of a Systems Analyst
Someone on your left speaks French and someone on your right speaks English; both individuals need to speak to each other. The systems analyst is the middleman, assessing the needs of the end-user and translating them into programming or turning over the programming responsibility to the development department. What are the business requirements? Who will comprise the user community? How large is the application going to be? Will it be internal or external? These are all questions facing the systems analyst, who spends much of the day in front of the computer poring over these issues. With a new product, other elements come into play, such as network location, user community, type of machine, and portability. If the analyst is reviewing an established product, the user community will dictate its changes and enhancements. “One of the biggest surprises in my 25 years of technology work is that people who have a creative background as opposed to a degree in computer science tend to make better systems analysts,” says one seasoned professional. “The best analysts I’ve come across came from backgrounds in theater, art, and filmmaking. But they were all able to see and grasp big-picture concepts very quickly, and break them down into subcomponents. People who have a computer science or math background tend to be very technical, and sometimes that can be a hindrance.” Systems analysts need to be independent thinkers-people who can “think out of the box” by grasping concepts quickly and seeing the big picture as opposed to the small details. “I also look for someone who is self-motivated. Here . . . take the ball and run with it and come back if you have any issues,” says one employer who heads up a technology group.
Paying Your Dues
Few companies are willing to spend money on someone who doesn’t have some kind of programming background. There is not much difference between an analyst and a programmer, though the programmer needs to be versed in a programming language. As far as dealing with the functional requirements, these are the same position. There are junior-level analyst positions, which is almost like being a junior programmer. Any of the Java applets and the basic visual C++ programs are very applicable to today’s market, while Cobol and the older programs such as Assembler are considered dinosaurs. Without experience, a support role at the help desk with internal training is a good way to start out.
Associated Careers
Financial companies and most of the Fortune 100 companies have systems analysts who may also have programming responsibilities. But today, many young analysts are flocking to Web companies where there’s money to be made. A small starting salary combined with options could make you a multimillionaire within a short period of time, or your company could go bust within the year. Internet ventures attract risk-takers, so it all depends on how much of a gambler you are. Many systems analysts come from creative backgrounds; some return to those fields, while others combine their artistic passions with Internet opportunities. “If I left my position and was able to do anything, I would go back to photography or painting or apply those talents to Web design,” says one systems analyst.
Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives. It is often closely related to and sometimes conflated with program management.
A project is a temporary endeavor, having a defined beginning and end (usually constrained by date, but can be by funding or deliverables), undertaken to meet particular goals and objectives, usually to bring about beneficial change or added value. The temporary nature of projects stands in contrast to business as usual (or operations), which are repetitive, permanent or semi-permanent functional work to produce products or services. In practice, the management of these two systems is often found to be quite different, and as such requires the development of distinct technical skills and the adoption of separate management.
The primary challenge of project management is to achieve all of the project goals and objectives while honoring the preconceived project constraints. Typical constraints are scope, time, and budget. The secondary—and more ambitious—challenge is to optimize the allocation and integration of inputs necessary to meet pre-defined objectives.
A project manager is a professional in the field of project management. Project managers can have the responsibility of the planning, execution, and closing of any project, typically relating to construction industry, architecture, computer networking, telecommunications or software development.
A project manager is the person accountable for accomplishing the stated project objectives. Key project management responsibilities include creating clear and attainable project objectives, building the project requirements, and managing the triple constraint for projects, which are; cost, time, and quality (also known as scope).
A project manager is often a client representative and has to determine and implement the exact needs of the client, based on knowledge of the firm they are representing. The ability to adapt to the various internal procedures of the contracting party, and to form close links with the nominated representatives, is essential in ensuring that the key issues of cost, time, quality and above all, client satisfaction, can be realized.
According to our interview, the system analyst as a project manager manages the process of the company. The systems analyst is considered the middleman, assessing the needs of the end-user and translating them into programming or turning over the programming responsibility to the development department. They bridge the gap between the user and the programmer. The system analyst are the very important person in the company because they are the people who are concern of the flow of the business. As project managers, they do innovations and improve technologies in a certain organization to be able to meet the need of the customers. According to our interviewee, system analyst analyzes the processes or the cycle of how an organization is being run. An organization has its edge whenever they have a system analyst.
References:
http://www.princetonreview.com/Careers.aspx?cid=210
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_manager
System analyst
Analytical Skills
the ability to visualize, articulate, and solve complex problems and concepts, and make decisions that make sense based on available information. Such skills include demonstration of the ability to apply logical thinking to gathering and analyzing information, designing and testing solutions to problems, and formulating plans.
To test for analytical skills one might be asked to look for inconsistencies in an advertisement, put a series of events in the proper order, or critically read an essay. Usually standardized tests and interviews include an analytical section that requires the examine to use their logic to pick apart a problem and come up with a solution.
Although there is no question that analytical skills are essential, other skills are equally required as well. For instance in systems analysis the systems analyst should focus on four sets of analytical skills: systems thinking, organizational knowledge, problem identification, and problem analyzing and solving.
It also includes the way we describe a problem and subsequently finding out the solutions.
ability to see things as systems, identify, analyze, and solve problems in an optimal way for a specific organization.
Technical Skills ability to understand how computers, data networks, databases, operating systems, etc. work together, as well as their potentials and limitations.
Knowledge and proficiencies required in the accomplishment of engineering, scientific, or any specific task.
Are Technical Skills Still Important?
By Cindy Blanthorne, Sak Bhamornsiri, and Robert E. Guinn
MARCH 2005 - For decades, various groups and institutions within the accounting profession have been advocating a change in accounting education to address the skills necessary for success in the workplace. The 1989 Big Eight white paper “Perspectives on Education: Capabilities for Success in the Accounting Profession” first emphasized the need for general skills, including communication, intellectual, and interpersonal skills. The Accounting Education Change Commission was subsequently established to help educators achieve the white paper’s objectives. Since then, many have suggested incorporating into accounting curricula classroom activities that enhance nontechnical, or “soft,” skills in accounting education.
Many accounting programs responded by incorporating into their curriculum group work, essay exams, and oral presentations. In addition, some textbooks have deleted technical information or have placed it in the appendices, which is significant, because courses are often textbook-driven. Many accounting professors that changed emphasis to the soft skills are now reemphasizing technical skills, because their experience has convinced them that class time is better used for developing students’ technical accounting skills.
Much research has been conducted in search of definitive accounting skills. The perceptions of CPAs, accounting educators, students, and Fortune 500 executives have been studied. The majority have ranked communication as the most important skill in accounting. A survey by Usoff and Feldermann (Journal of Education for Business, March/April 1998) found that students thought that accounting knowledge was the most important skill. Based on this finding, Usoff and Feldermann concluded that students were out of touch and suggested that undergraduate students needed to be more aware of the importance of nontechnical skills.
A more recent article by Moncada and Sanders (CPA Journal, January 1999) investigated skills related to recruiting. Students and faculty ranked characteristics important to prescreening and office visits; the rankings were compared to those rankings by CPA firm recruiters. Interestingly, accounting GPA was ranked most important for prescreening by all three groups. This suggests that technical skills are important when screening students for a campus interview.
The study discussed in this article identifies skills necessary for promotion and success in the public accounting environment. Recently promoted Big Five partners were asked to rate six skills—interpersonal, communication, administrative, technical, leadership, and practice development—in terms of their importance for promotion at three levels: from staff to senior, senior to manager, and manager to partner.
Skills
Staff to senior. In Exhibit 1, the same three skills were rated as most important for promotion from staff to senior in tax and audit, but not in the same order. In tax, the average ratings among technical, communication, and interpersonal skills differed substantially in importance.
Senior to manager. In Exhibit 2, the six skills are rated in the same order for promotion to manager in both tax and audit. When comparing the promotion from senior to manager with the promotion from staff to senior, there is an increase in the average ratings for all of the six skills, which suggests that perceptions of technical skills become even more important at higher levels in public accounting firms.
Manager to partner. The most dramatic change in the rankings occurs at the promotion from manager to partner, seen in Exhibit 3. In both tax and audit, technical competence drops to only the fifth most important skill. Administrative skills also dropped in importance, but all other nontechnical skills rose in importance. The reason for the change in rankings may be related to the added nontechnical responsibilities expected of partners.
The 150-Hour Requirement and Technical Skills
While “soft” skills become increasingly important at higher levels, accountants also must possess a high level of technical competence throughout the promotional process in order to reach the point of consideration for partnership.
Are technical skills still important? The findings of the current study would indicate that they are. The fundamental goal of accounting education remains the same: providing students with sound technical competency.
Management Skills include organization’s recourse management, project management (people and money), risk management, and change management.
Management in all business and human organisation activity is simply the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives. Management comprises planning, organizing, staffing, leading or directing, and controlling an organization (a group of one or more people or entities) or effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal. Resourcing encompasses the deployment and manipulation of human resources, financial resources, technological resources, and natural resources.
Theoretical scope
Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933), who wrote on the topic in the early twentieth century, defined management as "the art of getting things done through people". She also described management as philosophy.[2] One can also think of management functionally, as the action of measuring a quantity on a regular basis and of adjusting some initial plan; or as the actions taken to reach one's intended goal. This applies even in situations where planning does not take place. From this perspective, Frenchman Henri Fayol[3] considers management to consist of seven functions:
1. planning
2. organizing
3. leading
4. co-ordinating
5. controlling
6. staffing
7. motivating
Some people, however, find this definition, while useful, far too narrow. The phrase "management is what managers do" occurs widely, suggesting the difficulty of defining management, the shifting nature of definitions, and the connection of managerial practices with the existence of a managerial cadre or class.
One habit of thought regards management as equivalent to "business administration" and thus excludes management in places outside commerce, as for example in charities and in the public sector. More realistically, however, every organization must manage its work, people, processes, technology, etc. in order to maximize its effectiveness. Nonetheless, many people refer to university departments which teach management as "business schools." Some institutions (such as the Harvard Business School) use that name while others (such as the Yale School of Management) employ the more inclusive term "management."
English speakers may also use the term "management" or "the management" as a collective word describing the managers of an organization, for example of a corporation. Historically this use of the term was often contrasted with the term "Labor" referring to those being managed.
Management can also refer to the person or people who perform the act(s) of management.
Communication Skills include effective interpersonal communication (written, verbal, visual, electronic, face-to-face conversations, presentations in front of groups), listening, group facilitation skills.
Communication is something all living creatures have innately in them to interact with one another so they can understand one another. Human beings communicate through conveying thoughts and ideas.
Some people have better communication skills than others. Communication skills involve the use of auditory, which is spoken, or sung words and sounds; non-verbal, which involves the use of body or sign language and paralanguage, which involves touch or eye contact.
Communication is a process by which information is exchanged. It can be between two or more people. What makes the interaction understood is that the people all recognize the same symbols, signs and behavior so they know what is going on. Based on ones communication abilities determine how effective they are as a communicator. This is where communication skills come into play.
In order to have good communication skills one has to understand what the process of communication is and how to effectively use it. Thus in executing good communication skills one must view communication as a process of transmitting information based on three ideas: Syntactic, Pragmatic and Semantic. Syntactic are the properties given to various signs and symbols, Pragmatic are the relationship between expression/sign and the user of them and Semantic, which is the representation between the signs and symbols and what they mean.
One who uses their communication skills well makes their message understood by all who are present. They understand the feedback of the message they gave out and have some mastery of the flow of communication. Good communication skills involve being able to listen as well as just speak. When you listen and understand what is being said you can respond appropriately, which is another communication skill.
When we utilize good communication skills people will want to hear what we have to say. It helps mobilize people into action with us. When we have poor communication skills it alienates people from us. They don’t want to hear what we have to say must less act on it.
Effective communication skills means to keep it simple and to the point. People who ramble, with tedious large words and jargon tend to bore people and they turn off to what the speaker is speaking about. Short to the point and concise is the first rule of making one’s communication skills effectively heard
Another good communication skill to use is simplifying complex information with simpler ideas first. You can be as creative as you want so the idea is conveyed but be accurate so there is no misunderstanding of the information. Repeat the idea if you have to so it could be understood.
Our body language as part of communication skills is also very important. Facial expressions, gestures, posture and how close or far away from whom we are communicating with all play a part in our communication skills. Not to mention our tone of voice, inflection and volume of our voice all affect the people we are communicating with. The more all these aspects of communication are mastered and are used at the appropriate times the more successful our communication skills will become.
Interpersonal skills
refers to mental and communicative algorithms applied during social communications and interaction to reach certain effects or results. The term "interpersonal skills" is used often in business contexts to refer to the measure of a person's ability to operate within business organizations through social communication and interactions. Interpersonal skills are how people relate to one another.
As an illustration, it is generally understood that communicating respect for other people or professionals within will enable one to reduce conflict and increase participation or assistance in obtaining information or completing tasks. For instance, to interrupt someone who is currently preoccupied with the task of obtaining information needed immediately, it is recommended that a professional use a deferential approach with language such as, "Excuse me, are you busy? I have an urgent matter to discuss with you if you have the time at the moment." This allows the receiving professional to make their own judgement regarding the importance of their current task versus entering into a discussion with their colleague. While it is generally understood that interrupting someone with an "urgent" request will often take priority, allowing the receiver of the message to judge independently the request and agree to further interaction will likely result in a higher quality interaction. Following these kinds of heuristics to achieve better professional results generally results in a professional being ranked as one with 'good interpersonal skills.' Often these evaluations occur in formal and informal settings.
Having positive interpersonal skills increases the productivity in the organization since the number of conflicts is reduced. In informal situations, it allows communication to be easy and comfortable. People with good interpersonal skills can generally control the feelings that emerge in difficult situations and respond appropriately, instead of being overwhelmed by emotion.
According to my research, the skills that were mentioned above are the major skills that a system analyst should have. These skills are very significant for a system analyst in order for him to relate or do his job in an organization.
During Interview..
When we had our interview in our adopted company, we have asked how important a system analyst in an organization and what are the characteristics he/she should have in order to perform his task in an organization well.
Our interviewee told us that a system analyst in today’s trend in an organization is considered one of the most important persons because they bridge the gap between the two people with different languages, it’s the management and the programmers. Without a system analyst the management would have a hard time understanding the language of the programmers so as the programmers to the management.
Our interviewee gave us some qualities that a system analyst should possess. One of the characteristics is that, a system analyst should have determination. It is something that motivates you in doing your work. Even though you tend to stop, determination keeps you going on. He said, without determination the work or the job will not be done on its due time.
Another characteristic of a system analyst is that he is willing to accept correction. Whenever there are feedbacks from the user, it should be taken as a challenge for the improvement of the flow, system or process of the organization. It is the stepping stone of the company in order to go to another level of catering and satisfying the need of the people.
References:
http://www.interlabs.bradley.edu/NSF_CCLI/Demo/class6/module6/Skills_Pretest_Posttest_Answers.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_skills
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpersonal_skills
http://www.yourcommunicationskills.com/
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/technical-skills.html
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/305/essentials/p64.htm
the ability to visualize, articulate, and solve complex problems and concepts, and make decisions that make sense based on available information. Such skills include demonstration of the ability to apply logical thinking to gathering and analyzing information, designing and testing solutions to problems, and formulating plans.
To test for analytical skills one might be asked to look for inconsistencies in an advertisement, put a series of events in the proper order, or critically read an essay. Usually standardized tests and interviews include an analytical section that requires the examine to use their logic to pick apart a problem and come up with a solution.
Although there is no question that analytical skills are essential, other skills are equally required as well. For instance in systems analysis the systems analyst should focus on four sets of analytical skills: systems thinking, organizational knowledge, problem identification, and problem analyzing and solving.
It also includes the way we describe a problem and subsequently finding out the solutions.
ability to see things as systems, identify, analyze, and solve problems in an optimal way for a specific organization.
Technical Skills ability to understand how computers, data networks, databases, operating systems, etc. work together, as well as their potentials and limitations.
Knowledge and proficiencies required in the accomplishment of engineering, scientific, or any specific task.
Are Technical Skills Still Important?
By Cindy Blanthorne, Sak Bhamornsiri, and Robert E. Guinn
MARCH 2005 - For decades, various groups and institutions within the accounting profession have been advocating a change in accounting education to address the skills necessary for success in the workplace. The 1989 Big Eight white paper “Perspectives on Education: Capabilities for Success in the Accounting Profession” first emphasized the need for general skills, including communication, intellectual, and interpersonal skills. The Accounting Education Change Commission was subsequently established to help educators achieve the white paper’s objectives. Since then, many have suggested incorporating into accounting curricula classroom activities that enhance nontechnical, or “soft,” skills in accounting education.
Many accounting programs responded by incorporating into their curriculum group work, essay exams, and oral presentations. In addition, some textbooks have deleted technical information or have placed it in the appendices, which is significant, because courses are often textbook-driven. Many accounting professors that changed emphasis to the soft skills are now reemphasizing technical skills, because their experience has convinced them that class time is better used for developing students’ technical accounting skills.
Much research has been conducted in search of definitive accounting skills. The perceptions of CPAs, accounting educators, students, and Fortune 500 executives have been studied. The majority have ranked communication as the most important skill in accounting. A survey by Usoff and Feldermann (Journal of Education for Business, March/April 1998) found that students thought that accounting knowledge was the most important skill. Based on this finding, Usoff and Feldermann concluded that students were out of touch and suggested that undergraduate students needed to be more aware of the importance of nontechnical skills.
A more recent article by Moncada and Sanders (CPA Journal, January 1999) investigated skills related to recruiting. Students and faculty ranked characteristics important to prescreening and office visits; the rankings were compared to those rankings by CPA firm recruiters. Interestingly, accounting GPA was ranked most important for prescreening by all three groups. This suggests that technical skills are important when screening students for a campus interview.
The study discussed in this article identifies skills necessary for promotion and success in the public accounting environment. Recently promoted Big Five partners were asked to rate six skills—interpersonal, communication, administrative, technical, leadership, and practice development—in terms of their importance for promotion at three levels: from staff to senior, senior to manager, and manager to partner.
Skills
Staff to senior. In Exhibit 1, the same three skills were rated as most important for promotion from staff to senior in tax and audit, but not in the same order. In tax, the average ratings among technical, communication, and interpersonal skills differed substantially in importance.
Senior to manager. In Exhibit 2, the six skills are rated in the same order for promotion to manager in both tax and audit. When comparing the promotion from senior to manager with the promotion from staff to senior, there is an increase in the average ratings for all of the six skills, which suggests that perceptions of technical skills become even more important at higher levels in public accounting firms.
Manager to partner. The most dramatic change in the rankings occurs at the promotion from manager to partner, seen in Exhibit 3. In both tax and audit, technical competence drops to only the fifth most important skill. Administrative skills also dropped in importance, but all other nontechnical skills rose in importance. The reason for the change in rankings may be related to the added nontechnical responsibilities expected of partners.
The 150-Hour Requirement and Technical Skills
While “soft” skills become increasingly important at higher levels, accountants also must possess a high level of technical competence throughout the promotional process in order to reach the point of consideration for partnership.
Are technical skills still important? The findings of the current study would indicate that they are. The fundamental goal of accounting education remains the same: providing students with sound technical competency.
Management Skills include organization’s recourse management, project management (people and money), risk management, and change management.
