Question

Compare and contrast an information systems development project in a global setting to one in a single country. What unique challenges must be overcome when using information technology to support global operations of a business?

200 Words please.

Answer 1

Answer

An information systems development project in a global setting to one in a single country:

Global projects large teams as compared to single country projects.

Effective communication is important in global projects as various stakeholders are spread across various time zones.

Global projects need to consider various local laws, regulations and create common solution meeting all requirements.

Continuous traveling across various geographies at various critical milestones is important in global projects as compared to a single country project.

The diverse workforce is required to handle various geography social, regional and communication barriers.

Below are some of the unique challenges must be overcome when using information technology to support global operations of a business:

Diverse and unique requirements across various geographies make requirement gathering complex process in the global setting as compared to a single country.

Communication and Co-ordination become difficult across various all stakeholders due to time difference across global geographies.

Local legal issues, compliance issues across geographies makes single global solution meeting all requirements becomes complex and difficult.

It becomes difficult to manage various stakeholders’ expectation in the global setting as compared to a single country project.

24*7 support is expected in a global business operation support as supposed to limited hours support required for single country operations.

A global information system (GIS) is used across one or more national borders. The IS executive has many system development strategies from which to select in satisfying global system requirements. Alternatives to the classical approaches of in-house development, such as outsourcing, and commercial off-the-shelf software (COTS) now include offshore outsourcing and global software development. GIS development poses many challenges. Questions such as: how to get support from subsidiaries, how and who should go about gathering the information requirements from subsidiaries, who should build the system, how to exploit existing applications, what code should be common and what should be local, how many versions of the code are needed, etc. present a wide variety of difficult choices. The choices are not clear-cut and require careful consideration.A major problem facing the firm is to identify the acquisition option/development strategy that will maximize the net present value of software acquisition, subject to organizational considerations (e.g. corporate policy and resource availability). Because many strategies are available, the choice is very difficult. In the domestic context, insourced development, package acquisition, and outsourcing are the primary strategies available to companies. Additional alternatives are available to global companies. In the literature, eight GIS development strategies are noted [15,17]. We added another. The nine strategies are:

1. Development of a multinational design team (MDT)

2. Parallel development (PD) Central development (CD)

3. Core versus local development (CL)

4. Best-in-firm software adoption (BIF)

5. Outsourced custom development (OC)

6. Unmodified package software acquisition (UP)

7. Modified package software acquisition (MP)

8. Joint development with the vendor (JDV)