IT & Technology Consulting

Dr. Joe O’Mahoney 2007

IT Consulting

1. IT Consulting

2. What is IT?

3. It’s the Business, Stupid

4. Managing Projects

5. Case-studies

The Agenda

IT Consulting

IT Systems Development

Outsourcing Services

Outsourcing Advice

IT Consulting

Tax

Audit

Finance

Engineering

Asset Management

Infrastructure

“Pure” Management Consuting*

*Program/Project Management, Strategy, Change Management, Human Resources, BPR, Operations, Marketing,

Corporate Communications

Strategy Consulting

- McKinsey , BCG

- Sapient, Methods Consulting, Xantus

Program Management

- Deloitte

- PWC

- E&Y

Implementation

- IBM

- Accenture

- Cap Gemini

Board Level

- IT Strategy

- Business Case

Management Level

- Requirements Management

-Process Design

- Planning

Operations Level

- Systems Interation

- IT Operations

- Coding

HIGH VOLUME

LOW VALUE

HIGH INVESTMENT

HI-VALUE

LOW-VOLUME

MED-VOLUME

MED-VALUE

Who does what?

IT Consulting Market

• 10% Pure IT / Strategy (e.g. McKinseys)• 10% with Audit / Accounting (e.g. Deloitte)• 80% with integration / outsourcing (e.g. IBM)

• UK Market - aprx £2.1bn revenue• World Market - aprx £18bn revenue• Biggest type of consulting

• Public Bodies: (NHS, DVLA etc…)• Central & Local Government• Banking

For example?

• M&A: inconsistent systems

• Modernisation: cheque clearing, e-business

• New Opportunities: RFID, mobile working

• Cutting costs: Outsourcing, automation

• Improving service: CRM, Security, Business Intelligence

Trends

• India & China– moving towards consultancy– developing centres of expertise– E.g. Infosys

• Away from strategy– Benefit realisation

• Size of projects– £100m +

• What is a consultant?

What is IT?

1. Information

- Useful, Structured, Value-add

- Data Information Assets

2. Technology

- A way of doing something

3. IT Consultants

- Experts in finding ways of turning information into assets

What is IT?

1. MIS

- A faulty part Recorded Trends Identified Benchmarked

- Knowing if production has a problem

2. Video

- Football Goal Digitized Protected tagged

- A product that can be promoted and sold

3. FaceBook

- Friends Digitized Structured

- A product to enhance sociability

Data Products

1. The Asset

- Tagged, Protected, Digitized

2. The Product

- Multi-channel: TV, Mobile, Internet

- Peer2Peer, Storage, Tasters….

3. The Business

- Advertising, user information, network details

- Pricing: time, subscription, per view….

- Sport vs. news, porn, game etc…

The Goal……

The Business

Focus on Business Requirements

• What the system will be able to do……..

• MoSCoW– Must– Should– Could– Would like…

• Traceable

• Hierarchies

• Change Management

Example: Windows Media Player

• WMP will play all music and video formats

• The system will play mpeg, mp3, aac, wmf, atrack 3

• The system will prevent illegal ripping of CDs

• The system will support a DRM solution so that protected files will need a lisence

• WMP will enable the creation of a media library

• The system will read metadata tags associated with music files

When it comes to requirements, the pencil costs pennies…

it is the eraser that can

cost millions.

1. User Interface

2. Scenarios

3. Business Rules

4. Flow charts

5. Use Cases

Other forms of requirements

Example: Amazon

1. Functional

- The system must allow searches by title, author and ISBN

- The system must allow a purchase within five clicks

- The customer must have the ability to unsubscribe from emails

2. Technical / System

- 99% of search returns will be faster than 0.5 sec.

- Card transactions with be encoded with 128bit coding

- The system must be available 99.999% of the time

Business Requirements

Requirement Hierarchy (examples)

• Anyone can post a review of a book– All reviews must be spell and key word checked before publication

– The administrator can remove and edit a review

– A customer must enter a password before posting a review

• The customer will be able to search for a product– By name, genre, author, album and publisher

– A maximum of 50 results will be shown

– The return must never be zero

– The search results can be ordered by price, alphabetically or popularity

1. If the customer enters a wrong password three times then their PC will be blocked for an hour

2. If the search return delivers nil then automatically search with variants of the spelling

3. If a customer makes a purchase then recommend the product that most customers who purchased that product also bought

4. If a cookie is present on the customer’s PC then automatically populate the customer’s email on the log-in screen

Business Rules

1. Katherine visits Amazon for the first time

2. She types “Russia” into the search box

3. Amazon returns items fitting this term by product type and listed by popularity

4. Amazon remembers what Katherine has searched for

5. Katherine clicks on the first item then clicks Add to Shopping Basket

6. Katherine is presented with a screen recommending similar items that other buyers of this product bought.

Scenario

IT Projects

Building a house?

• Just start building!?

• Start with a plan

• What are the requirements?

• What components do you need?

• What do those components do?

• Who builds it? Based on what?

• What makes a good design?

• You need a good method!!

3-Schema Architecture

External Design Conceptual Model Physical/Internal Design

Supplier Pro

26 27 28 29

Purchase Or

1 2 3

Set of

Purchase Order Item

Purchase Ord

19 20 21 22

Product

Purchase Order

Purchase Order

Line

Supplier

Supplier's Product

Process Purcha-

se Order Query

Process

Supplier

1 2 3 4

Process Set of

Purchase Order

Process

Purchase Order

4

Process

Next

P.O.

Physical Data

Storage

User and System Interfaces

SSM UML

SSADM

Project Lifecycle I

• A. Study Phase1. Link to Strategy2. User Need 3. Project Scoping4. Recruitment

• B. Design Phase1. Business Requirements2. Systems Requirements3. Data Requirements4. System Design5. Software Selection 6. Equipment Selection

Project Lifecycle II

• C. Development Phase1. Detailed System Design2. Detailed Application Design3. Detailed Database Design4. Coding and Debugging

• D. Test Phase

1. System Testing2. User Testing 3. Reference Manual Preparation 4. Personnel Training

• E. Operation Phase1. System Changeover 2. Routine Operation 3. System Performance Evaluation 4. System Changes/Enhancements

So Who’s Involved?

• Product Manager

• Business / Systems Analyst

• Coders

• Project Manager

Understand

Question

Analyse

Present

• What is the key question here?

• What type of case is this (e.g. New Product etc…)?

• If verbal, clarify the case.

• What information is missing?

• Use frameworks (e.g. 4Cs, 4Ps, Porter) as a prompt.

• Ask both qualitative and quantitative questions.

• Structure your information e.g. tree, mind map

• Perform calculations

• Make assumptions

• Prioritise recommendations.

• Base recommendations on facts.

• Examine impementation “how” issues.