Management in all business and human organisation activity is simply the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives. Management comprises planning, organizing, staffing, leading or directing, and controlling an organization (a group of one or more people or entities) or effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal. Resourcing encompasses the deployment and manipulation of human resources, financial resources, technological resources, and natural resources.
Theoretical scope
Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933), who wrote on the topic in the early twentieth century, defined management as "the art of getting things done through people". She also described management as philosophy.[2] One can also think of management functionally, as the action of measuring a quantity on a regular basis and of adjusting some initial plan; or as the actions taken to reach one's intended goal. This applies even in situations where planning does not take place. From this perspective, Frenchman Henri Fayol[3] considers management to consist of seven functions:
1. planning
2. organizing
3. leading
4. co-ordinating
5. controlling
6. staffing
7. motivating
Some people, however, find this definition, while useful, far too narrow. The phrase "management is what managers do" occurs widely, suggesting the difficulty of defining management, the shifting nature of definitions, and the connection of managerial practices with the existence of a managerial cadre or class.
One habit of thought regards management as equivalent to "business administration" and thus excludes management in places outside commerce, as for example in charities and in the public sector. More realistically, however, every organization must manage its work, people, processes, technology, etc. in order to maximize its effectiveness. Nonetheless, many people refer to university departments which teach management as "business schools." Some institutions (such as the Harvard Business School) use that name while others (such as the Yale School of Management) employ the more inclusive term "management."
English speakers may also use the term "management" or "the management" as a collective word describing the managers of an organization, for example of a corporation. Historically this use of the term was often contrasted with the term "Labor" referring to those being managed.
Management can also refer to the person or people who perform the act(s) of management.
Communication Skills include effective interpersonal communication (written, verbal, visual, electronic, face-to-face conversations, presentations in front of groups), listening, group facilitation skills.
Communication is something all living creatures have innately in them to interact with one another so they can understand one another. Human beings communicate through conveying thoughts and ideas.
Some people have better communication skills than others. Communication skills involve the use of auditory, which is spoken, or sung words and sounds; non-verbal, which involves the use of body or sign language and paralanguage, which involves touch or eye contact.
Communication is a process by which information is exchanged. It can be between two or more people. What makes the interaction understood is that the people all recognize the same symbols, signs and behavior so they know what is going on. Based on ones communication abilities determine how effective they are as a communicator. This is where communication skills come into play.
In order to have good communication skills one has to understand what the process of communication is and how to effectively use it. Thus in executing good communication skills one must view communication as a process of transmitting information based on three ideas: Syntactic, Pragmatic and Semantic. Syntactic are the properties given to various signs and symbols, Pragmatic are the relationship between expression/sign and the user of them and Semantic, which is the representation between the signs and symbols and what they mean.
One who uses their communication skills well makes their message understood by all who are present. They understand the feedback of the message they gave out and have some mastery of the flow of communication. Good communication skills involve being able to listen as well as just speak. When you listen and understand what is being said you can respond appropriately, which is another communication skill.
When we utilize good communication skills people will want to hear what we have to say. It helps mobilize people into action with us. When we have poor communication skills it alienates people from us. They don’t want to hear what we have to say must less act on it.
Effective communication skills means to keep it simple and to the point. People who ramble, with tedious large words and jargon tend to bore people and they turn off to what the speaker is speaking about. Short to the point and concise is the first rule of making one’s communication skills effectively heard
Another good communication skill to use is simplifying complex information with simpler ideas first. You can be as creative as you want so the idea is conveyed but be accurate so there is no misunderstanding of the information. Repeat the idea if you have to so it could be understood.
Our body language as part of communication skills is also very important. Facial expressions, gestures, posture and how close or far away from whom we are communicating with all play a part in our communication skills. Not to mention our tone of voice, inflection and volume of our voice all affect the people we are communicating with. The more all these aspects of communication are mastered and are used at the appropriate times the more successful our communication skills will become.
Interpersonal skills
refers to mental and communicative algorithms applied during social communications and interaction to reach certain effects or results. The term "interpersonal skills" is used often in business contexts to refer to the measure of a person's ability to operate within business organizations through social communication and interactions. Interpersonal skills are how people relate to one another.
As an illustration, it is generally understood that communicating respect for other people or professionals within will enable one to reduce conflict and increase participation or assistance in obtaining information or completing tasks. For instance, to interrupt someone who is currently preoccupied with the task of obtaining information needed immediately, it is recommended that a professional use a deferential approach with language such as, "Excuse me, are you busy? I have an urgent matter to discuss with you if you have the time at the moment." This allows the receiving professional to make their own judgement regarding the importance of their current task versus entering into a discussion with their colleague. While it is generally understood that interrupting someone with an "urgent" request will often take priority, allowing the receiver of the message to judge independently the request and agree to further interaction will likely result in a higher quality interaction. Following these kinds of heuristics to achieve better professional results generally results in a professional being ranked as one with 'good interpersonal skills.' Often these evaluations occur in formal and informal settings.
Having positive interpersonal skills increases the productivity in the organization since the number of conflicts is reduced. In informal situations, it allows communication to be easy and comfortable. People with good interpersonal skills can generally control the feelings that emerge in difficult situations and respond appropriately, instead of being overwhelmed by emotion.
According to my research, the skills that were mentioned above are the major skills that a system analyst should have. These skills are very significant for a system analyst in order for him to relate or do his job in an organization.
During Interview..
When we had our interview in our adopted company, we have asked how important a system analyst in an organization and what are the characteristics he/she should have in order to perform his task in an organization well.
Our interviewee told us that a system analyst in today’s trend in an organization is considered one of the most important persons because they bridge the gap between the two people with different languages, it’s the management and the programmers. Without a system analyst the management would have a hard time understanding the language of the programmers so as the programmers to the management.
Our interviewee gave us some qualities that a system analyst should possess. One of the characteristics is that, a system analyst should have determination. It is something that motivates you in doing your work. Even though you tend to stop, determination keeps you going on. He said, without determination the work or the job will not be done on its due time.
Another characteristic of a system analyst is that he is willing to accept correction. Whenever there are feedbacks from the user, it should be taken as a challenge for the improvement of the flow, system or process of the organization. It is the stepping stone of the company in order to go to another level of catering and satisfying the need of the people.
References:
http://www.interlabs.bradley.edu/NSF_CCLI/Demo/class6/module6/Skills_Pretest_Posttest_Answers.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_skills
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpersonal_skills
http://www.yourcommunicationskills.com/
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/technical-skills.html
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/305/essentials/p64.htm
Characteristics of a System Analyst
On the first chapter, there were so many things that I have learned and identified. I’ve learned that a systems analyst is one of the most important persons in an organization. Before, during the 90s below, systems analyst is not being recognized as an important one because during those times the systems or the processes are still manually done. Most of the processes in the businesses are manually written. Computers before were not that need before. Today or this generation is considered the rise of the computer trend which means most of the businesses and companies do use computer and most of the processes are automated. That’s why the systems analyst do play a big role in today’s trend.
Why analyst so important…
A system analyst is very important because they determine the success of the company. It can either “make or break” the performance of an organization. According to the Wikipedia, a free internet encyclopedia, “a systems analyst is responsible for researching, planning, coordinating and recommending software and system choices to meet an organization's business requirements. The systems analyst plays a vital role in the systems development process. A successful systems analyst must acquire four skills: analytical, technical, managerial, and interpersonal. Analytical skills enable systems analysts to understand the organization and its functions, which helps him/her to identify opportunities and to analyze and solve problems. Technical skills help systems analysts understand the potential and the limitations of information technology. The systems analyst must be able to work with various programming languages, operating systems, and computer hardware platforms. Management skills help systems analysts manage projects, resources, risk, and change. Interpersonal skills help systems analysts work with end users as well as with analysts, programmers, and other systems professionals.
Because they must write user requests into technical specifications, the systems analysts are the liaisons between vendors and the IT professionals of the organization they represent[1] They may be responsible for developing cost analysis, design considerations, and implementation time-lines. They may also be responsible for feasibility studies of a computer system before making recommendations to senior management.”
A systems analyst performs the following tasks:
• Interact with the customers to know their requirements
• Interact with designers to convey the possible interface of the software
• Interact/guide the coders/developers to keep track of system development
• Perform system testing with sample/live data with the help of testers
• Implement the new system
• Prepare High quality Documentation
Many systems analysts have morphed into business analysts. And, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that "Increasingly, employers are seeking individuals who have a master’s degree in business administration (MBA) with a concentration in information systems."
According to our discussion;
A business professional who uses analysis and design techniques to solve business problems using information technology.
Has computer technology knowledge and programming expertise
Understands business problems
Uses logical methods for solving problems
Has fundamental curiosity
Wants to make things better
Is more of a business problem solver than a technical programmer
What skills a system analyst should have…
Technical skills
Knowledge and proficiencies required in the accomplishment of engineering, scientific, or any specific task.
Business skills
It amazes me when I got this from the internet. 21 business skills needed to succeed:
Communication
1. Written - Most people in business spend a lot of time communicating in writing. While the inter-office memo and the fax are old hat, you will spend a good few hours a day fighting your inbox. Add to this reports, white papers, proposals and resumes, it's certain you will need to sharpen your word power to succeed.
2. Social Networking - We are not all social gadflys, some of us struggle to make small talk. It is a key skill to learn though, it is true what they say, sometimes it is more who you know than what!
3. Speaking - Public speaking ranks high amongst the worlds most popular fears. You must overcome it and the best way is to practice. It might feel more comfortable working from the safety of your desk but at some point you are going to have to present. Better to have some experience under your belt before being forced to perform unprepared when it really counts.
4. Sales - You might think you do not need to sell but we all sell every day. From even before your first day you will be selling, starting at your interview all the way to asking the boss for a raise. In normal life we sell, persuading your partner that you really need that new purchase, getting out of that parking ticket ... persuasion skills can come in very handy indeed.
5. Negotiation - If you can't sell perhaps you can negotiate. A lot of the skills are the same but you will find people who have been in business for a while can drive a hard bargain. If you do not have the skills you will lose out each and every time.
Planning
1. Strategic - A business that lurches from one crisis to another is not going to stay around very long. Obviously if you are in charge then you have to set the marching orders. Can you clearly see the road ahead?
2. Project - I know many people in business who see their role as the hot headed maverick that shoots from the hip and flies from the seat of their pants. Unfortunately most of them eventually crash and burn. Project management makes your life and that of your team less stressful and gets things done on time and on budget. It might not be the white knuckle ride that some enjoy but at least you will be able to clock off at a reasonable hour!
3. Financial - The top reason why businesses go out of business is bad financial planning. All the cash flows in the wrong direction. Having worked through the dotcom boom and bust I have seen first hand what too big a budget in the wrong hands can do. Someone needs a firm grip on the numbers and it had better be you otherwise someone might just take a trip to a tropical island at your expense.
4. Risk - I'm a natural worrier which though it annoys my wife, does have the advantage in business that I tend to see the potential potholes and bear traps in any plan. If you can imagine a risk you can set about to mitigate it.
5. Logistics - Money is just one resource you need. Any business has inputs and outputs. You need to have the right people in the right jobs with what they need when they need it to get their work done. Logistics might not put you on the cover of Time magazine but it could make you a hero in your office.
Productivity
1. Time management - I once had a boss who could never get to a single meeting on time. He would always turn up ten minutes late, red-faced, unprepared, looking like he had slept in a bush. He had a growing collection of speeding tickets and a bigger collection of excuses and apologies. Time management reduces stress and increases your respect.
2. Meeting management - Most of us hate meeting but they are a fact of business life. There are always the few who love them as a way to avoid real work. There are many tricks from firmly sticking to the agenda through to holding meetings standing up just before lunch. Whatever works for you if you can get meetings to be productive and under control you will get ahead.
3. Leadership - In the Dilbert universe leadership might be something you step in, but in business it really helps to be able to take the lead. Can you get people to follow you? Are you able to get people to do things they don't want to do for the good of the team?
4. Systems - If you are repeatedly re-inventing the wheel there is something seriously wrong. Effective systems bring consistency, efficiency and reduced costs. Learning how to create and implement both human and automated systems can go a long way to being more competitive.
5. Personal Productivity - What are your rhythms, when are you more sociable, detail-oriented, creative or lacking energy? Where do you excel and which areas are a struggle? Before you can lead anyone else you need to work out how to get the best out of yourself.
Creativity
1. Imagination - Many people neglect their creative side feeling that it is better to be all about the logic, but in fact some of the most successful business people are also the most imaginative.
2. Inventiveness - If you can imagine it you can create it, and if you create it then you can sell it! Look around you, think of the things you buy and use, someone had to have the idea before it was built and sold to you. You might be surprised how few mad inventors there are, more products are invented in a marketing office than a garage.
3. Problem Solving - A big part of surviving in business is about solving problems fast and effectively. An employee who is good at keeping their head in a crisis while fighting fires is a worthwhile asset to any business.
4. Brainstorming - Some people think brainstorming is all about having stupid ideas while ridiculing the contributions of everyone else while drinking coffee, eating cookies and flirting with the secretary from floor 2. Perhaps this is why brainstorms get a bad name? If you can brainstorm great ideas, fast then you will be one step ahead.
5. Making connections - Some of the best ideas have simply been about connecting two otherwise unconnected ideas together. Could you invent the next iPhone?
I am sure the sharp-eyed amongst you have noticed there are only 20 points in this list. What is number 21? Perhaps the most important skill of all; the ability to switch off! It is so easy for the stresses and strains of business life to burn people out so you must develop the ability to relax and unwind.
People skills
Being able to communicate effectively with others requires people skills, and here's eight essential ones:
1. Understanding people
People not only come in all shapes and sizes, but they come with different personality types as well. You may want to brush up on how to communicate with the four main personality types by reading this article. Indeed, dedicated students of communication could do little better than purchase Bem Allen's excellent introduction to personality types, 'Personality Theories'.
People are individuals, with as many similarities from one person to the next as differences. To communicate most effectively, each will require you to communicate with them in their own individual preference style, using their language, their body gestures, and their pace and intonation.
So how do you find out how best to communicate with someone? Spend time with them! Don't expect to meet someone off the street and talk intimately with them within a minute. Understanding a subject takes time -- whether that subject is an academic one or another human being.
2. Expressing your thoughts and feelings clearly
Our brains can only take so much information in at any one time. We are bombarded with messages every second of the day, so to compete with the barrage of 'noise' a person faces, your message needs to be clear, succinct and to the point.
It is very worthwhile taking time to plan your communication -- no matter by what method it is delivered -- to ensure that you are taking the least amount of time to express the right level of thought in the most receptively simple manner.
3. Speaking up when your needs are not being met
Just as important in business relationships as in domestic ones, speaking up to ensure that your needs are met is a fundamental part of any relationship.
You may wish to read this article on assertive, not aggressive, communication, but in a nutshell there are six different ways you can be assertive and not aggressive in your communication: by rehearsing your behaviour prior to the communication; by repeating your communication (the 'broken record' technique); fogging; asking for negative feedback; tentative agreement with negative feedback; and creating a workable compromise.
Assertiveness is a useful communication tool. It's application is contextual and it's not appropriate to be assertive in all situations. Remember, your sudden use of assertiveness may be perceived as an act of aggression by others.
4. Asking for feedback from others and giving quality feedback in return
Alongside assertiveness techniques, the giving and receiving of feedback is a key communication skill that must be learnt if you want to have any hope of developing long-term business relationships..
Toastmasters International teach a useful feedback and critical review technique -- first give a sincere compliment, follow this with any practical suggestions for improvement, then wrap up with further sincere praise. It is known as 'CRC', or 'Commend, Recommend, Commend', a three-step model for excellence in giving quality feedback.
Remember, too, that truthfulness is a subjective view. What you may find distasteful in someone may be equally desirable from another's point of view. As I learnt, by living through a series of IRA attrocities in England and watching the US political and media reactions, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
5. Influencing how others think and act
We all have the opportunity to influence how others think and act. All the way from Cialdini's Persuasion principles down to simple violence (of a verbal or physical nature), we are daily able to shape the thoughts and actions of those around us.
From something as simple as smiling and saying, "Hello!" as a way of influencing someone's mood, to leading by example during an intense period of change, there are many ways of either leading to or drawing out of others required behaviours and attitudes.
Remember that an attitude leads to an emotion, which in turn leads to an action. Shape the attitudes and you have a more reliable way of predicting actions.
6. Bringing conflicts to the surface and getting them resolved
I confess: I'm not a 'natural' at handling conflict. It's taken marrying into an existing family of three children to help this only child come to terms with conflict.
It's taken me three years of living in my family to realise it's possible to co-exist in conflict and not get personally involved. But it wasn't an easy lesson to learn, I can tell you!
But being a step-father to teenage children has helped me learn the importance of bringing conflicts and resentments to the surface where they can be more easily managed.
Your employees might be harbouring secret resentments of you, and unless you find out what they are, bring these 'dark secrets' out into the light of day, you are never going to be able to successfully deal with them.
It's embarassing, potentially humiliating and requires a strong level of patience not to launch straight into a defensive mode, but giving people the opportunity to express their concerns, disappointments and anger, face-to-face, gives you tremendous opportunity to put things right, or help them see where their thoughts and feelings are misplaced.
7. Collaborating with others instead of doing things by yourself
I'm a shocker at this, but learning to delegate and share has been instrumental in growing my own business.
The quickest way of burying yourself in excess detail and workload is to try and do everything yourself. Yet sharing the workload can be the smartest thing you will ever do. Here's why:
'Leverage'.
Leverage is taking your skills and abilities and allowing others to magnify your work capacity. You train them to do what you do and you do something else.
One bricklayer can only lay a certain number of bricks in an hour, but that same bricklayer can train 15 mates to lay bricks and suddenly those 15 bricklayers are building monuments while the first bricklayer is out securing more work for them.
While the 15 are laying bricks, the original bricklayer can be learning how to perform advanced bricklaying, or learn sales strategies, or learn supervision skills.
The lesson is simple: try and do it all yourself and the 'all' will bury you; teach others to do what you do and you build a monument.
Jesus taught 11 men how to do what he did. Then he left them to carry on while he moved on to other things. From the simple act of one man teaching 11 others, a church and the largest, most influential religious movement the world has ever known was born.
8. Shifting gears when relationships are unproductive
Sometimes you need to walk away. Sometimes you need to jettison unhealthy cargo. And sometimes you need to take drastic steps to regain balance and momentum.
'Shfting gears' can be as simple as changing the venue of your supervision meeting from a dark office to a nearby cafe. Sometimes it can be moving the meeting from straight after lunch to first thing next morning, when clearer heads might prevail.
Sometimes it can mean increasing the level of assertiveness in order to ensure the point you are making is being received. Sometimes it might mean bringing others into the meeting so that the other person understands the implications of their attitudes or actions.
And sometimes it can mean helping them find a more meaningful and satisfying role outside of your sphere of influence.
As a management psychologist I clearly remember one organisation I consulted to: the only way out of a staff impasse was to remove the impediments to progress. Which meant helping key protagonists find new work outside of the organisation. Sometimes culture change can only be effected in a quick way by bringing in an entire new team and throwing away the dead wood. But only as a last resort.
