Question

Brief Introduction

Suppose that you are an analyst for the ABC Company, a large consulting firm with offices around the world. The company wants to build a new knowledge management system that can identify and track the expertise of individual consultants anywhere in the world on the basis of their education and the various consulting projects on which they have worked. Assume that this is a new idea that has never before been attempted in ABC or elsewhere. ABC has an international network, but the offices in each country may use somewhat different hardware and software. ABC management wants the system up and running within a year.

Action Items

• Given the situation, what methodology would you recommend that ABC Company use? Why?
• Support or Oppose the above statements with arguments
• Respond to two other class member postings: observe and criticize their statements

Answer 1

The development methodology to be used for the proposed project should be Throwaway Prototyping.

In order to make this decision ,the situations which played a vital role were:

Factor 1: Unclear of User Requirements

As stated in a question that developing a knowledge based management system has been a new idea and have never been attempted before in ABC or elsewhere indicates that user requirement might be unclear since users normally need to interact with technology to really understand what the new system can do and how to best apply it to their needs and here they have no practical hands on experience neither they have seen it practically.

Solution:With the help of throwaway prototyping different prototypes for users are provided containing enough detail to enable users to understand the issues under consideration and understand what really needs to be made finalise the requirements.

Factor 2: Unfamiliarity with Technology

The knowledge based management has never been attempted before in ABC or elsewhere also indicates that no base technology is present and the tool needs to be designed from scratch pointing to the fact that analysts and programmers are not familiar with the technology.

Solution:Throwaway prototyping is particularly appropriate for situations where there is a lack of familiarity with technology, because it explicitly encourages the developers to create design prototypes for areas with high risks

Factor 3: System Complexity

ABC has an international network, but the offices in each country may use somewhat different hardware and software which leads to system complexity as for different location different hardware and software needs to be used which further adds on to the unclear on the requirements

Solution:Through Throwaway prototyping it gives careful and detailed analysis and design of the system finalising the particular hardware and software for a particular location.

Factor 3:With short time schedule and reliable

ABC management wants the system up and running within a year which clearly states that the knowledge based system should be made reliable to use as it will be used all over the network to allocate the resources according to their past experiences and expertise,so any error will cost company a fortune.And also with reliability it needs to be done within a year.

Solution:Throwaway prototyping is most appropriate when system reliability is a high priority, because detailed analysis and design phases are combined with the ability for the project team to test many different approaches through design prototypes before giving the result hence reducing risk and errors and also reducing mid development stage changes .