Conclusion
The whole idea of being people skilled is knowing or finding how to bring out the best in others in any situation, rather than their worst. By mastering these eight essential people skills you dramatically increase your chances of achieving the best outcomes out of your interactions and business challenges.
When you match consumer psychology with effective communication styles you get a powerful combination. Lee Hopkins can show you how to communicate better for better business results. At Hopkins-Business-Communication-Training.com you can find the secrets to communication success.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lee_Hopkins
The characteristics I have…
Here are the characteristics I have identified and discovered in me that perhaps motivates me in pursuing my career:
1. Respect
As an Information technology student, team work is one of the greatest assets that we should have. In order to improve team work, respect to one another should be visible in the team. Respect means to honor or to treat with kindness. And I’m proud to say that I have this characteristic because in our career, “we cannot live on our own”. Each individual works with the group or the team.
2. Determination
According to Linzy Davis, “Determination is one the greatest assets we can possess. Determination can bring out the best in us. Determination is the tool we use to defeat discouragement. Determination is the tool we use to overcome temporary failure to prevent failure from becoming permanent. Determination is the tool we use to produce patience. Determination is the tool we use to feed our faith and starve our doubts to death.
Determination builds character. It helps us become a more reliable person. It helps us meet our commitments. It helps us prioritize and manage our time to maximize positive results.
Determination is the tool we use to give us the will to win. Determination is the tool we use to help us win in spite of our limitations. Determination is the tool we use to dig ourselves out of a hole. Determination is the tool we use to improve our relationships. Determination is the tool we use to reach our goals. Determination is the tool we use to succeed.”
3. Integrity
Integrity is also an important factor of an analyst. One of the things why system analyst are considered very important person in an organization because he/she knows most of the data, records and information of the company. As people who holds information of a certain organization, we should have a sense of honesty, loyalty, truthfulness for the safety of an organization. Without it, we can be trusted with bigger things.
4. Responsible
Responsible means you can be trusted with anything. Being responsible is one of the key in order to finish task. If an I.T student is irresponsible, then it would be a problem to a company because a job might not be done before deadline.
5. Perseverance
Steady persistence in a course of action, a purpose, a state, etc., esp. in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement.
Perseverance also means being consistent of something. In my experience as a student, many times I am discouraged of going to school because of failures in exams, quizzes and etc. though I know I’m doing my best. But, perseverance keeps me on the track. It is the value that keeps on telling me, “never lose hope”. Without perseverance, I may stop schooling. Yet, indeed, I’m still on this course with steady persistence.
6. Willing to take a risk
Willing to take a risk means not afraid to fail. Many companies succeeded and boomed because they were willing to take the risk. They were not afraid to lose something for the betterment of the organization. Taking the risk also means focused on the main thing.
I can say that I have this characteristic too because I am not afraid to fail. It is what pushes me to another level of improvement. Failure takes me to a higher level.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_analyst
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/technical-skills.html
http://www.businessschooledge.com/21-business-skills-to-succeed
http://ezinearticles.com/?People-Skills:-Eight-Essential-People-Skills&id=12294
http://www.georgiaelitemagazine.com/what_is_determination.htm
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/perseverance
Why analyst so important…
A system analyst is very important because they determine the success of the company. It can either “make or break” the performance of an organization. According to the Wikipedia, a free internet encyclopedia, “a systems analyst is responsible for researching, planning, coordinating and recommending software and system choices to meet an organization's business requirements. The systems analyst plays a vital role in the systems development process. A successful systems analyst must acquire four skills: analytical, technical, managerial, and interpersonal. Analytical skills enable systems analysts to understand the organization and its functions, which helps him/her to identify opportunities and to analyze and solve problems. Technical skills help systems analysts understand the potential and the limitations of information technology. The systems analyst must be able to work with various programming languages, operating systems, and computer hardware platforms. Management skills help systems analysts manage projects, resources, risk, and change. Interpersonal skills help systems analysts work with end users as well as with analysts, programmers, and other systems professionals.
Because they must write user requests into technical specifications, the systems analysts are the liaisons between vendors and the IT professionals of the organization they represent[1] They may be responsible for developing cost analysis, design considerations, and implementation time-lines. They may also be responsible for feasibility studies of a computer system before making recommendations to senior management.”
A systems analyst performs the following tasks:
• Interact with the customers to know their requirements
• Interact with designers to convey the possible interface of the software
• Interact/guide the coders/developers to keep track of system development
• Perform system testing with sample/live data with the help of testers
• Implement the new system
• Prepare High quality Documentation
Many systems analysts have morphed into business analysts. And, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that "Increasingly, employers are seeking individuals who have a master’s degree in business administration (MBA) with a concentration in information systems."
According to our discussion;
A business professional who uses analysis and design techniques to solve business problems using information technology.
Has computer technology knowledge and programming expertise
Understands business problems
Uses logical methods for solving problems
Has fundamental curiosity
Wants to make things better
Is more of a business problem solver than a technical programmer
What skills a system analyst should have…
Technical skills
Knowledge and proficiencies required in the accomplishment of engineering, scientific, or any specific task.
Business skills
It amazes me when I got this from the internet. 21 business skills needed to succeed:
Communication
1. Written - Most people in business spend a lot of time communicating in writing. While the inter-office memo and the fax are old hat, you will spend a good few hours a day fighting your inbox. Add to this reports, white papers, proposals and resumes, it's certain you will need to sharpen your word power to succeed.
2. Social Networking - We are not all social gadflys, some of us struggle to make small talk. It is a key skill to learn though, it is true what they say, sometimes it is more who you know than what!
3. Speaking - Public speaking ranks high amongst the worlds most popular fears. You must overcome it and the best way is to practice. It might feel more comfortable working from the safety of your desk but at some point you are going to have to present. Better to have some experience under your belt before being forced to perform unprepared when it really counts.
4. Sales - You might think you do not need to sell but we all sell every day. From even before your first day you will be selling, starting at your interview all the way to asking the boss for a raise. In normal life we sell, persuading your partner that you really need that new purchase, getting out of that parking ticket ... persuasion skills can come in very handy indeed.
5. Negotiation - If you can't sell perhaps you can negotiate. A lot of the skills are the same but you will find people who have been in business for a while can drive a hard bargain. If you do not have the skills you will lose out each and every time.
Planning
1. Strategic - A business that lurches from one crisis to another is not going to stay around very long. Obviously if you are in charge then you have to set the marching orders. Can you clearly see the road ahead?
2. Project - I know many people in business who see their role as the hot headed maverick that shoots from the hip and flies from the seat of their pants. Unfortunately most of them eventually crash and burn. Project management makes your life and that of your team less stressful and gets things done on time and on budget. It might not be the white knuckle ride that some enjoy but at least you will be able to clock off at a reasonable hour!
3. Financial - The top reason why businesses go out of business is bad financial planning. All the cash flows in the wrong direction. Having worked through the dotcom boom and bust I have seen first hand what too big a budget in the wrong hands can do. Someone needs a firm grip on the numbers and it had better be you otherwise someone might just take a trip to a tropical island at your expense.
4. Risk - I'm a natural worrier which though it annoys my wife, does have the advantage in business that I tend to see the potential potholes and bear traps in any plan. If you can imagine a risk you can set about to mitigate it.
5. Logistics - Money is just one resource you need. Any business has inputs and outputs. You need to have the right people in the right jobs with what they need when they need it to get their work done. Logistics might not put you on the cover of Time magazine but it could make you a hero in your office.
Productivity
1. Time management - I once had a boss who could never get to a single meeting on time. He would always turn up ten minutes late, red-faced, unprepared, looking like he had slept in a bush. He had a growing collection of speeding tickets and a bigger collection of excuses and apologies. Time management reduces stress and increases your respect.
2. Meeting management - Most of us hate meeting but they are a fact of business life. There are always the few who love them as a way to avoid real work. There are many tricks from firmly sticking to the agenda through to holding meetings standing up just before lunch. Whatever works for you if you can get meetings to be productive and under control you will get ahead.
3. Leadership - In the Dilbert universe leadership might be something you step in, but in business it really helps to be able to take the lead. Can you get people to follow you? Are you able to get people to do things they don't want to do for the good of the team?
4. Systems - If you are repeatedly re-inventing the wheel there is something seriously wrong. Effective systems bring consistency, efficiency and reduced costs. Learning how to create and implement both human and automated systems can go a long way to being more competitive.
5. Personal Productivity - What are your rhythms, when are you more sociable, detail-oriented, creative or lacking energy? Where do you excel and which areas are a struggle? Before you can lead anyone else you need to work out how to get the best out of yourself.
Creativity
1. Imagination - Many people neglect their creative side feeling that it is better to be all about the logic, but in fact some of the most successful business people are also the most imaginative.
2. Inventiveness - If you can imagine it you can create it, and if you create it then you can sell it! Look around you, think of the things you buy and use, someone had to have the idea before it was built and sold to you. You might be surprised how few mad inventors there are, more products are invented in a marketing office than a garage.
3. Problem Solving - A big part of surviving in business is about solving problems fast and effectively. An employee who is good at keeping their head in a crisis while fighting fires is a worthwhile asset to any business.
4. Brainstorming - Some people think brainstorming is all about having stupid ideas while ridiculing the contributions of everyone else while drinking coffee, eating cookies and flirting with the secretary from floor 2. Perhaps this is why brainstorms get a bad name? If you can brainstorm great ideas, fast then you will be one step ahead.
5. Making connections - Some of the best ideas have simply been about connecting two otherwise unconnected ideas together. Could you invent the next iPhone?
I am sure the sharp-eyed amongst you have noticed there are only 20 points in this list. What is number 21? Perhaps the most important skill of all; the ability to switch off! It is so easy for the stresses and strains of business life to burn people out so you must develop the ability to relax and unwind.
People skills
Being able to communicate effectively with others requires people skills, and here's eight essential ones:
1. Understanding people
People not only come in all shapes and sizes, but they come with different personality types as well. You may want to brush up on how to communicate with the four main personality types by reading this article. Indeed, dedicated students of communication could do little better than purchase Bem Allen's excellent introduction to personality types, 'Personality Theories'.
People are individuals, with as many similarities from one person to the next as differences. To communicate most effectively, each will require you to communicate with them in their own individual preference style, using their language, their body gestures, and their pace and intonation.
So how do you find out how best to communicate with someone? Spend time with them! Don't expect to meet someone off the street and talk intimately with them within a minute. Understanding a subject takes time -- whether that subject is an academic one or another human being.
2. Expressing your thoughts and feelings clearly
Our brains can only take so much information in at any one time. We are bombarded with messages every second of the day, so to compete with the barrage of 'noise' a person faces, your message needs to be clear, succinct and to the point.
It is very worthwhile taking time to plan your communication -- no matter by what method it is delivered -- to ensure that you are taking the least amount of time to express the right level of thought in the most receptively simple manner.
3. Speaking up when your needs are not being met
Just as important in business relationships as in domestic ones, speaking up to ensure that your needs are met is a fundamental part of any relationship.
You may wish to read this article on assertive, not aggressive, communication, but in a nutshell there are six different ways you can be assertive and not aggressive in your communication: by rehearsing your behaviour prior to the communication; by repeating your communication (the 'broken record' technique); fogging; asking for negative feedback; tentative agreement with negative feedback; and creating a workable compromise.
Assertiveness is a useful communication tool. It's application is contextual and it's not appropriate to be assertive in all situations. Remember, your sudden use of assertiveness may be perceived as an act of aggression by others.
4. Asking for feedback from others and giving quality feedback in return
Alongside assertiveness techniques, the giving and receiving of feedback is a key communication skill that must be learnt if you want to have any hope of developing long-term business relationships..
Toastmasters International teach a useful feedback and critical review technique -- first give a sincere compliment, follow this with any practical suggestions for improvement, then wrap up with further sincere praise. It is known as 'CRC', or 'Commend, Recommend, Commend', a three-step model for excellence in giving quality feedback.
Remember, too, that truthfulness is a subjective view. What you may find distasteful in someone may be equally desirable from another's point of view. As I learnt, by living through a series of IRA attrocities in England and watching the US political and media reactions, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
5. Influencing how others think and act
We all have the opportunity to influence how others think and act. All the way from Cialdini's Persuasion principles down to simple violence (of a verbal or physical nature), we are daily able to shape the thoughts and actions of those around us.
From something as simple as smiling and saying, "Hello!" as a way of influencing someone's mood, to leading by example during an intense period of change, there are many ways of either leading to or drawing out of others required behaviours and attitudes.
Remember that an attitude leads to an emotion, which in turn leads to an action. Shape the attitudes and you have a more reliable way of predicting actions.
6. Bringing conflicts to the surface and getting them resolved
I confess: I'm not a 'natural' at handling conflict. It's taken marrying into an existing family of three children to help this only child come to terms with conflict.
It's taken me three years of living in my family to realise it's possible to co-exist in conflict and not get personally involved. But it wasn't an easy lesson to learn, I can tell you!
But being a step-father to teenage children has helped me learn the importance of bringing conflicts and resentments to the surface where they can be more easily managed.
Your employees might be harbouring secret resentments of you, and unless you find out what they are, bring these 'dark secrets' out into the light of day, you are never going to be able to successfully deal with them.
It's embarassing, potentially humiliating and requires a strong level of patience not to launch straight into a defensive mode, but giving people the opportunity to express their concerns, disappointments and anger, face-to-face, gives you tremendous opportunity to put things right, or help them see where their thoughts and feelings are misplaced.
7. Collaborating with others instead of doing things by yourself
I'm a shocker at this, but learning to delegate and share has been instrumental in growing my own business.
The quickest way of burying yourself in excess detail and workload is to try and do everything yourself. Yet sharing the workload can be the smartest thing you will ever do. Here's why:
'Leverage'.
Leverage is taking your skills and abilities and allowing others to magnify your work capacity. You train them to do what you do and you do something else.
One bricklayer can only lay a certain number of bricks in an hour, but that same bricklayer can train 15 mates to lay bricks and suddenly those 15 bricklayers are building monuments while the first bricklayer is out securing more work for them.
While the 15 are laying bricks, the original bricklayer can be learning how to perform advanced bricklaying, or learn sales strategies, or learn supervision skills.
The lesson is simple: try and do it all yourself and the 'all' will bury you; teach others to do what you do and you build a monument.
Jesus taught 11 men how to do what he did. Then he left them to carry on while he moved on to other things. From the simple act of one man teaching 11 others, a church and the largest, most influential religious movement the world has ever known was born.
8. Shifting gears when relationships are unproductive
Sometimes you need to walk away. Sometimes you need to jettison unhealthy cargo. And sometimes you need to take drastic steps to regain balance and momentum.
'Shfting gears' can be as simple as changing the venue of your supervision meeting from a dark office to a nearby cafe. Sometimes it can be moving the meeting from straight after lunch to first thing next morning, when clearer heads might prevail.
Sometimes it can mean increasing the level of assertiveness in order to ensure the point you are making is being received. Sometimes it might mean bringing others into the meeting so that the other person understands the implications of their attitudes or actions.
And sometimes it can mean helping them find a more meaningful and satisfying role outside of your sphere of influence.
As a management psychologist I clearly remember one organisation I consulted to: the only way out of a staff impasse was to remove the impediments to progress. Which meant helping key protagonists find new work outside of the organisation. Sometimes culture change can only be effected in a quick way by bringing in an entire new team and throwing away the dead wood. But only as a last resort.
Conclusion
The whole idea of being people skilled is knowing or finding how to bring out the best in others in any situation, rather than their worst. By mastering these eight essential people skills you dramatically increase your chances of achieving the best outcomes out of your interactions and business challenges.
When you match consumer psychology with effective communication styles you get a powerful combination. Lee Hopkins can show you how to communicate better for better business results. At Hopkins-Business-Communication-Training.com you can find the secrets to communication success.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lee_Hopkins
The characteristics I have…
Here are the characteristics I have identified and discovered in me that perhaps motivates me in pursuing my career:
1. Respect
As an Information technology student, team work is one of the greatest assets that we should have. In order to improve team work, respect to one another should be visible in the team. Respect means to honor or to treat with kindness. And I’m proud to say that I have this characteristic because in our career, “we cannot live on our own”. Each individual works with the group or the team.
2. Determination
According to Linzy Davis, “Determination is one the greatest assets we can possess. Determination can bring out the best in us. Determination is the tool we use to defeat discouragement. Determination is the tool we use to overcome temporary failure to prevent failure from becoming permanent. Determination is the tool we use to produce patience. Determination is the tool we use to feed our faith and starve our doubts to death.
Determination builds character. It helps us become a more reliable person. It helps us meet our commitments. It helps us prioritize and manage our time to maximize positive results.
Determination is the tool we use to give us the will to win. Determination is the tool we use to help us win in spite of our limitations. Determination is the tool we use to dig ourselves out of a hole. Determination is the tool we use to improve our relationships. Determination is the tool we use to reach our goals. Determination is the tool we use to succeed.”
3. Integrity
Integrity is also an important factor of an analyst. One of the things why system analyst are considered very important person in an organization because he/she knows most of the data, records and information of the company. As people who holds information of a certain organization, we should have a sense of honesty, loyalty, truthfulness for the safety of an organization. Without it, we can be trusted with bigger things.
4. Responsible
Responsible means you can be trusted with anything. Being responsible is one of the key in order to finish task. If an I.T student is irresponsible, then it would be a problem to a company because a job might not be done before deadline.
5. Perseverance
Steady persistence in a course of action, a purpose, a state, etc., esp. in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement.
Perseverance also means being consistent of something. In my experience as a student, many times I am discouraged of going to school because of failures in exams, quizzes and etc. though I know I’m doing my best. But, perseverance keeps me on the track. It is the value that keeps on telling me, “never lose hope”. Without perseverance, I may stop schooling. Yet, indeed, I’m still on this course with steady persistence.
6. Willing to take a risk
Willing to take a risk means not afraid to fail. Many companies succeeded and boomed because they were willing to take the risk. They were not afraid to lose something for the betterment of the organization. Taking the risk also means focused on the main thing.
I can say that I have this characteristic too because I am not afraid to fail. It is what pushes me to another level of improvement. Failure takes me to a higher level.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_analyst
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/technical-skills.html
http://www.businessschooledge.com/21-business-skills-to-succeed
http://ezinearticles.com/?People-Skills:-Eight-Essential-People-Skills&id=12294
http://www.georgiaelitemagazine.com/what_is_determination.htm
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/perseverance
Business Process Reengineering
Organizational change
Perhaps the most asked but least answered question in business today is “What can we do to make our business survive and grow?” The world is rapidly changing into something too hard to easily predict, with a hundred opportunities and pitfalls passing by every moment.
To add to this confusion, there are hundreds, if not thousands of techniques, solutions and methods that claim to help business improve productivity, quality and customer satisfaction. A company President, CEO or business owner has so many choices in these buzzwords, whether they be called Total Quality Management, Customer Satisfaction, Re-engineering or Teambuilding. They are like new shoppers in a giant grocery store: They are hungry, but there are so many brands, sizes and varieties you don’t know what to buy.
In response to this confusion, many do nothing, often afraid of making the wrong choices. Others change the techniques they use every few months, using the “program du’jeur” method of organizational change, otherwise known as MBS (Management by Best Seller). Neither of these responses help the organization in the long run. Changing nothing will produce nothing. Implementing a different buzzword (Total Quality, Just in Time, Re-engineering, etc.) every few months often creates a “whipsaw” effect that causes mass confusion among your employees. These buzzwords are often a hammer in search of a nail, techniques applied with no clear focus as to the why, expected results or return on investment.
One of the organizations we consulted with started on this path. Senior management proclaimed in a memo that Total Quality should be a way of life. One senior vice president declared that he wanted 25% of his organization using Total Quality tools within a year. This caused tremendous excitement in the organization, However, the follow-through was delayed, occasionally inappropriate and sometimes not there. Many employee became discouraged with the process and considered it just another management fad. With the next business downturn, virtually all training had stopped and little enthusiasm was left.
Other organizations clearly focus on technical problems and on improving what they had. They are initially successful, but become victims of their own success. I call this an improved, planned incremental approach. Their initial quality improvement teams may be so successful they rapidly create more teams, without the qualitative organization-wide changes (re-engineering) necessary to sustain a permanent effort.
One organization we worked with had over 70 quality improvement teams in a plan with only 300 employees. They had shown little results after their first successes, and asked us what their next steps should be. We suggested the union’s leadership in their efforts, look at restructuring their organization along more product-focused lines, and possibly start profit sharing. They were not interested in taking any of these actions. A few months later, its parent company shut down the site, partly because of its poor productivity.
Organizations need to move beyond the buzzwords into deciding what actions they need to perform that will help them grow and develop. In response to this problem, this article will provide you a framework for coping with organizational change independent of buzzwords or the latest management fad. Organizations must first decide on the framework their organizational change long before they choose a buzzword to implement.
The major decisions
Instead of grasping for the latest technique, I suggest instead that organizations should go through a formal decision-making process that has four major components:
Levels, goals and strategies
Measurement system
Sequence of steps
Implementation and organizational change
The levels of organizational change
Perhaps the most difficult decision to make is at what "level" to start. There are four levels of organizational change:
shaping and anticipating the future (level 1)
defining what business(es) to be in and their "core competencies” (level 2)
reengineering processes (level 3)
incrementally improving processes (level 4)
First let's describe these levels, and then under what circumstances a business should use them.
Level 1- shaping and anticipating the future
At this level, organizations start out with few assumptions about the business itself, what it is "good" at, and what the future will be like.
Management generates alternate "scenarios" of the future, defines opportunities based on these possible futures, assesses its strengths and weaknesses in these scenarios changes its mission, measurement system etc. More information on this is in the next article, "Moving from the Future to your Strategy."
Level 2 - defining what business(es) to be in and their "Core Competencies
Many attempts at strategic planning start at this level, either assuming that 1) the future will be like the past or at least predictable; 2) the future is embodied in the CEO's "vision for the future"; or 3) management doesn't know where else to start; 4) management is too afraid to start at level 1 because of the changes needed to really meet future requirements; or 5) the only mandate they have is to refine what mission already exists.
After a mission has been defined and a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis is completed, an organization can then define its measures, goals, strategies, etc. More information on this is in the next article, "Moving from the Future to your Strategy."
Level 3 - Reengineering (Structurally Changing) Your Processes
Either as an aftermath or consequence of level one or two work or as an independent action, level three work focuses on fundamentally changing how work is accomplished. Rather than focus on modest improvements, reengineering focuses on making major structural changes to everyday with the goal of substantially improving productivity, efficiency, quality or customer satisfaction. To read more about level 3 organizational changes, please see "A Tale of Three Villages."
Level 4 - Incrementally Changing your Processes
Level 4 organizational changes are focusing in making many small changes to existing work processes. Oftentimes organizations put in considerable effort into getting every employee focused on making these small changes, often with considerable effect. Unfortunately, making improvements on how a buggy whip for horse-drawn carriages is made will rarely come up with the idea that buggy whips are no longer necessary because cars have been invented. To read more about level 4 organizational changes and how it compares to level 3, please see "A Tale of Three Villages."
One organization we consulted with has had a more positive experience with the incremental approach. We trained an internal facilitator, helped them deliver training in a just-in-time fashion, and had them focus on specific technical problems. The teams management formed reduced initial quality defects by 48%.
The disadvantages of such an incremental approach include avoiding structural, system-wide problems, and assumes existing processes need modest improvement. In addition, using incremental approaches can be frustrating to employees and management if (pick a buzzword) does not catch on in the organization. As a result of these disadvantages, many organizations experience a high risk of failure in the long run.
What level do I choose?
These levels have much of the same goals: increasing customer satisfaction, doing things right the first time, greater employee productivity, etc. Despite these similarities, they differ substantially in the methods they use to achieve these goals.
Levels one through three, on one hand, focuses on "big picture" elements such as analysis of the marketplace, out-sourcing, purchase/sale of subsidiaries, truly out-of-the box" thinking and substantial change in the management and support systems of the company . In my experience, companies that use these methods tend to have a high need for change, risk-tolerant management, relatively few constraints and have substantial consensus among its management on what to do. Types of industries include those whose environment requires rapid adaptation to fast-moving events: electronics, information systems and telecommunication industries, for example.
Companies using mostly incremental tools (level 4) have management that perceives only a modest need for change, is relatively risk-avoidant, has many constraints on its actions and only has a modest consensus among themselves on what to do. Instead of focusing on new opportunities, they wish to hone and clarify what they already do. Types of industries that often use these methods include the military, aerospace, and until recently, health care organizations. Those organizations whose strategic planning solely focuses on refining an existing mission statement and communicating the paragraph also fall into using incremental (level 4) methods.
When discussing the continuum of structural vs. incremental change, its important to realize that what labels companies use are not important here. One must carefully observe their actions. Many companies have slogans, "glitter" recognition programs and large budgets to provide "awareness" training in the buzzword they are attempting to implement. The key, however, is to note what changes they are really making. If management is mostly filling training slots with disinterested workers and forming a few process improvement teams, they are using level three methods. If they are considering changes in business lines, re-organizing by customer instead of by function, or making major changes in how the everyday employee is being paid, they are using level 3 methods.
Unfortunately, all of this discussion hinges in management's belief about how much change is necessary. This belief often hinges on their often unassessed beliefs of 1) how well the organization performs compared to other organizations (a lack of benchmarking); and 2) what the future will be.
As a result, my recommendation is that organizations conduct scenario/strategic planning exercises (level 1) anyway, even if they have already decided that level 4 (incremental) methods will suffice to solve their problems. This way management can be aware of the limitations of the lower-level methods they are using and realize when it is best to abandon these lower-level methods for something more substantive.
Based on this exercise, comparison of existing internal processes with world-class examples (benchmarking) and market analysis, management may come to realize how much change is necessary. The greater the gap between what the organization needs to be and how it currently operations and what businesses it is in, the more it suggests that greater change is necessary, and greater restructuring is necessary.
This decision is very important. IBM in the mid 1980’s felt that the future would be much like the past and a result didn't have to change much. They did not realize how much microcomputers would replace the functions of their bread-and-butter business, the mainframe. The net result was tens of thousands of people were laid off, with the company suffering the first losses in its history.
Goals
Based on whatever level work you are doing, the opportunities that are found need to be evaluated to determine which of them best suit the existing and future capabilities of the organization and provide the most "bang for the buck" in terms of improvement in your measures of success. In addition, goals need to have the resources and management determination to see to their success.
Goals also need to be SMART, that is:
Specific - concrete action, step-by-step actions needed to make the goal succeed
Measurable - observable results from the goal's accomplishment
Attainable - The goal is both possible and is done at the right time with sufficient attention and resources
Realistic- The probability of success is good, given the resources and attention given it.
Time-bound- The goal is achieved within a specified period of time in a way that takes advantage of the opportunity before it passes you by.
Some examples include:
“We will expand into the polystyrene market within the next five years and achieve 20% market share”
We will decrease the time from research to customer delivery by 50% within two years
We will increase the quality of our largest product by 20% in three years.
Strategies
Where goals focus on what, strategies focus on how. Some examples include:
“We will re-engineer our research and development process”
“We will evaluate and improve our sales and marketing department”
We will conduct a SWOT analysis and then define our core competencies
Additional examples of strategies are included in the "Moving from the Future to your Strategy" chapter.
Wait a second. Aren't goals and strategies really the same. They are in one sense as they both need to be SMART. As what you might guess, the goals of a level are achieved by creating strategies at the lower levels.
The Measurement System
Without measures of success, the organization does not know if it has succeeded in its efforts. Someone once said, “What gets measured gets improved.” Someone else said, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”
For more information on measurement systems and their place in organizational change, please see the "Balanced Scorecard" article, along with a number of articles where employee surveys are used.
Implementation and Organizational Change
The success of any organizational change effort can be summed into an equation:
Success = Measurement X Method X Control X Focused Persistence X Consensus
Like any equation with multiplication, a high value of one variable can compensate for lower levels on other variables. Also like any equation with multiplication, if one variable equals 0, the result is zero.
On employee involvement
Some organizations involve employees right from the start, where they have significant influence in the strategic plan of the organization. This kind of involvement tends to reduce employees’ resistance, which is always a very important factor in the success of any organizational change. Such organizations as Eaton, Eastman Chemical and Rohm and Haas have used such an approach.
Such employee involvement, however, might also be threatening to management’s traditional power. Some organizations decide employee involvement will be limited to implementing the strategic decisions management makes, or further limit involvement to purely task-focused teams working on technical problems. Many aerospace organizations have used this approach.
Focused persistence, good project management and the sequence of implementation
The sequence of implementation is also an important factor. There are four basic options, with many variations of them. The first involves the entire organization from the start, with the whole organization intensively working at once on making the change. Ford Motor Company is currently restructuring its entire organization, moving from planning to implementation in nine months.
Another option is a more relaxed approach, in which divisions or business units of the organization go at their own pace. This option can often become an incremental approach like the first or second village. Many conglomerates or other companies with diverse operations try this approach.
A third option is similar to the previous one, with the focus being on individual business units doing the implementation. In this case, however, business units implement roughly the same things in roughly the same time schedule. Unisys, the computer company, is using this method on some of its organizational change efforts.
A fourth option is to create a pilot project in one division or business unit, learn from its mistakes, and then apply those lessons to the rest of the organization. Examples of this option include the Saturn car facility at General Motors and the Enfield plant of Digital Equipment Corporation. It’s important to note here that creating pilot projects is a high-risk business. In both cases, the lessons learned from these pilot projects have not gained widespread acceptance in their parent companies due to their heavily ingrained cultures.
Business process reengineering (BPR) is, in computer science and management, an approach aiming at improvements by means of elevating efficiency and effectiveness of the business process that exist within and across organizations. The key to BPR is for organizations to look at their business processes from a "clean slate" perspective and determine how they can best construct these processes to improve how they conduct business.
Business process reengineering is also known as BPR, Business Process Redesign, Business Transformation, or Business Process Change Management. Reengineering is a fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in cost, quality, speed, and service. BPR combines a strategy of promoting business innovation with a strategy of making major improvements to business processes so that a company can become a much stronger and more successful competitor in the marketplace.
The main proponents of reengineering were Michael Hammer and James A. Champy. In a series of books including Reengineering the Corporation, Reengineering Management, and The Agenda, they argue that far too much time is wasted passing-on tasks from one department to another. They claim that it is far more efficient to appoint a team who are responsible for all the tasks in the process. In The Agenda they extend the argument to include suppliers, distributors, and other business partners.
Re-engineering is the basis for many recent developments in management. The cross-functional team, for example, has become popular because of the desire to re-engineer separate functional tasks into complete cross-functional processes. Also, many recent management information systems developments aim to integrate a wide number of business functions. Enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, knowledge management systems, groupware and collaborative systems, Human Resource Management Systems and customer relationship management systems all owe a debt to re-engineering theory.
Business process reengineering (BPR) began as a private sector technique to help organizations fundamentally rethink how they do their work in order to dramatically improve customer service, cut operational costs, and become world-class competitors. A key stimulus for reengineering has been the continuing development and deployment of sophisticated information systems and networks. Leading organizations are becoming bolder in using this technology to support innovative business processes, rather than refining current ways of doing work.
Business process reengineering is one approach for redesigning the way work is done to better support the organization's mission and reduce costs. Reengineering starts with a high-level assessment of the organization's mission, strategic goals, and customer needs. Basic questions are asked, such as "Does our mission need to be redefined? Are our strategic goals aligned with our mission? Who are our customers?" An organization may find that it is operating on questionable assumptions, particularly in terms of the wants and needs of its customers. Only after the organization rethinks what it should be doing, does it go on to decide how best to do it.[1]
Within the framework of this basic assessment of mission and goals, reengineering focuses on the organization's business processes--the steps and procedures that govern how resources are used to create products and services that meet the needs of particular customers or markets. As a structured ordering of work steps across time and place, a business process can be decomposed into specific activities, measured, modeled, and improved. It can also be completely redesigned or eliminated altogether. Reengineering identifies, analyzes, and redesigns an organization's core business processes with the aim of achieving dramatic improvements in critical performance measures, such as cost, quality, service, and speed.
Reengineering recognizes that an organization's business processes are usually fragmented into subprocesses and tasks that are carried out by several specialized functional areas within the organization. Often, no one is responsible for the overall performance of the entire process. Reengineering maintains that optimizing the performance of subprocesses can result in some benefits, but cannot yield dramatic improvements if the process itself is fundamentally inefficient and outmoded. For that reason, reengineering focuses on redesigning the process as a whole in order to achieve the greatest possible benefits to the organization and their customers. This drive for realizing dramatic improvements by fundamentally rethinking how the organization's work should be done distinguishes reengineering from process improvement efforts that focus on functional or incremental improvement.
Base on the articles I have read above, I think the most radical type of change in the spectrum of organizational change is the business reengineering or business process reengineering (BPR) which is the fundamental innovation of the business processes. Many companies wants a redesign of the business processes before considering automation or rationalization of procedures. Considering the fast changing environment due to technology-oriented generation, reengineering or changing the design of the company is focused in order to cope up with what is happening around. Reengineering becomes the basis for many development management also because recent management information systems developments wants to integrate a wide number or bigger business functions.
References:
David Chaudron, PhD
http://www.organizedchange.com/decide.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_reengineering
Perhaps the most asked but least answered question in business today is “What can we do to make our business survive and grow?” The world is rapidly changing into something too hard to easily predict, with a hundred opportunities and pitfalls passing by every moment.
To add to this confusion, there are hundreds, if not thousands of techniques, solutions and methods that claim to help business improve productivity, quality and customer satisfaction. A company President, CEO or business owner has so many choices in these buzzwords, whether they be called Total Quality Management, Customer Satisfaction, Re-engineering or Teambuilding. They are like new shoppers in a giant grocery store: They are hungry, but there are so many brands, sizes and varieties you don’t know what to buy.
In response to this confusion, many do nothing, often afraid of making the wrong choices. Others change the techniques they use every few months, using the “program du’jeur” method of organizational change, otherwise known as MBS (Management by Best Seller). Neither of these responses help the organization in the long run. Changing nothing will produce nothing. Implementing a different buzzword (Total Quality, Just in Time, Re-engineering, etc.) every few months often creates a “whipsaw” effect that causes mass confusion among your employees. These buzzwords are often a hammer in search of a nail, techniques applied with no clear focus as to the why, expected results or return on investment.
One of the organizations we consulted with started on this path. Senior management proclaimed in a memo that Total Quality should be a way of life. One senior vice president declared that he wanted 25% of his organization using Total Quality tools within a year. This caused tremendous excitement in the organization, However, the follow-through was delayed, occasionally inappropriate and sometimes not there. Many employee became discouraged with the process and considered it just another management fad. With the next business downturn, virtually all training had stopped and little enthusiasm was left.
Other organizations clearly focus on technical problems and on improving what they had. They are initially successful, but become victims of their own success. I call this an improved, planned incremental approach. Their initial quality improvement teams may be so successful they rapidly create more teams, without the qualitative organization-wide changes (re-engineering) necessary to sustain a permanent effort.
One organization we worked with had over 70 quality improvement teams in a plan with only 300 employees. They had shown little results after their first successes, and asked us what their next steps should be. We suggested the union’s leadership in their efforts, look at restructuring their organization along more product-focused lines, and possibly start profit sharing. They were not interested in taking any of these actions. A few months later, its parent company shut down the site, partly because of its poor productivity.
Organizations need to move beyond the buzzwords into deciding what actions they need to perform that will help them grow and develop. In response to this problem, this article will provide you a framework for coping with organizational change independent of buzzwords or the latest management fad. Organizations must first decide on the framework their organizational change long before they choose a buzzword to implement.
The major decisions
Instead of grasping for the latest technique, I suggest instead that organizations should go through a formal decision-making process that has four major components:
Levels, goals and strategies
Measurement system
Sequence of steps
Implementation and organizational change
The levels of organizational change
Perhaps the most difficult decision to make is at what "level" to start. There are four levels of organizational change:
shaping and anticipating the future (level 1)
defining what business(es) to be in and their "core competencies” (level 2)
reengineering processes (level 3)
incrementally improving processes (level 4)
First let's describe these levels, and then under what circumstances a business should use them.
Level 1- shaping and anticipating the future
At this level, organizations start out with few assumptions about the business itself, what it is "good" at, and what the future will be like.
Management generates alternate "scenarios" of the future, defines opportunities based on these possible futures, assesses its strengths and weaknesses in these scenarios changes its mission, measurement system etc. More information on this is in the next article, "Moving from the Future to your Strategy."
Level 2 - defining what business(es) to be in and their "Core Competencies
Many attempts at strategic planning start at this level, either assuming that 1) the future will be like the past or at least predictable; 2) the future is embodied in the CEO's "vision for the future"; or 3) management doesn't know where else to start; 4) management is too afraid to start at level 1 because of the changes needed to really meet future requirements; or 5) the only mandate they have is to refine what mission already exists.
After a mission has been defined and a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis is completed, an organization can then define its measures, goals, strategies, etc. More information on this is in the next article, "Moving from the Future to your Strategy."
Level 3 - Reengineering (Structurally Changing) Your Processes
Either as an aftermath or consequence of level one or two work or as an independent action, level three work focuses on fundamentally changing how work is accomplished. Rather than focus on modest improvements, reengineering focuses on making major structural changes to everyday with the goal of substantially improving productivity, efficiency, quality or customer satisfaction. To read more about level 3 organizational changes, please see "A Tale of Three Villages."
Level 4 - Incrementally Changing your Processes
Level 4 organizational changes are focusing in making many small changes to existing work processes. Oftentimes organizations put in considerable effort into getting every employee focused on making these small changes, often with considerable effect. Unfortunately, making improvements on how a buggy whip for horse-drawn carriages is made will rarely come up with the idea that buggy whips are no longer necessary because cars have been invented. To read more about level 4 organizational changes and how it compares to level 3, please see "A Tale of Three Villages."
One organization we consulted with has had a more positive experience with the incremental approach. We trained an internal facilitator, helped them deliver training in a just-in-time fashion, and had them focus on specific technical problems. The teams management formed reduced initial quality defects by 48%.
The disadvantages of such an incremental approach include avoiding structural, system-wide problems, and assumes existing processes need modest improvement. In addition, using incremental approaches can be frustrating to employees and management if (pick a buzzword) does not catch on in the organization. As a result of these disadvantages, many organizations experience a high risk of failure in the long run.
What level do I choose?
These levels have much of the same goals: increasing customer satisfaction, doing things right the first time, greater employee productivity, etc. Despite these similarities, they differ substantially in the methods they use to achieve these goals.
Levels one through three, on one hand, focuses on "big picture" elements such as analysis of the marketplace, out-sourcing, purchase/sale of subsidiaries, truly out-of-the box" thinking and substantial change in the management and support systems of the company . In my experience, companies that use these methods tend to have a high need for change, risk-tolerant management, relatively few constraints and have substantial consensus among its management on what to do. Types of industries include those whose environment requires rapid adaptation to fast-moving events: electronics, information systems and telecommunication industries, for example.
Companies using mostly incremental tools (level 4) have management that perceives only a modest need for change, is relatively risk-avoidant, has many constraints on its actions and only has a modest consensus among themselves on what to do. Instead of focusing on new opportunities, they wish to hone and clarify what they already do. Types of industries that often use these methods include the military, aerospace, and until recently, health care organizations. Those organizations whose strategic planning solely focuses on refining an existing mission statement and communicating the paragraph also fall into using incremental (level 4) methods.
When discussing the continuum of structural vs. incremental change, its important to realize that what labels companies use are not important here. One must carefully observe their actions. Many companies have slogans, "glitter" recognition programs and large budgets to provide "awareness" training in the buzzword they are attempting to implement. The key, however, is to note what changes they are really making. If management is mostly filling training slots with disinterested workers and forming a few process improvement teams, they are using level three methods. If they are considering changes in business lines, re-organizing by customer instead of by function, or making major changes in how the everyday employee is being paid, they are using level 3 methods.
Unfortunately, all of this discussion hinges in management's belief about how much change is necessary. This belief often hinges on their often unassessed beliefs of 1) how well the organization performs compared to other organizations (a lack of benchmarking); and 2) what the future will be.
As a result, my recommendation is that organizations conduct scenario/strategic planning exercises (level 1) anyway, even if they have already decided that level 4 (incremental) methods will suffice to solve their problems. This way management can be aware of the limitations of the lower-level methods they are using and realize when it is best to abandon these lower-level methods for something more substantive.
Based on this exercise, comparison of existing internal processes with world-class examples (benchmarking) and market analysis, management may come to realize how much change is necessary. The greater the gap between what the organization needs to be and how it currently operations and what businesses it is in, the more it suggests that greater change is necessary, and greater restructuring is necessary.
This decision is very important. IBM in the mid 1980’s felt that the future would be much like the past and a result didn't have to change much. They did not realize how much microcomputers would replace the functions of their bread-and-butter business, the mainframe. The net result was tens of thousands of people were laid off, with the company suffering the first losses in its history.
Goals
Based on whatever level work you are doing, the opportunities that are found need to be evaluated to determine which of them best suit the existing and future capabilities of the organization and provide the most "bang for the buck" in terms of improvement in your measures of success. In addition, goals need to have the resources and management determination to see to their success.
Goals also need to be SMART, that is:
Specific - concrete action, step-by-step actions needed to make the goal succeed
Measurable - observable results from the goal's accomplishment
Attainable - The goal is both possible and is done at the right time with sufficient attention and resources
Realistic- The probability of success is good, given the resources and attention given it.
Time-bound- The goal is achieved within a specified period of time in a way that takes advantage of the opportunity before it passes you by.
Some examples include:
“We will expand into the polystyrene market within the next five years and achieve 20% market share”
We will decrease the time from research to customer delivery by 50% within two years
We will increase the quality of our largest product by 20% in three years.
Strategies
Where goals focus on what, strategies focus on how. Some examples include:
“We will re-engineer our research and development process”
“We will evaluate and improve our sales and marketing department”
We will conduct a SWOT analysis and then define our core competencies
Additional examples of strategies are included in the "Moving from the Future to your Strategy" chapter.
Wait a second. Aren't goals and strategies really the same. They are in one sense as they both need to be SMART. As what you might guess, the goals of a level are achieved by creating strategies at the lower levels.
The Measurement System
Without measures of success, the organization does not know if it has succeeded in its efforts. Someone once said, “What gets measured gets improved.” Someone else said, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”
For more information on measurement systems and their place in organizational change, please see the "Balanced Scorecard" article, along with a number of articles where employee surveys are used.
Implementation and Organizational Change
The success of any organizational change effort can be summed into an equation:
Success = Measurement X Method X Control X Focused Persistence X Consensus
Like any equation with multiplication, a high value of one variable can compensate for lower levels on other variables. Also like any equation with multiplication, if one variable equals 0, the result is zero.
On employee involvement
Some organizations involve employees right from the start, where they have significant influence in the strategic plan of the organization. This kind of involvement tends to reduce employees’ resistance, which is always a very important factor in the success of any organizational change. Such organizations as Eaton, Eastman Chemical and Rohm and Haas have used such an approach.
Such employee involvement, however, might also be threatening to management’s traditional power. Some organizations decide employee involvement will be limited to implementing the strategic decisions management makes, or further limit involvement to purely task-focused teams working on technical problems. Many aerospace organizations have used this approach.
Focused persistence, good project management and the sequence of implementation
The sequence of implementation is also an important factor. There are four basic options, with many variations of them. The first involves the entire organization from the start, with the whole organization intensively working at once on making the change. Ford Motor Company is currently restructuring its entire organization, moving from planning to implementation in nine months.
Another option is a more relaxed approach, in which divisions or business units of the organization go at their own pace. This option can often become an incremental approach like the first or second village. Many conglomerates or other companies with diverse operations try this approach.
A third option is similar to the previous one, with the focus being on individual business units doing the implementation. In this case, however, business units implement roughly the same things in roughly the same time schedule. Unisys, the computer company, is using this method on some of its organizational change efforts.
A fourth option is to create a pilot project in one division or business unit, learn from its mistakes, and then apply those lessons to the rest of the organization. Examples of this option include the Saturn car facility at General Motors and the Enfield plant of Digital Equipment Corporation. It’s important to note here that creating pilot projects is a high-risk business. In both cases, the lessons learned from these pilot projects have not gained widespread acceptance in their parent companies due to their heavily ingrained cultures.
Business process reengineering (BPR) is, in computer science and management, an approach aiming at improvements by means of elevating efficiency and effectiveness of the business process that exist within and across organizations. The key to BPR is for organizations to look at their business processes from a "clean slate" perspective and determine how they can best construct these processes to improve how they conduct business.
Business process reengineering is also known as BPR, Business Process Redesign, Business Transformation, or Business Process Change Management. Reengineering is a fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in cost, quality, speed, and service. BPR combines a strategy of promoting business innovation with a strategy of making major improvements to business processes so that a company can become a much stronger and more successful competitor in the marketplace.
The main proponents of reengineering were Michael Hammer and James A. Champy. In a series of books including Reengineering the Corporation, Reengineering Management, and The Agenda, they argue that far too much time is wasted passing-on tasks from one department to another. They claim that it is far more efficient to appoint a team who are responsible for all the tasks in the process. In The Agenda they extend the argument to include suppliers, distributors, and other business partners.
Re-engineering is the basis for many recent developments in management. The cross-functional team, for example, has become popular because of the desire to re-engineer separate functional tasks into complete cross-functional processes. Also, many recent management information systems developments aim to integrate a wide number of business functions. Enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, knowledge management systems, groupware and collaborative systems, Human Resource Management Systems and customer relationship management systems all owe a debt to re-engineering theory.
Business process reengineering (BPR) began as a private sector technique to help organizations fundamentally rethink how they do their work in order to dramatically improve customer service, cut operational costs, and become world-class competitors. A key stimulus for reengineering has been the continuing development and deployment of sophisticated information systems and networks. Leading organizations are becoming bolder in using this technology to support innovative business processes, rather than refining current ways of doing work.
Business process reengineering is one approach for redesigning the way work is done to better support the organization's mission and reduce costs. Reengineering starts with a high-level assessment of the organization's mission, strategic goals, and customer needs. Basic questions are asked, such as "Does our mission need to be redefined? Are our strategic goals aligned with our mission? Who are our customers?" An organization may find that it is operating on questionable assumptions, particularly in terms of the wants and needs of its customers. Only after the organization rethinks what it should be doing, does it go on to decide how best to do it.[1]
Within the framework of this basic assessment of mission and goals, reengineering focuses on the organization's business processes--the steps and procedures that govern how resources are used to create products and services that meet the needs of particular customers or markets. As a structured ordering of work steps across time and place, a business process can be decomposed into specific activities, measured, modeled, and improved. It can also be completely redesigned or eliminated altogether. Reengineering identifies, analyzes, and redesigns an organization's core business processes with the aim of achieving dramatic improvements in critical performance measures, such as cost, quality, service, and speed.
Reengineering recognizes that an organization's business processes are usually fragmented into subprocesses and tasks that are carried out by several specialized functional areas within the organization. Often, no one is responsible for the overall performance of the entire process. Reengineering maintains that optimizing the performance of subprocesses can result in some benefits, but cannot yield dramatic improvements if the process itself is fundamentally inefficient and outmoded. For that reason, reengineering focuses on redesigning the process as a whole in order to achieve the greatest possible benefits to the organization and their customers. This drive for realizing dramatic improvements by fundamentally rethinking how the organization's work should be done distinguishes reengineering from process improvement efforts that focus on functional or incremental improvement.
Base on the articles I have read above, I think the most radical type of change in the spectrum of organizational change is the business reengineering or business process reengineering (BPR) which is the fundamental innovation of the business processes. Many companies wants a redesign of the business processes before considering automation or rationalization of procedures. Considering the fast changing environment due to technology-oriented generation, reengineering or changing the design of the company is focused in order to cope up with what is happening around. Reengineering becomes the basis for many development management also because recent management information systems developments wants to integrate a wide number or bigger business functions.
References:
David Chaudron, PhD
http://www.organizedchange.com/decide.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_reengineering
Implementation of Information System Plan
Rationale for an Information Systems Plan
Every year, $300-700 million dollar corporations spend about 5% of their gross income on information systems and their supports. That's from about $15,000,000 to $35,000,000! A significant part of those funds support enterprise databases, a philosophy of database system applications that enable corporations to research the past, control the present, and plan for the future.
Even though an information system costs from $1,000,000 to $10,000,000, and even through most chief information officers (CIOs) can specify exactly how much money is being spent for hardware, software, and staff, CIOs cannot however state with any degree of certainty why one system is being done this year versus next, why it is being done ahead of another, or finally, why it is being done at all.
Many enterprises do not have model-based information systems development environments that allow system designers to see the benefits of rearranging an information systems development schedule. Consequently, the questions that cannot be answered include:
• What effect will there be on the overall schedule if an information system is purchased versus developed?
• At what point does it pay to hire an abnormal quantity of contract staff to advance a schedule?
• What is the long term benefit from 4GL versus 3GL?
• Is it better to generate 3GL than to generate/use a 4GL?
• What are the real costs of distributed software development over centralized development?
If these questions were transformed and applied to any other component of a business (e.g., accounting, manufacturing, distribution and marketing), and remained unanswered, that unit's manager would surely be fired!
We not only need answers to these questions NOW!, we also need them quickly, cost effectively, and in a form that they can be modeled and changed in response to unfolding realities. This paper provides a brief review of a successful 10-step strategy that answers these questions.
Too many half-billion dollar organizations have only a vague notion of the names and interactions of the existing and under development information systems. Whenever they need to know, a meeting is held among the critical few, an inventory is taken, interactions confirmed, and accomplishment schedules are updated.
This ad hoc information systems plan was possible only because all design and development was centralized, the only computer was a main-frame, and the past was acceptable prologue because budgets were ever increasing, schedules always slipping, and information was not yet part of the corporation's critical edge.
Well, today is different, really different! Budgets are decreasing, and slipped schedules are being cited as preventing business alternatives. Confounding the computing environment are different operating systems, DBMSs, development tools, telecommunications (LAN, WAN, Intra-, Inter-, and Extra-net), and distributed hard- and software.
Rather than having centralized, long-range planning and management activities that address these problems, today's business units are using readily available tools to design and build ad hoc stop-gap solutions. These ad hoc systems not only do not interconnect, support common semantics, or provide synchronized views of critical corporate policy, they are soon to form the almost impossible to comprehend confusion of systems and data from which systems order and semantic harmony must spring.
Not only has the computing landscape become profoundly different and more difficult to comprehend, the need for just the right--and correct--information at just the right time is escalating. Late or wrong information is worse than no information.
Information systems managers need a model of their information systems environment. A model that is malleable. As new requirements are discovered, budgets modified, new hardware/software introduced, this model must be such that it can reconstitute the information systems plan in a timely and efficient manner.
Characteristics of a Quality ISP
A quality ISP must exhibit five distinct characteristics before it is useful. These five are presented in the table that follows.
Timely
The ISP must be timely. An ISP that is created long after it is needed is useless. In almost all cases, it makes no sense to take longer to plan work than to perform the work planned.
Useable
The ISP must be useable. It must be so for all the projects as well as for each project. The ISP should exist in sections that once adopted can be parceled out to project managers and immediately started.
Maintainable
The ISP must be maintainable. New business opportunities, new computers, business mergers, etc. all affect the ISP. The ISP must support quick changes to the estimates, technologies employed, and possibly even to the fundamental project sequences. Once these changes are accomplished, the new ISP should be just a few computer program executions away.
Quality
While the ISP must be a quality product, no ISP is ever perfect on the first try. As the ISP is executed, the metrics employed to derive the individual project estimates become refined as a consequence of new hardware technologies, code generators, techniques, or faster working staff. As these changes occur, their effects should be installable into the data that supports ISP computation. In short, the ISP is a living document. It should be updated with every technology event, and certainly no less often than quarterly.
Reproducible
The ISP must be reproducible. That is, when its development activities are performed by any other staff, the ISP produced should essentially be the same. The ISP should not significantly vary by staff assigned.
Whenever a proposal for the development of an ISP is created it must be assessed against these five characteristics. If any fail or not addressed in an optimum way, the entire set of funds for the development of an ISP is risked.
ISP Within the Context of the Meta data Environment
The information systems plan is the plan by which databases and information systems of the enterprise are accomplished in a timely manner. A key facility through which the ISP obtains its Adata@ is the meta data repository. The domain of the meta data repository is set forth in Figure 1, and, as seen through Figure 1, persons through their role within an organization perform functions in the accomplishment of enterprise missions, they have information needs. These information needs reflect the state of certain enterprise resources such as finance, people, and products that are known to the enterprises. The states are created through business information systems and databases.
The majority of the meta data employed to develop the ISP resides in the meta entities supporting the enterprise=s resource life cycles (see TDAN issue #7, December 1998, Resource Life Cycle Analysis), the databases and information systems, and project management. All these meta entities are depicted within the meta data repository meta model in Figure 2.
Figure 1
Figure 2
The ISP Steps
The information systems plan project determines the sequence for implementing specific information systems. The goal of the strategy is to deliver the most valuable business information at the earliest time possible in the most cost-effective manner.
The end product of the information systems project is an information systems plan (ISP). Once deployed, the information systems department can implement the plan with confidence that they are doing the correct information systems project at the right time and in the right sequence. The focus of the ISP is not one information system but the entire suite of information systems for the enterprise. Once developed, each identified information system is seen in context with all other information systems within the enterprise.
Information Systems Plan Development Steps
1. Create the mission model
The mission model, generally shorter than 30 pages presents end-result characterizations of the essential raison d=etre of the enterprise. Missions are strategic, long range, and a-political because they are stripped of the Awho@ and the Ahow.@
2. Develop a high-level data model
The high-level data model is an Entity Relationship diagram created to meet the data needs of the mission descriptions. No attributes or keys are created.
3. Create the resource life cycles (RLC) and their nodes
Resources are drawn from both the mission descriptions and the high level data model. Resources and their life cycles are the names, descriptions and life cycles of the critical assets of the enterprise, which, when exercised achieve one or more aspect of the missions. Each enterprise resource Alives@ through its resource life cycle.
4. Allocate precedence vectors among RLC nodes
Tied together into a enablement network, the resulting resource life cycle network forms a framework of enterprise=s assets that represent an order and set of inter-resource relationships. The enterprise Alives@ through its resource life cycle network.
5. Allocate existing information systems and databases to the RLC nodes
The resource life cycle network presents a Alattice-work@onto which the Aas is@ business information systems and databases can be Aattached.@ See for example, the meta model in Figure 2. The Ato-be@ databases and information systems are similarly attached. ADifference projects@ between the Aas-is@ and the Ato-be@ are then formulated. Achievement of all the difference projects is the achievement of the Information Systems Plan.
6. Allocate standard work break down structures (WBS) to each RLC node
Detailed planning of the Adifference projects@ entails allocating the appropriate canned work breakdown structures and metrics. Employing WBS and metrics from a comprehensive methodology supports project management standardization, repeatability, and self-learning.
7. Load resources into each WBS node
Once the resources are determined, these are loaded into the project management meta entities of the meta data repository, that is, metrics, project, work plan and deliverables. The meta entities are those inferred by Figure 2.
8. Schedule the RLC nodes through a project management package facilities.
The entire suite of projects is then scheduled on an enterprise-wide basis. The PERT chart used by project management is the APERT@ chart represented by the Resource Life Cycle enablement network.
9. Produce and review of the ISP
The scheduled result is predicable: Too long, too costly, and too ambitious. At that point, the real work starts: paring down the suite of projects to a realistic set within time and budget. Because of the meta data environment (see Figure 1), the integrated project management meta data (see Figure 2), and because all projects are configured against fundamental business-rationale based designs, the results of the inevitable trade-offs can be set against business basics. Although the process is painful, the results can be justified and rationalized.
10. Execute and adjust the ISP through time.
As the ISP is set into execution, technology changes occur that affect resource loadings. In this case, only steps 6-9 need to be repeated. As work progresses, the underlying meta data built or used in steps 1-5 will also change. Because a quality ISP is Aautomated@ the recasting of the ISP should only take a week or less.
Collectively, the first nine steps take about 5000 staff hours, or about $500,000. Compared to an IS budget $15-35 million, that's only about 3.0% to 1.0%.
If the pundits are to be believed, that is, that the right information at the right time is the competitive edge, then paying for an information systems plan that is accurate, repeatable, and reliable is a small price indeed.
Executive and Adjusting the ISP Through Time
IT projects are accomplished within distinct development environments. The two most common are: discrete project and release. The discrete project environment is typified by completely encapsulated projects accomplished through a water-fall methodology.
In release environments, there are a number of different projects underway by different organizations and staff of varying skill levels. Once a large number of projects are underway, the ability of the enterprise to know about and manage all the different projects degrades rapidly. That is because the project management environment has been transformed from discrete encapsulated projects into a continuous flow process of product or functionality improvements that are released on a set time schedule. Figure 3 illustrates the continuous flow process environment that supports releases. The continuous flow process environment is characterized by:
• Multiple, concurrent, but differently scheduled projects against the same enterprise resource
• Single projects that affect multiple enterprise resources
• Projects that develop completely new capabilities, or changes to existing capabilities within enterprise resources
It is precisely because enterprises have transformed themselves from a project to a release environment that information systems plans that can be created, evolved, and maintained on an enterprise-wide basis are essential.
There are four major sets of activities within the continuous flow process environment. The user/client is represented at the top in the small rectangular box. Each of the ellipses represents an activity targeted to a specific need. The four basic needs are:
• Need Identification
• Need Assessment
• Design
• Deployment
The box in the center is the meta data repository. Specification and impact analysis is represented through the left two processes. Implementation design and accomplishment is represented by the right two processes. Two key characteristics should be immediately apparent. First, unlike the water-fall approach, the activities do not flow one to the other. They are disjoint. In fact, they may be done by different teams, on different time schedules, and involve different quantities of products under management. In short, these four activities are independent one from the other. Their only interdependence is through the meta data repository.
The second characteristic flows from the first. Because these four activities are independent one from the other, the enterprise evolves by means of releases rather than through whole systems. If it evolved through whole systems, then the four activities would be connected either in a waterfall or a spiral approach, and the enterprise would be evolving through major upgrades to encapsulated functionality within specific business resources. In contrast, the release approach causes coordinated sets of changes to multiple business resources to be placed into production. This causes simultaneous, enterprise-wide capability upgrades across multiple business resources.
Through this continuous-flow process, several unique features are present:
• All four processes are concurrently executing.
• Changes to enterprise resources occur in unison, periodically, and in a very controlled manner.
• The meta data repository is always contains all the enterprise resource specifications: current or planned. Simply put, if an enterprise resource semantic is not within the meta data repository, it is not enterprise policy.
• All changes are planned, scheduled, measured, and subject to auditing, accounting, and traceability.
• All documentation of all types is generated from the meta data repository.
ISP Summary
In summary, any technique employed to achieve an ISP must be accomplishable with less than 3% of the IT budget. Additionally, it must be timely, useable, maintainable, able to be iterated into a quality product, and reproducible. IT organizations, once they have completed their initial set of databases and business information systems will find themselves transformed from a project to a release environment.
The continuous flow environment then becomes the only viable alternative for moving the enterprise forward. It is precisely because of the release environment that enterprise-wide information systems plans that can be created, evolved, and maintained are essential.
Here are the steps that will help expedite the implementation of an Information System Plan:
I got this from Federal Emergency Management Agency site which will exactly help our University in implementing an Information System plan also.
Step 1 – Establish a Planning Team
There must be an individual or group in charge of developing the emergency management plan. The following is guidance for making the appointment.
Form the Team
The size of the planning team will depend on the facility's operations, requirements and resources. Usually involving a group of people is best because:
• It encourages participation and gets more people invested in the process.
• It increases the amount of time and energy participants are able to give.
• It enhances the visibility and stature of the planning process.
• It provides for a broad perspective on the issues.
Determine who can be an active member and who can serve in an advisory capacity. In most cases, one or two people will be doing the bulk of the work. At the very least, you should obtain input from all functional areas. Remember:
• Upper management
• Line management
• Labor
• Human Resources
• Engineering and maintenance
• Safety, health and environmental affairs
• Public information officer
• Security
• Community relations
• Sales and marketing
• Legal
• Finance and purchasing
Have participants appointed in writing by upper management. Their job descriptions could also reflect this assignment.
Establish Authority
Demonstrate management's commitment and promote an atmosphere of cooperation by "authorizing" the planning group to take the steps necessary to develop a plan. The group should be led by the chief executive or the plant manager. Establish a clear line of authority between group members and the group leader, though not so rigid as to prevent the free flow of ideas.
Issue a Mission Statement
Have the chief executive or plant manager issue a mission statement to demonstrate the company's commitment to emergency management. The statement should:
Define the purpose of the plan and indicate that it will involve the entire organization
Define the authority and structure of the planning group
Establish a Schedule and Budget
Establish a work schedule and planning deadlines. Timelines can be modified as priorities become more clearly defined.
Develop an initial budget for such things as research, printing, seminars, consulting services and other expenses that may be necessary during the development process.
Step 2 – Analyze Capabilities and Hazards
This step entails gathering information about current capabilities and about possible hazards and emergencies, and then conducting a vulnerability analysis to determine the facility's capabilities for handling emergencies.
Where Do You Stand Right Now?
Review Internal Plans and Policies
Documents to look for include:
• Evacuation plan
• Fire protection plan
• Safety and health program
• Environmental policies
• Security procedures
• Insurance programs
• Finance and purchasing procedures
• Plant closing policy
• Employee manuals
• Hazardous materials plan
• Process safety assessment
• Risk management plan
• Capital improvement program
• Mutual aid agreements
Meet with Outside Groups
Meet with government agencies, community organizations and utilities. Ask about potential emergencies and about plans and available resources for responding to them. Sources of information include:
• Community emergency management office
• Mayor or Community Administrator's office
• Local Emergency Planning Committee (LEPC)
• Fire Department
• Police Department
• Emergency Medical Services organizations
• American Red Cross
• National Weather Service
• Public Works Department
• Planning Commission
• Telephone companies
• Electric utilities
• Neighboring businesses
While researching potential emergencies, one facility discovered that a dam -- 50 miles away -- posed a threat to its community. The facility was able to plan accordingly.
Identify Codes and Regulations
Identify applicable Federal, State and local regulations such as:
• Occupational safety and health regulations
• Environmental regulations
• Fire codes
• Seismic safety codes
• Transportation regulations
• Zoning regulations
• Corporate policies
Identify Critical Products, Services and Operations
You'll need this information to assess the impact of potential emergencies and to determine the need for backup systems. Areas to review include:
• Company products and services and the facilities and equipment needed to produce them
• Products and services provided by suppliers, especially sole source vendors
• Lifeline services such as electrical power, water, sewer, gas, telecommunications and transportation
• Operations, equipment and personnel vital to the continued functioning of the facility
Identify Internal Resources and Capabilities
Resources and capabilities that could be needed in an emergency include:
• Personnel -- fire brigade, hazardous materials response team, emergency medical services, security, emergency management group, evacuation team, public information officer
• Equipment -- fire protection and suppression equipment, communications equipment, first aid supplies, emergency supplies, warning systems, emergency power equipment, decontamination equipment
• Facilities -- emergency operating center, media briefing area, shelter areas, first-aid stations, sanitation facilities
• Organizational capabilities -- training, evacuation plan, employee support system
• Backup systems -- arrangements with other facilities to provide for:
o Payroll
o Communications
o Production
o Customer services
o Shipping and receiving
o Information systems support
o Emergency power
o Recovery support
One way to increase response capabilities is to identify employee skills (medical, engineering, communications, foreign language) that might be needed in an emergency.
Identify External Resources
There are many external resources that could be needed in an emergency. In some cases, formal agreements may be necessary to define the facility's relationship with the following:
• Local emergency management office
• Fire Department
• Hazardous materials response organization
• Emergency medical services
• Hospitals
• Local and State police
• Community service organizations
• Utilities
• Contractors
• Suppliers of emergency equipment
• Insurance carriers
Do an Insurance Review
Meet with insurance carriers to review all policies. (See Section 2: Recovery and Restoration.)
Conduct a Vulnerability Analysis
The next step is to assess the vulnerability of your facility -- the probability and potential impact of each emergency. Use the Vulnerability Analysis Chart to guide the process, which entails assigning probabilities, estimating impact and assessing resources, using a numerical system. The lower the score the better.
Vulnerability Analysis Chart
Rate each criteria on a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being low and 5 being high.
List Potential Emergencies
In the first column of the chart, list all emergencies that could affect your facility, including those identified by your local emergency management office. Consider both:
• Emergencies that could occur within your facility
• Emergencies that could occur in your community
Below are some other factors to consider:
Historical -- What types of emergencies have occurred in the community, at this facility and at other facilities in the area?
• Fires
• Severe weather
• Hazardous material spills
• Transportation accidents
• Earthquakes
• Hurricanes
• Tornadoes
• Terrorism
• Utility outages
Geographic -- What can happen as a result of the facility's location? Keep in mind:
• Proximity to flood plains, seismic faults and dams
• Proximity to companies that produce, store, use or transport hazardous materials
• Proximity to major transportation routes and airports
• Proximity to nuclear power plants
Technological -- What could result from a process or system failure? Possibilities include:
• Fire, explosion, hazardous materials incident
• Safety system failure
• Telecommunications failure
• Computer system failure
• Power failure
• Heating/cooling system failure
• Emergency notification system failure
Human Error -- What emergencies can be caused by employee error? Are employees trained to work safely? Do they know what to do in an emergency? Human error is the single largest cause of workplace emergencies and can result from:
• Poor training
• Poor maintenance
• Carelessness
• Misconduct
• Substance abuse
• Fatigue
Physical -- What types of emergencies could result from the design or construction of the facility? Does the physical facility enhance safety? Consider:
• The physical construction of the facility
• Hazardous processes or byproducts
• Facilities for storing combustibles
• Layout of equipment
• Lighting
• Evacuation routes and exits
• Proximity of shelter areas
Regulatory -- What emergencies or hazards are you regulated to deal with?
Analyze each potential emergency from beginning to end. Consider what could happen as a result of:
• Prohibited access to the facility
• Loss of electric power
• Communication lines down
• Ruptured gas mains
• Water damage
• Smoke damage
• Structural damage
• Air or water contamination
• Explosion
• Building collapse
• Trapped persons
• Chemical release
Estimate Probability
In the Probability column, rate the likelihood of each emergency's occurrence. This is a subjective consideration, but useful nonetheless. Use a simple scale of 1 to 5 with 1 as the lowest probability and 5 as the highest.
Assess the Potential Human Impact
Analyze the potential human impact of each emergency -- the possibility of death or injury. Assign a rating in the Human Impact column of the Vulnerability Analysis Chart. Use a 1 to 5 scale with 1 as the lowest impact and 5 as the highest.
Assess the Potential Business Impact
Consider the potential loss of market share. Assign a rating in the Business Impact column. Again, 1 is the lowest impact and 5 is the highest. Assess the impact of:
• Business interruption
• Employees unable to report to work
• Customers unable to reach facility
• Company in violation of contractual agreements
• Imposition of fines and penalties or legal costs
• Interruption of critical supplies
• Interruption of product distribution
Assess the Potential Property Impact
Consider the potential property for losses and damages. Again, assign a rating in the Property Impact column, 1 being the lowest impact and 5 being the highest. Consider:
• Cost to replace
• Cost to set up temporary replacement
• Cost to repair
A bank's vulnerability analysis concluded that a "small" fire could be as catastrophic to the business as a computer system failure. The planning group discovered that bank employees did not know how to use fire extinguishers, and that the bank lacked any kind of evacuation or emergency response system.
Assess Internal and External Resources
Next assess your resources and ability to respond. Assign a score to your Internal Resources and External Resources. The lower the score the better. To help you do this, consider each potential emergency from beginning to end and each resource that would be needed to respond. For each emergency ask these questions:
• Do we have the needed resources and capabilities to respond?
• Will external resources be able to respond to us for this emergency as quickly as we may need them, or will they have other priority areas to serve?
If the answers are yes, move on to the next assessment. If the answers are no, identify what can be done to correct the problem. For example, you may need to:
• Develop additional emergency procedures
• Conduct additional training
• Acquire additional equipment
• Establish mutual aid agreements
• Establish agreements with specialized contractors
Add the Columns
Total the scores for each emergency. The lower the score the better. While this is a subjective rating, the comparisons will help determine planning and resource priorities -- the subject of the pages to follow.
When assessing resources, remember that community emergency workers -- police, paramedics, firefighters -- will focus their response where the need is greatest. Or they may be victims themselves and be unable to respond immediately. That means response to your facility may be delayed.
Step 3 – Develop the Plan
Plan Components
Your plan should include the following basic components.
Executive Summary
The executive summary gives management a brief overview of: the purpose of the plan; the facility's emergency management policy; authorities and responsibilities of key personnel; the types of emergencies that could occur; and where response operations will be managed.
Emergency Management Elements
This section of the plan briefly describes the facility's approach to the core elements of emergency management, which are:
• Direction and control
• Communications
• Life safety
• Property protection
• Community outreach
• Recovery and restoration
• Administration and logistics
.
These elements, which are described in detail in Section 2, are the foundation for the emergency procedures that your facility will follow to protect personnel and equipment and resume operations.
Emergency Response Procedures
The procedures spell out how the facility will respond to emergencies. Whenever possible, develop them as a series of checklists that can be quickly accessed by senior management, department heads, response personnel and employees.
Determine what actions would be necessary to:
• Assess the situation
• Protect employees, customers, visitors, equipment, vital records and other assets, particularly during the first three days
• Get the business back up and running.
Specific procedures might be needed for any number of situations such as bomb threats or tornadoes, and for such functions as:
• Warning employees and customers
• Communicating with personnel and community responders
• Conducting an evacuation and accounting for all persons in the facility
• Managing response activities
• Activating and operating an emergency operations center
• Fighting fires
• Shutting down operations
• Protecting vital records
• Restoring operations
Support Documents
Documents that could be needed in an emergency include:
Emergency call lists -- lists (wallet size if possible) of all persons on and off site who would be involved in responding to an emergency, their responsibilities and their 24-hour telephone numbers
Building and site maps that indicate:
• Utility shutoffs
• Water hydrants
• Water main valves
• Water lines
• Gas main valves
• Gas lines
• Electrical cutoffs
• Electrical substations
• Storm drains
• Sewer lines
• Location of each building (include name of building, street name and number)
• Floor plans
• Alarm and enunciators
• Fire extinguishers
• Fire suppression systems
• Exits
• Stairways
• Designated escape routes
• Restricted areas
• Hazardous materials (including cleaning supplies and chemicals)
• High-value items
Resource lists -- lists of major resources (equipment, supplies, services) that could be needed in an emergency; mutual aid agreements with other companies and government agencies.
In an emergency, all personnel should know:
• What is my role?
• Where should I go?
Some facilities are required to develop:
• Emergency escape procedures and routes
• Procedures for employees who perform or shut down critical operations before an evacuation
• Procedures to account for all employees, visitors and contractors after an evacuation is completed
• Rescue and medical duties for assigned employees
• Procedures for reporting emergencies
• Names of persons or departments to be contacted for information regarding the plan
The Development Process
The following is guidance for developing the plan.
1. Identify Challenges and Prioritize Activities
Determine specific goals and milestones. Make a list of tasks to be performed, by whom and when. Determine how you will address the problem areas and resource shortfalls that were identified in the vulnerability analysis.
2. Write the Plan
Assign each member of the planning group a section to write. Determine the most appropriate format for each section.
Establish an aggressive timeline with specific goals. Provide enough time for completion of work, but not so much as to allow assignments to linger. Establish a schedule for:
o First draft
o Review
o Second draft
o Tabletop exercise
o Final draft
o Printing
o Distribution
3. Establish a Training Schedule
Have one person or department responsible for developing a training schedule for your facility. For specific ideas about training, refer to Step 4.
4. Coordinate with Outside Organizations
Meet periodically with local government agencies and community organizations. Inform appropriate government agencies that you are creating an emergency management plan. While their official approval may not be required, they will likely have valuable insights and information to offer.
Determine State and local requirements for reporting emergencies, and incorporate them into your procedures.
Determine protocols for turning control of a response over to outside agencies. Some details that may need to be worked out are:
o Which gate or entrance will responding units use?
o Where and to whom will they report?
o How will they be identified?
o How will facility personnel communicate with outside responders?
o Who will be in charge of response activities?
Determine what kind of identification authorities will require to allow your key personnel into your facility during an emergency.
Determine the needs of disabled persons and non-English-speaking personnel. For example, a blind employee could be assigned a partner in case an evacuation is necessary.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) defines a disabled person as anyone who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, such as seeing, hearing, walking, breathing, performing manual tasks, learning, caring for oneself or working.
Your emergency planning priorities may be influenced by government regulation. To remain in compliance you may be required to address specific emergency management functions that might otherwise be a lower priority activity for that given year.
5. Maintain Contact with Other Corporate Offices
Communicate with other offices and divisions in your company to learn:
o Their emergency notification requirements
o The conditions where mutual assistance would be necessary
o How offices will support each other in an emergency
o Names, telephone numbers and pager numbers of key personnel
Incorporate this information into your procedures.
6. Review, Conduct Training and Revise
Distribute the first draft to group members for review. Revise as needed.
For a second review, conduct a tabletop exercise with management and personnel who have a key emergency management responsibility. In a conference room setting, describe an emergency scenario and have participants discuss their responsibilities and how they would react to the situation. Based on this discussion, identify areas of confusion and overlap, and modify the plan accordingly.
7. Seek Final Approval
Arrange a briefing for the chief executive officer and senior management and obtain written approval.
8. Distribute the Plan
Place the final plan in three-ring binders and number all copies and pages. Each individual who receives a copy should be required to sign for it and be responsible for posting subsequent changes.
Determine which sections of the plan would be appropriate to show to government agencies (some sections may refer to corporate secrets or include private listings of names, telephone numbers or radio frequencies). Distribute the final plan to:
o Chief executive and senior managers
o Key members of the company's emergency response organization
o Company headquarters
o Community emergency response agencies (appropriate sections)
Have key personnel keep a copy of the plan in their homes. Inform employees about the plan and training schedule.
Consolidate emergency plans for better coordination. Stand-alone plans, such as a Spill Prevention Control and Countermeasures (SPCC) plan, fire protection plan or safety and health plan, should be incorporated into one comprehensive plan.
Step 4 - Implement the Plan
Implementation means more than simply exercising the plan during an emergency. It means acting on recommendations made during the vulnerability analysis, integrating the plan into company operations, training employees and evaluating the plan.
Integrate the Plan into Company Operations
Emergency planning must become part of the corporate culture.
Look for opportunities to build awareness; to educate and train personnel; to test procedures; to involve all levels of management, all departments and the community in the planning process; and to make emergency management part of what personnel do on a day-to-day basis.
Test How Completely The Plan Has Been Integrated By Asking:
• How well does senior management support the responsibilities outlined in the plan?
• Have emergency planning concepts been fully incorporated into the facility's accounting, personnel and financial procedures?
• How can the facility's processes for evaluating employees and defining job classifications better address emergency management responsibilities?
• Are there opportunities for distributing emergency preparedness information through corporate newsletters, employee manuals or employee mailings?
• What kinds of safety posters or other visible reminders would be helpful?
• Do personnel know what they should do in an emergency?
• How can all levels of the organization be involved in evaluating and updating the plan?
Conduct Training, Drills and Exercises
Everyone who works at or visits the facility requires some form of training. This could include periodic employee discussion sessions to review procedures, technical training in equipment use for emergency responders, evacuation drills and full-scale exercises. Below are basic considerations for developing a training plan.
1. Planning Considerations
Assign responsibility for developing a training plan. Consider the training and information needs for employees, contractors, visitors, managers and those with an emergency response role identified in the plan. Determine for a 12 month period:
o Who will be trained?
o Who will do the training?
o What training activities will be used?
o When and where each session will take place?
o How the session will be evaluated and documented?
Use the Training Drills and Exercises Chart in the appendix section to schedule training activities or create one of your own. Consider how to involve community responders in training activities.
Conduct reviews after each training activity. Involve both personnel and community responders in the evaluation process.
2. Training Activities
Training can take many forms:
o Orientation and Education Sessions - These are regularly scheduled discussion sessions to provide information, answer questions and identify needs and concerns.
o Tabletop Exercise - Members of the emergency management group meet in a conference room setting to discuss their responsibilities and how they would react to emergency scenarios. This is a cost-effective and efficient way to identify areas of overlap and confusion before conducting more demanding training activities.
o Walk-through Drill - The emergency management group and response teams actually perform their emergency response functions. This activity generally involves more people and is more thorough than a tabletop exercise.
o Functional Drills - These drills test specific functions such as medical response, emergency notifications, warning and communications procedures and equipment, though not necessarily at the same time. Personnel are asked to evaluate the systems and identify problem areas.
o Evacuation Drill - Personnel walk the evacuation route to a designated area where procedures for accounting for all personnel are tested. Participants are asked to make notes as they go along of what might become a hazard during an emergency, e.g., stairways cluttered with debris, smoke in the hallways. Plans are modified accordingly.
o Full-scale Exercise - A real-life emergency situation is simulated as closely as possible. This exercise involves company emergency response personnel, employees, management and community response organizations.
3. Employee Training
General training for all employees should address:
o Individual roles and responsibilities
o Information about threats, hazards and protective actions
o Notification, warning and communications procedures
o Means for locating family members in an emergency
o Emergency response procedures
o Evacuation, shelter and accountability procedures
o Location and use of common emergency equipment
o Emergency shutdown procedures
The scenarios developed during the vulnerability analysis can serve as the basis for training events.
OSHA training requirements are a minimum standard for many facilities that have a fire brigade, hazardous materials team, rescue team or emergency medical response team.
4. Evaluate and Modify the Plan
Conduct a formal audit of the entire plan at least once a year. Among the issues to consider are:
o How can you involve all levels of management in evaluating and updating the plan?
o Are the problem areas and resource shortfalls identified in the vulnerability analysis being sufficiently addressed?
o Does the plan reflect lessons learned from drills and actual events?
o Do members of the emergency management group and emergency response team understand their respective responsibilities? Have new members been trained?
o Does the plan reflect changes in the physical layout of the facility? Does it reflect new facility processes?
o Are photographs and other records of facility assets up to date?
o Is the facility attaining its training objectives?
o Have the hazards in the facility changed?
o Are the names, titles and telephone numbers in the plan current?
o Are steps being taken to incorporate emergency management into other facility processes?
o Have community agencies and organizations been briefed on the plan? Are they involved in evaluating the plan?
In addition to a yearly audit, evaluate and modify the plan at these times:
o After each training drill or exercise
o After each emergency
o When personnel or their responsibilities change
o When the layout or design of the facility changes
o When policies or procedures change
o Remember to brief personnel on changes to the plan.
Conduct a formal audit of the entire plan at least once a year.
References:
http://www.tdan.com/view-articles/5262
Michael M. Gorman –
Published: September 1, 1999
Published in TDAN.com September 1999
Michael, the President of Whitemarsh Information Systems Corporation, has been involved in database and DBMS for more than 40 years. Michael has been the Secretary of the ANSI Database Languages Committee for more than 30 years. This committee standardizes SQL. A full list of Whitemarsh's clients and products can be found on the website. Whitemarsh has developed a very comprehensive Metadata CASE/Repository tool, Metabase, that supports enterprise architectures, information systems planning, comprehensive data model creation and management, and interfaces with the finest code generator on the market, Clarion ( www.SoftVelocity.com). The Whitemarsh website makes available data management books, courses, workshops, methodologies, software, and metrics. Whitemarsh prices are very reasonable and are designed for the individual, the information technology organization and professional training organizations. Whitemarsh provides free use of its materials for universities/colleges. Please contact Whitemarsh for assistance in data modeling, data architecture, enterprise architecture, metadata management, and for on-site delivery of data management workshops, courses, and seminars. Our phone number is (301) 249-1142. Our email address is: mmgorman@wiscorp.com.
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FEMA
http://www.fema.gov/business/guide/section1a.shtm
http://www.fema.gov/business/guide/section1b.shtm
http://www.fema.gov/business/guide/section1c.shtm
http://www.fema.gov/business/guide/section1d.shtm
FEMA has more than 3,700 full time employees. They work at FEMA headquarters in Washington D.C., at regional and area offices across the country, the Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center, and the National Emergency Training Center in Emmitsburg, Maryland. FEMA also has nearly 4,000 standby disaster assistance employees who are available for deployment after disasters. Often FEMA works in partnership with other organizations that are part of the nation's emergency management system. These partners include state and local emergency management agencies, 27 federal agencies and the American Red Cross.
Statutory Authority
Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, PL 100-707, signed into law November 23, 1988; amended the Disaster Relief Act of 1974, PL 93-288. This Act constitutes the statutory authority for most Federal disaster response activities especially as they pertain to FEMA and FEMA programs.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security | Federal Emergency Management Agency
500 C Street SW, Washington, D.C. 20472
Disaster Assistance: (800) 621-FEMA / TTY (800) 462-7585
Every year, $300-700 million dollar corporations spend about 5% of their gross income on information systems and their supports. That's from about $15,000,000 to $35,000,000! A significant part of those funds support enterprise databases, a philosophy of database system applications that enable corporations to research the past, control the present, and plan for the future.
Even though an information system costs from $1,000,000 to $10,000,000, and even through most chief information officers (CIOs) can specify exactly how much money is being spent for hardware, software, and staff, CIOs cannot however state with any degree of certainty why one system is being done this year versus next, why it is being done ahead of another, or finally, why it is being done at all.
Many enterprises do not have model-based information systems development environments that allow system designers to see the benefits of rearranging an information systems development schedule. Consequently, the questions that cannot be answered include:
• What effect will there be on the overall schedule if an information system is purchased versus developed?
• At what point does it pay to hire an abnormal quantity of contract staff to advance a schedule?
• What is the long term benefit from 4GL versus 3GL?
• Is it better to generate 3GL than to generate/use a 4GL?
• What are the real costs of distributed software development over centralized development?
If these questions were transformed and applied to any other component of a business (e.g., accounting, manufacturing, distribution and marketing), and remained unanswered, that unit's manager would surely be fired!
We not only need answers to these questions NOW!, we also need them quickly, cost effectively, and in a form that they can be modeled and changed in response to unfolding realities. This paper provides a brief review of a successful 10-step strategy that answers these questions.
Too many half-billion dollar organizations have only a vague notion of the names and interactions of the existing and under development information systems. Whenever they need to know, a meeting is held among the critical few, an inventory is taken, interactions confirmed, and accomplishment schedules are updated.
This ad hoc information systems plan was possible only because all design and development was centralized, the only computer was a main-frame, and the past was acceptable prologue because budgets were ever increasing, schedules always slipping, and information was not yet part of the corporation's critical edge.
Well, today is different, really different! Budgets are decreasing, and slipped schedules are being cited as preventing business alternatives. Confounding the computing environment are different operating systems, DBMSs, development tools, telecommunications (LAN, WAN, Intra-, Inter-, and Extra-net), and distributed hard- and software.
Rather than having centralized, long-range planning and management activities that address these problems, today's business units are using readily available tools to design and build ad hoc stop-gap solutions. These ad hoc systems not only do not interconnect, support common semantics, or provide synchronized views of critical corporate policy, they are soon to form the almost impossible to comprehend confusion of systems and data from which systems order and semantic harmony must spring.
Not only has the computing landscape become profoundly different and more difficult to comprehend, the need for just the right--and correct--information at just the right time is escalating. Late or wrong information is worse than no information.
Information systems managers need a model of their information systems environment. A model that is malleable. As new requirements are discovered, budgets modified, new hardware/software introduced, this model must be such that it can reconstitute the information systems plan in a timely and efficient manner.
Characteristics of a Quality ISP
A quality ISP must exhibit five distinct characteristics before it is useful. These five are presented in the table that follows.
Timely
The ISP must be timely. An ISP that is created long after it is needed is useless. In almost all cases, it makes no sense to take longer to plan work than to perform the work planned.
Useable
The ISP must be useable. It must be so for all the projects as well as for each project. The ISP should exist in sections that once adopted can be parceled out to project managers and immediately started.
Maintainable
The ISP must be maintainable. New business opportunities, new computers, business mergers, etc. all affect the ISP. The ISP must support quick changes to the estimates, technologies employed, and possibly even to the fundamental project sequences. Once these changes are accomplished, the new ISP should be just a few computer program executions away.
Quality
While the ISP must be a quality product, no ISP is ever perfect on the first try. As the ISP is executed, the metrics employed to derive the individual project estimates become refined as a consequence of new hardware technologies, code generators, techniques, or faster working staff. As these changes occur, their effects should be installable into the data that supports ISP computation. In short, the ISP is a living document. It should be updated with every technology event, and certainly no less often than quarterly.
Reproducible
The ISP must be reproducible. That is, when its development activities are performed by any other staff, the ISP produced should essentially be the same. The ISP should not significantly vary by staff assigned.
Whenever a proposal for the development of an ISP is created it must be assessed against these five characteristics. If any fail or not addressed in an optimum way, the entire set of funds for the development of an ISP is risked.
ISP Within the Context of the Meta data Environment
The information systems plan is the plan by which databases and information systems of the enterprise are accomplished in a timely manner. A key facility through which the ISP obtains its Adata@ is the meta data repository. The domain of the meta data repository is set forth in Figure 1, and, as seen through Figure 1, persons through their role within an organization perform functions in the accomplishment of enterprise missions, they have information needs. These information needs reflect the state of certain enterprise resources such as finance, people, and products that are known to the enterprises. The states are created through business information systems and databases.
The majority of the meta data employed to develop the ISP resides in the meta entities supporting the enterprise=s resource life cycles (see TDAN issue #7, December 1998, Resource Life Cycle Analysis), the databases and information systems, and project management. All these meta entities are depicted within the meta data repository meta model in Figure 2.
Figure 1
Figure 2
The ISP Steps
The information systems plan project determines the sequence for implementing specific information systems. The goal of the strategy is to deliver the most valuable business information at the earliest time possible in the most cost-effective manner.
The end product of the information systems project is an information systems plan (ISP). Once deployed, the information systems department can implement the plan with confidence that they are doing the correct information systems project at the right time and in the right sequence. The focus of the ISP is not one information system but the entire suite of information systems for the enterprise. Once developed, each identified information system is seen in context with all other information systems within the enterprise.
Information Systems Plan Development Steps
1. Create the mission model
The mission model, generally shorter than 30 pages presents end-result characterizations of the essential raison d=etre of the enterprise. Missions are strategic, long range, and a-political because they are stripped of the Awho@ and the Ahow.@
2. Develop a high-level data model
The high-level data model is an Entity Relationship diagram created to meet the data needs of the mission descriptions. No attributes or keys are created.
3. Create the resource life cycles (RLC) and their nodes
Resources are drawn from both the mission descriptions and the high level data model. Resources and their life cycles are the names, descriptions and life cycles of the critical assets of the enterprise, which, when exercised achieve one or more aspect of the missions. Each enterprise resource Alives@ through its resource life cycle.
4. Allocate precedence vectors among RLC nodes
Tied together into a enablement network, the resulting resource life cycle network forms a framework of enterprise=s assets that represent an order and set of inter-resource relationships. The enterprise Alives@ through its resource life cycle network.
5. Allocate existing information systems and databases to the RLC nodes
The resource life cycle network presents a Alattice-work@onto which the Aas is@ business information systems and databases can be Aattached.@ See for example, the meta model in Figure 2. The Ato-be@ databases and information systems are similarly attached. ADifference projects@ between the Aas-is@ and the Ato-be@ are then formulated. Achievement of all the difference projects is the achievement of the Information Systems Plan.
6. Allocate standard work break down structures (WBS) to each RLC node
Detailed planning of the Adifference projects@ entails allocating the appropriate canned work breakdown structures and metrics. Employing WBS and metrics from a comprehensive methodology supports project management standardization, repeatability, and self-learning.
7. Load resources into each WBS node
Once the resources are determined, these are loaded into the project management meta entities of the meta data repository, that is, metrics, project, work plan and deliverables. The meta entities are those inferred by Figure 2.
8. Schedule the RLC nodes through a project management package facilities.
The entire suite of projects is then scheduled on an enterprise-wide basis. The PERT chart used by project management is the APERT@ chart represented by the Resource Life Cycle enablement network.
9. Produce and review of the ISP
The scheduled result is predicable: Too long, too costly, and too ambitious. At that point, the real work starts: paring down the suite of projects to a realistic set within time and budget. Because of the meta data environment (see Figure 1), the integrated project management meta data (see Figure 2), and because all projects are configured against fundamental business-rationale based designs, the results of the inevitable trade-offs can be set against business basics. Although the process is painful, the results can be justified and rationalized.
10. Execute and adjust the ISP through time.
As the ISP is set into execution, technology changes occur that affect resource loadings. In this case, only steps 6-9 need to be repeated. As work progresses, the underlying meta data built or used in steps 1-5 will also change. Because a quality ISP is Aautomated@ the recasting of the ISP should only take a week or less.
Collectively, the first nine steps take about 5000 staff hours, or about $500,000. Compared to an IS budget $15-35 million, that's only about 3.0% to 1.0%.
If the pundits are to be believed, that is, that the right information at the right time is the competitive edge, then paying for an information systems plan that is accurate, repeatable, and reliable is a small price indeed.
Executive and Adjusting the ISP Through Time
IT projects are accomplished within distinct development environments. The two most common are: discrete project and release. The discrete project environment is typified by completely encapsulated projects accomplished through a water-fall methodology.
In release environments, there are a number of different projects underway by different organizations and staff of varying skill levels. Once a large number of projects are underway, the ability of the enterprise to know about and manage all the different projects degrades rapidly. That is because the project management environment has been transformed from discrete encapsulated projects into a continuous flow process of product or functionality improvements that are released on a set time schedule. Figure 3 illustrates the continuous flow process environment that supports releases. The continuous flow process environment is characterized by:
• Multiple, concurrent, but differently scheduled projects against the same enterprise resource
• Single projects that affect multiple enterprise resources
• Projects that develop completely new capabilities, or changes to existing capabilities within enterprise resources
It is precisely because enterprises have transformed themselves from a project to a release environment that information systems plans that can be created, evolved, and maintained on an enterprise-wide basis are essential.
There are four major sets of activities within the continuous flow process environment. The user/client is represented at the top in the small rectangular box. Each of the ellipses represents an activity targeted to a specific need. The four basic needs are:
• Need Identification
• Need Assessment
• Design
• Deployment
The box in the center is the meta data repository. Specification and impact analysis is represented through the left two processes. Implementation design and accomplishment is represented by the right two processes. Two key characteristics should be immediately apparent. First, unlike the water-fall approach, the activities do not flow one to the other. They are disjoint. In fact, they may be done by different teams, on different time schedules, and involve different quantities of products under management. In short, these four activities are independent one from the other. Their only interdependence is through the meta data repository.
The second characteristic flows from the first. Because these four activities are independent one from the other, the enterprise evolves by means of releases rather than through whole systems. If it evolved through whole systems, then the four activities would be connected either in a waterfall or a spiral approach, and the enterprise would be evolving through major upgrades to encapsulated functionality within specific business resources. In contrast, the release approach causes coordinated sets of changes to multiple business resources to be placed into production. This causes simultaneous, enterprise-wide capability upgrades across multiple business resources.
Through this continuous-flow process, several unique features are present:
• All four processes are concurrently executing.
• Changes to enterprise resources occur in unison, periodically, and in a very controlled manner.
• The meta data repository is always contains all the enterprise resource specifications: current or planned. Simply put, if an enterprise resource semantic is not within the meta data repository, it is not enterprise policy.
• All changes are planned, scheduled, measured, and subject to auditing, accounting, and traceability.
• All documentation of all types is generated from the meta data repository.
ISP Summary
In summary, any technique employed to achieve an ISP must be accomplishable with less than 3% of the IT budget. Additionally, it must be timely, useable, maintainable, able to be iterated into a quality product, and reproducible. IT organizations, once they have completed their initial set of databases and business information systems will find themselves transformed from a project to a release environment.
The continuous flow environment then becomes the only viable alternative for moving the enterprise forward. It is precisely because of the release environment that enterprise-wide information systems plans that can be created, evolved, and maintained are essential.
Here are the steps that will help expedite the implementation of an Information System Plan:
I got this from Federal Emergency Management Agency site which will exactly help our University in implementing an Information System plan also.
Step 1 – Establish a Planning Team
There must be an individual or group in charge of developing the emergency management plan. The following is guidance for making the appointment.
Form the Team
The size of the planning team will depend on the facility's operations, requirements and resources. Usually involving a group of people is best because:
• It encourages participation and gets more people invested in the process.
• It increases the amount of time and energy participants are able to give.
• It enhances the visibility and stature of the planning process.
• It provides for a broad perspective on the issues.
Determine who can be an active member and who can serve in an advisory capacity. In most cases, one or two people will be doing the bulk of the work. At the very least, you should obtain input from all functional areas. Remember:
• Upper management
• Line management
• Labor
• Human Resources
• Engineering and maintenance
• Safety, health and environmental affairs
• Public information officer
• Security
• Community relations
• Sales and marketing
• Legal
• Finance and purchasing
Have participants appointed in writing by upper management. Their job descriptions could also reflect this assignment.
Establish Authority
Demonstrate management's commitment and promote an atmosphere of cooperation by "authorizing" the planning group to take the steps necessary to develop a plan. The group should be led by the chief executive or the plant manager. Establish a clear line of authority between group members and the group leader, though not so rigid as to prevent the free flow of ideas.
Issue a Mission Statement
Have the chief executive or plant manager issue a mission statement to demonstrate the company's commitment to emergency management. The statement should:
Define the purpose of the plan and indicate that it will involve the entire organization
Define the authority and structure of the planning group
Establish a Schedule and Budget
Establish a work schedule and planning deadlines. Timelines can be modified as priorities become more clearly defined.
Develop an initial budget for such things as research, printing, seminars, consulting services and other expenses that may be necessary during the development process.
Step 2 – Analyze Capabilities and Hazards
This step entails gathering information about current capabilities and about possible hazards and emergencies, and then conducting a vulnerability analysis to determine the facility's capabilities for handling emergencies.
Where Do You Stand Right Now?
Review Internal Plans and Policies
Documents to look for include:
• Evacuation plan
• Fire protection plan
• Safety and health program
• Environmental policies
• Security procedures
• Insurance programs
• Finance and purchasing procedures
• Plant closing policy
• Employee manuals
• Hazardous materials plan
• Process safety assessment
• Risk management plan
• Capital improvement program
• Mutual aid agreements
Meet with Outside Groups
Meet with government agencies, community organizations and utilities. Ask about potential emergencies and about plans and available resources for responding to them. Sources of information include:
• Community emergency management office
• Mayor or Community Administrator's office
• Local Emergency Planning Committee (LEPC)
• Fire Department
• Police Department
• Emergency Medical Services organizations
• American Red Cross
• National Weather Service
• Public Works Department
• Planning Commission
• Telephone companies
• Electric utilities
• Neighboring businesses
While researching potential emergencies, one facility discovered that a dam -- 50 miles away -- posed a threat to its community. The facility was able to plan accordingly.
Identify Codes and Regulations
Identify applicable Federal, State and local regulations such as:
• Occupational safety and health regulations
• Environmental regulations
• Fire codes
• Seismic safety codes
• Transportation regulations
• Zoning regulations
• Corporate policies
Identify Critical Products, Services and Operations
You'll need this information to assess the impact of potential emergencies and to determine the need for backup systems. Areas to review include:
• Company products and services and the facilities and equipment needed to produce them
• Products and services provided by suppliers, especially sole source vendors
• Lifeline services such as electrical power, water, sewer, gas, telecommunications and transportation
• Operations, equipment and personnel vital to the continued functioning of the facility
Identify Internal Resources and Capabilities
Resources and capabilities that could be needed in an emergency include:
• Personnel -- fire brigade, hazardous materials response team, emergency medical services, security, emergency management group, evacuation team, public information officer
• Equipment -- fire protection and suppression equipment, communications equipment, first aid supplies, emergency supplies, warning systems, emergency power equipment, decontamination equipment
• Facilities -- emergency operating center, media briefing area, shelter areas, first-aid stations, sanitation facilities
• Organizational capabilities -- training, evacuation plan, employee support system
• Backup systems -- arrangements with other facilities to provide for:
o Payroll
o Communications
o Production
o Customer services
o Shipping and receiving
o Information systems support
o Emergency power
o Recovery support
One way to increase response capabilities is to identify employee skills (medical, engineering, communications, foreign language) that might be needed in an emergency.
Identify External Resources
There are many external resources that could be needed in an emergency. In some cases, formal agreements may be necessary to define the facility's relationship with the following:
• Local emergency management office
• Fire Department
• Hazardous materials response organization
• Emergency medical services
• Hospitals
• Local and State police
• Community service organizations
• Utilities
• Contractors
• Suppliers of emergency equipment
• Insurance carriers
Do an Insurance Review
Meet with insurance carriers to review all policies. (See Section 2: Recovery and Restoration.)
Conduct a Vulnerability Analysis
The next step is to assess the vulnerability of your facility -- the probability and potential impact of each emergency. Use the Vulnerability Analysis Chart to guide the process, which entails assigning probabilities, estimating impact and assessing resources, using a numerical system. The lower the score the better.
Vulnerability Analysis Chart
Rate each criteria on a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being low and 5 being high.
| Type of Emergency | Probability | Human Impact | Property Impact | Business Impact | Internal Resources | External Resources | Total |
List Potential Emergencies
In the first column of the chart, list all emergencies that could affect your facility, including those identified by your local emergency management office. Consider both:
• Emergencies that could occur within your facility
• Emergencies that could occur in your community
Below are some other factors to consider:
Historical -- What types of emergencies have occurred in the community, at this facility and at other facilities in the area?
• Fires
• Severe weather
• Hazardous material spills
• Transportation accidents
• Earthquakes
• Hurricanes
• Tornadoes
• Terrorism
• Utility outages
Geographic -- What can happen as a result of the facility's location? Keep in mind:
• Proximity to flood plains, seismic faults and dams
• Proximity to companies that produce, store, use or transport hazardous materials
• Proximity to major transportation routes and airports
• Proximity to nuclear power plants
Technological -- What could result from a process or system failure? Possibilities include:
• Fire, explosion, hazardous materials incident
• Safety system failure
• Telecommunications failure
• Computer system failure
• Power failure
• Heating/cooling system failure
• Emergency notification system failure
Human Error -- What emergencies can be caused by employee error? Are employees trained to work safely? Do they know what to do in an emergency? Human error is the single largest cause of workplace emergencies and can result from:
• Poor training
• Poor maintenance
• Carelessness
• Misconduct
• Substance abuse
• Fatigue
Physical -- What types of emergencies could result from the design or construction of the facility? Does the physical facility enhance safety? Consider:
• The physical construction of the facility
• Hazardous processes or byproducts
• Facilities for storing combustibles
• Layout of equipment
• Lighting
• Evacuation routes and exits
• Proximity of shelter areas
Regulatory -- What emergencies or hazards are you regulated to deal with?
Analyze each potential emergency from beginning to end. Consider what could happen as a result of:
• Prohibited access to the facility
• Loss of electric power
• Communication lines down
• Ruptured gas mains
• Water damage
• Smoke damage
• Structural damage
• Air or water contamination
• Explosion
• Building collapse
• Trapped persons
• Chemical release
Estimate Probability
In the Probability column, rate the likelihood of each emergency's occurrence. This is a subjective consideration, but useful nonetheless. Use a simple scale of 1 to 5 with 1 as the lowest probability and 5 as the highest.
Assess the Potential Human Impact
Analyze the potential human impact of each emergency -- the possibility of death or injury. Assign a rating in the Human Impact column of the Vulnerability Analysis Chart. Use a 1 to 5 scale with 1 as the lowest impact and 5 as the highest.
Assess the Potential Business Impact
Consider the potential loss of market share. Assign a rating in the Business Impact column. Again, 1 is the lowest impact and 5 is the highest. Assess the impact of:
• Business interruption
• Employees unable to report to work
• Customers unable to reach facility
• Company in violation of contractual agreements
• Imposition of fines and penalties or legal costs
• Interruption of critical supplies
• Interruption of product distribution
Assess the Potential Property Impact
Consider the potential property for losses and damages. Again, assign a rating in the Property Impact column, 1 being the lowest impact and 5 being the highest. Consider:
• Cost to replace
• Cost to set up temporary replacement
• Cost to repair
A bank's vulnerability analysis concluded that a "small" fire could be as catastrophic to the business as a computer system failure. The planning group discovered that bank employees did not know how to use fire extinguishers, and that the bank lacked any kind of evacuation or emergency response system.
Assess Internal and External Resources
Next assess your resources and ability to respond. Assign a score to your Internal Resources and External Resources. The lower the score the better. To help you do this, consider each potential emergency from beginning to end and each resource that would be needed to respond. For each emergency ask these questions:
• Do we have the needed resources and capabilities to respond?
• Will external resources be able to respond to us for this emergency as quickly as we may need them, or will they have other priority areas to serve?
If the answers are yes, move on to the next assessment. If the answers are no, identify what can be done to correct the problem. For example, you may need to:
• Develop additional emergency procedures
• Conduct additional training
• Acquire additional equipment
• Establish mutual aid agreements
• Establish agreements with specialized contractors
Add the Columns
Total the scores for each emergency. The lower the score the better. While this is a subjective rating, the comparisons will help determine planning and resource priorities -- the subject of the pages to follow.
When assessing resources, remember that community emergency workers -- police, paramedics, firefighters -- will focus their response where the need is greatest. Or they may be victims themselves and be unable to respond immediately. That means response to your facility may be delayed.
Step 3 – Develop the Plan
Plan Components
Your plan should include the following basic components.
Executive Summary
The executive summary gives management a brief overview of: the purpose of the plan; the facility's emergency management policy; authorities and responsibilities of key personnel; the types of emergencies that could occur; and where response operations will be managed.
Emergency Management Elements
This section of the plan briefly describes the facility's approach to the core elements of emergency management, which are:
• Direction and control
• Communications
• Life safety
• Property protection
• Community outreach
• Recovery and restoration
• Administration and logistics
.
These elements, which are described in detail in Section 2, are the foundation for the emergency procedures that your facility will follow to protect personnel and equipment and resume operations.
Emergency Response Procedures
The procedures spell out how the facility will respond to emergencies. Whenever possible, develop them as a series of checklists that can be quickly accessed by senior management, department heads, response personnel and employees.
Determine what actions would be necessary to:
• Assess the situation
• Protect employees, customers, visitors, equipment, vital records and other assets, particularly during the first three days
• Get the business back up and running.
Specific procedures might be needed for any number of situations such as bomb threats or tornadoes, and for such functions as:
• Warning employees and customers
• Communicating with personnel and community responders
• Conducting an evacuation and accounting for all persons in the facility
• Managing response activities
• Activating and operating an emergency operations center
• Fighting fires
• Shutting down operations
• Protecting vital records
• Restoring operations
Support Documents
Documents that could be needed in an emergency include:
Emergency call lists -- lists (wallet size if possible) of all persons on and off site who would be involved in responding to an emergency, their responsibilities and their 24-hour telephone numbers
Building and site maps that indicate:
• Utility shutoffs
• Water hydrants
• Water main valves
• Water lines
• Gas main valves
• Gas lines
• Electrical cutoffs
• Electrical substations
• Storm drains
• Sewer lines
• Location of each building (include name of building, street name and number)
• Floor plans
• Alarm and enunciators
• Fire extinguishers
• Fire suppression systems
• Exits
• Stairways
• Designated escape routes
• Restricted areas
• Hazardous materials (including cleaning supplies and chemicals)
• High-value items
Resource lists -- lists of major resources (equipment, supplies, services) that could be needed in an emergency; mutual aid agreements with other companies and government agencies.
In an emergency, all personnel should know:
• What is my role?
• Where should I go?
Some facilities are required to develop:
• Emergency escape procedures and routes
• Procedures for employees who perform or shut down critical operations before an evacuation
• Procedures to account for all employees, visitors and contractors after an evacuation is completed
• Rescue and medical duties for assigned employees
• Procedures for reporting emergencies
• Names of persons or departments to be contacted for information regarding the plan
The Development Process
The following is guidance for developing the plan.
1. Identify Challenges and Prioritize Activities
Determine specific goals and milestones. Make a list of tasks to be performed, by whom and when. Determine how you will address the problem areas and resource shortfalls that were identified in the vulnerability analysis.
2. Write the Plan
Assign each member of the planning group a section to write. Determine the most appropriate format for each section.
Establish an aggressive timeline with specific goals. Provide enough time for completion of work, but not so much as to allow assignments to linger. Establish a schedule for:
o First draft
o Review
o Second draft
o Tabletop exercise
o Final draft
o Printing
o Distribution
3. Establish a Training Schedule
Have one person or department responsible for developing a training schedule for your facility. For specific ideas about training, refer to Step 4.
4. Coordinate with Outside Organizations
Meet periodically with local government agencies and community organizations. Inform appropriate government agencies that you are creating an emergency management plan. While their official approval may not be required, they will likely have valuable insights and information to offer.
Determine State and local requirements for reporting emergencies, and incorporate them into your procedures.
Determine protocols for turning control of a response over to outside agencies. Some details that may need to be worked out are:
o Which gate or entrance will responding units use?
o Where and to whom will they report?
o How will they be identified?
o How will facility personnel communicate with outside responders?
o Who will be in charge of response activities?
Determine what kind of identification authorities will require to allow your key personnel into your facility during an emergency.
Determine the needs of disabled persons and non-English-speaking personnel. For example, a blind employee could be assigned a partner in case an evacuation is necessary.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) defines a disabled person as anyone who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, such as seeing, hearing, walking, breathing, performing manual tasks, learning, caring for oneself or working.
Your emergency planning priorities may be influenced by government regulation. To remain in compliance you may be required to address specific emergency management functions that might otherwise be a lower priority activity for that given year.
5. Maintain Contact with Other Corporate Offices
Communicate with other offices and divisions in your company to learn:
o Their emergency notification requirements
o The conditions where mutual assistance would be necessary
o How offices will support each other in an emergency
o Names, telephone numbers and pager numbers of key personnel
Incorporate this information into your procedures.
6. Review, Conduct Training and Revise
Distribute the first draft to group members for review. Revise as needed.
For a second review, conduct a tabletop exercise with management and personnel who have a key emergency management responsibility. In a conference room setting, describe an emergency scenario and have participants discuss their responsibilities and how they would react to the situation. Based on this discussion, identify areas of confusion and overlap, and modify the plan accordingly.
7. Seek Final Approval
Arrange a briefing for the chief executive officer and senior management and obtain written approval.
8. Distribute the Plan
Place the final plan in three-ring binders and number all copies and pages. Each individual who receives a copy should be required to sign for it and be responsible for posting subsequent changes.
Determine which sections of the plan would be appropriate to show to government agencies (some sections may refer to corporate secrets or include private listings of names, telephone numbers or radio frequencies). Distribute the final plan to:
o Chief executive and senior managers
o Key members of the company's emergency response organization
o Company headquarters
o Community emergency response agencies (appropriate sections)
Have key personnel keep a copy of the plan in their homes. Inform employees about the plan and training schedule.
Consolidate emergency plans for better coordination. Stand-alone plans, such as a Spill Prevention Control and Countermeasures (SPCC) plan, fire protection plan or safety and health plan, should be incorporated into one comprehensive plan.
Step 4 - Implement the Plan
Implementation means more than simply exercising the plan during an emergency. It means acting on recommendations made during the vulnerability analysis, integrating the plan into company operations, training employees and evaluating the plan.
Integrate the Plan into Company Operations
Emergency planning must become part of the corporate culture.
Look for opportunities to build awareness; to educate and train personnel; to test procedures; to involve all levels of management, all departments and the community in the planning process; and to make emergency management part of what personnel do on a day-to-day basis.
Test How Completely The Plan Has Been Integrated By Asking:
• How well does senior management support the responsibilities outlined in the plan?
• Have emergency planning concepts been fully incorporated into the facility's accounting, personnel and financial procedures?
• How can the facility's processes for evaluating employees and defining job classifications better address emergency management responsibilities?
• Are there opportunities for distributing emergency preparedness information through corporate newsletters, employee manuals or employee mailings?
• What kinds of safety posters or other visible reminders would be helpful?
• Do personnel know what they should do in an emergency?
• How can all levels of the organization be involved in evaluating and updating the plan?
Conduct Training, Drills and Exercises
Everyone who works at or visits the facility requires some form of training. This could include periodic employee discussion sessions to review procedures, technical training in equipment use for emergency responders, evacuation drills and full-scale exercises. Below are basic considerations for developing a training plan.
1. Planning Considerations
Assign responsibility for developing a training plan. Consider the training and information needs for employees, contractors, visitors, managers and those with an emergency response role identified in the plan. Determine for a 12 month period:
o Who will be trained?
o Who will do the training?
o What training activities will be used?
o When and where each session will take place?
o How the session will be evaluated and documented?
Use the Training Drills and Exercises Chart in the appendix section to schedule training activities or create one of your own. Consider how to involve community responders in training activities.
Conduct reviews after each training activity. Involve both personnel and community responders in the evaluation process.
2. Training Activities
Training can take many forms:
o Orientation and Education Sessions - These are regularly scheduled discussion sessions to provide information, answer questions and identify needs and concerns.
o Tabletop Exercise - Members of the emergency management group meet in a conference room setting to discuss their responsibilities and how they would react to emergency scenarios. This is a cost-effective and efficient way to identify areas of overlap and confusion before conducting more demanding training activities.
o Walk-through Drill - The emergency management group and response teams actually perform their emergency response functions. This activity generally involves more people and is more thorough than a tabletop exercise.
o Functional Drills - These drills test specific functions such as medical response, emergency notifications, warning and communications procedures and equipment, though not necessarily at the same time. Personnel are asked to evaluate the systems and identify problem areas.
o Evacuation Drill - Personnel walk the evacuation route to a designated area where procedures for accounting for all personnel are tested. Participants are asked to make notes as they go along of what might become a hazard during an emergency, e.g., stairways cluttered with debris, smoke in the hallways. Plans are modified accordingly.
o Full-scale Exercise - A real-life emergency situation is simulated as closely as possible. This exercise involves company emergency response personnel, employees, management and community response organizations.
3. Employee Training
General training for all employees should address:
o Individual roles and responsibilities
o Information about threats, hazards and protective actions
o Notification, warning and communications procedures
o Means for locating family members in an emergency
o Emergency response procedures
o Evacuation, shelter and accountability procedures
o Location and use of common emergency equipment
o Emergency shutdown procedures
The scenarios developed during the vulnerability analysis can serve as the basis for training events.
OSHA training requirements are a minimum standard for many facilities that have a fire brigade, hazardous materials team, rescue team or emergency medical response team.
4. Evaluate and Modify the Plan
Conduct a formal audit of the entire plan at least once a year. Among the issues to consider are:
o How can you involve all levels of management in evaluating and updating the plan?
o Are the problem areas and resource shortfalls identified in the vulnerability analysis being sufficiently addressed?
o Does the plan reflect lessons learned from drills and actual events?
o Do members of the emergency management group and emergency response team understand their respective responsibilities? Have new members been trained?
o Does the plan reflect changes in the physical layout of the facility? Does it reflect new facility processes?
o Are photographs and other records of facility assets up to date?
o Is the facility attaining its training objectives?
o Have the hazards in the facility changed?
o Are the names, titles and telephone numbers in the plan current?
o Are steps being taken to incorporate emergency management into other facility processes?
o Have community agencies and organizations been briefed on the plan? Are they involved in evaluating the plan?
In addition to a yearly audit, evaluate and modify the plan at these times:
o After each training drill or exercise
o After each emergency
o When personnel or their responsibilities change
o When the layout or design of the facility changes
o When policies or procedures change
o Remember to brief personnel on changes to the plan.
Conduct a formal audit of the entire plan at least once a year.
References:
http://www.tdan.com/view-articles/5262
Michael M. Gorman –
Published: September 1, 1999
Published in TDAN.com September 1999
Michael, the President of Whitemarsh Information Systems Corporation, has been involved in database and DBMS for more than 40 years. Michael has been the Secretary of the ANSI Database Languages Committee for more than 30 years. This committee standardizes SQL. A full list of Whitemarsh's clients and products can be found on the website. Whitemarsh has developed a very comprehensive Metadata CASE/Repository tool, Metabase, that supports enterprise architectures, information systems planning, comprehensive data model creation and management, and interfaces with the finest code generator on the market, Clarion ( www.SoftVelocity.com). The Whitemarsh website makes available data management books, courses, workshops, methodologies, software, and metrics. Whitemarsh prices are very reasonable and are designed for the individual, the information technology organization and professional training organizations. Whitemarsh provides free use of its materials for universities/colleges. Please contact Whitemarsh for assistance in data modeling, data architecture, enterprise architecture, metadata management, and for on-site delivery of data management workshops, courses, and seminars. Our phone number is (301) 249-1142. Our email address is: mmgorman@wiscorp.com.
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FEMA
http://www.fema.gov/business/guide/section1a.shtm
http://www.fema.gov/business/guide/section1b.shtm
http://www.fema.gov/business/guide/section1c.shtm
http://www.fema.gov/business/guide/section1d.shtm
FEMA has more than 3,700 full time employees. They work at FEMA headquarters in Washington D.C., at regional and area offices across the country, the Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center, and the National Emergency Training Center in Emmitsburg, Maryland. FEMA also has nearly 4,000 standby disaster assistance employees who are available for deployment after disasters. Often FEMA works in partnership with other organizations that are part of the nation's emergency management system. These partners include state and local emergency management agencies, 27 federal agencies and the American Red Cross.
Statutory Authority
Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, PL 100-707, signed into law November 23, 1988; amended the Disaster Relief Act of 1974, PL 93-288. This Act constitutes the statutory authority for most Federal disaster response activities especially as they pertain to FEMA and FEMA programs.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security | Federal Emergency Management Agency
500 C Street SW, Washington, D.C. 20472
Disaster Assistance: (800) 621-FEMA / TTY (800) 462-7585
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