System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is a process of developing information systems through seven phases. Those phases are concept, requirements, design,implementation, release, operation and maintenance, and decommission.
The first phase is the concept phase. This is when the project begins and give the overview of the overall project. The second phase is the requirement phase. The requirement phase is where the overall objectives are set. The third phase is the design phase. Design phase as the name suggests, is the phase were the final project detail is produced. Fourth phase is the implementation phase. This phase involves building the system and implementing the set specifications. Fifth phase is the release phase. The release phase involves the releasing of the product to users and customers. The second to the last phase is the operation and maintenance phase. This phase is to make sure that the system is in working order and to make sure that the system will operate overtime. The last stage is the decommission stage. This phase is when the life cycle of the system is completed and is replace by a new concept.
Entry criteria is a predetermined set of conditions. This conditions are use to determine the cost effectiveness of initiating a process or a sub-process. This criteria can be use to increase the quality of the product and minimize inadequate prior work. On the other hand, exit criteria is a predetermined set of conditions that must be met to complete a specific process or sub-process.
Entry and exit criteria is a set of tool that can be use between phases or stages of a process or a system. Integrating this tool between phases in the SDLC will ensure that it meets the set specifications in order to produce a good quality product. This will help reduced cost and inadequate work.
In my opinion accounting controls are procedures used to assure accuracy in the record keeping. They are use to detect errors and fraud in the system. Controls are also put in place to make sure that the data placed in the system are correct and accurate. As accountants, we have an obligation to help ensure that firms are run efficiently as possible. It’s our responsibility to give shareholders a better return on their investments. Its our job to make sure that public records are kept accurately. As accountants, we are also responsible in managing the asset of the company we work for, to manage the cost of the company’s overall operations, and to evaluate the performance of the company. Integrating the accounting aspect in a SDLC is bound to give better results in an organization. It will provide a cost-effective way of doing business. It will also ensure that the process develop will give a better return on investment.
Wesites visited:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit-criteria
http://www.stylusinc.com/Common/Concerns/SoftwareDevtPhilosophy.php
Monday, October 15, 2007
Friday, October 12, 2007
BP1 – Week 2 Success factors on BPR
According to wikipedia, business process reengineering (BPR) is a management approach aiming at improvements by means of elevating efficiency and effectiveness of the processes 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.
BPR if implemented properly can give huge returns to organization. One of the success story that I have encountered while researching BPR is the success of General Motors Corporation (GM) regarding their use of BPR. Their reengineering process involved replacing their existing systems like desktop systems, network operating systems and application development tools into a more manageable number of vendors and technology platforms. It’s interesting on how these changes saved GM a lot of money on hardware cost, licensing fees, and support cost.
Not every company needs to reinvent itself. There is a saying “do not fix things that is not broken”. But now a day, for a company to stay competitive and profitable they have to change their existing system to a better one. Analysing the existing system before undergoing a BPR project is vital. A company must analyse if the existing system can co-exist with new system during transition and retirement of the old system. Furthermore, assessing if the existing software can be reused and review existing programs if it can be refined. Keeping these perspectives in mind will help the success of implementing BPR.
I would say that back in the 1990’s BPR was widely accepted by organizations because of the constant change in technology and changing ways of doing business. Large corporations have accepted the method in way to reduce their overall operations cost and increase their overall profits. A major improvement in their business process leads to a workforce reductions. They focus mainly on technology and not on their most valuable asset - people. This leads to a low morale in their employees, which in turn leads to a low productivity.
BPR is not widely used anymore. The recently accepted concept now a day is Business Process Management (BPM). It has gained major attention in many organizations and it is considered as a successor to BPR.
Websites visited:
http://search.bnet.com/search/Business+Process+and+Business+process+reengineering
http://www.bpmroi.techweb.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_reengineering#Successes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_reengineering
BPR if implemented properly can give huge returns to organization. One of the success story that I have encountered while researching BPR is the success of General Motors Corporation (GM) regarding their use of BPR. Their reengineering process involved replacing their existing systems like desktop systems, network operating systems and application development tools into a more manageable number of vendors and technology platforms. It’s interesting on how these changes saved GM a lot of money on hardware cost, licensing fees, and support cost.
Not every company needs to reinvent itself. There is a saying “do not fix things that is not broken”. But now a day, for a company to stay competitive and profitable they have to change their existing system to a better one. Analysing the existing system before undergoing a BPR project is vital. A company must analyse if the existing system can co-exist with new system during transition and retirement of the old system. Furthermore, assessing if the existing software can be reused and review existing programs if it can be refined. Keeping these perspectives in mind will help the success of implementing BPR.
I would say that back in the 1990’s BPR was widely accepted by organizations because of the constant change in technology and changing ways of doing business. Large corporations have accepted the method in way to reduce their overall operations cost and increase their overall profits. A major improvement in their business process leads to a workforce reductions. They focus mainly on technology and not on their most valuable asset - people. This leads to a low morale in their employees, which in turn leads to a low productivity.
BPR is not widely used anymore. The recently accepted concept now a day is Business Process Management (BPM). It has gained major attention in many organizations and it is considered as a successor to BPR.
Websites visited:
http://search.bnet.com/search/Business+Process+and+Business+process+reengineering
http://www.bpmroi.techweb.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_reengineering#Successes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_reengineering
PM1 – Week 1 Project management career is not for me.
Project teams are being used more and more to pull together activities in organizations. As organizations move more quickly than ever to implement change, project teams are being assembled more and more. There are various positions, roles, and responsibilities within the organizational structure of a project. The number and type of positions is predicted by the size and scope of the project. Typical positions are as follows; project coordinator, project scheduler, assistant project manager, project manager, senior project manager, program manager, and portfolio manager.
If I was looking into a career in project management I will start of as being a project coordinator. A project coordinator is usually an entry-level position that focuses mainly on reporting, scheduling, and assisting the project management team. On the other hand, with the computer related work knowledge that that I have, I could start of as a project scheduler. A project scheduler is the one that inputs all of the project details and seldom has any management responsibilities. Based on my research, project manager is one of the most complex roles in any organization. It is the most vital position in a project team. project manager/team leader is directly responsible to the owner of the project and for bringing the project to completion on time and within budget. The person is also responsible for blending the team together to work on a common goal towards the success of the project. Furthermore, it’s essential for a project manager’s success to have interpersonal and negotiating skills.
Education and experience is required for many of the positions in project management. Most of the positions requires a bachelors degree. Ideal candidates must possess business and administrative experience with strong analytical, interpersonal, verbal, written and communication skills. Years of experience matters in securing a position in project management. Upper level positions requires 4 to 8 years of experience.
After all the researched that I have done, do I want a career in project management? My answer is no. I know a career in project management sounds very promising and just the thought of being a project manager excites me. But on the other hand, I don’t think that I can be a successful manager because I lack the skill on time management. As I recall most of the project that I started in high school, I never finished them. The main reason why is time constraint (unable to manage time) and just plain laziness. Furthermore, I can’t be a project manager because I lack one of the predominant skill that a project manager should have, keeping within budget. The budget that I have set up for food, gas, cell phone, and going out money I never follows them. I usually go over the budget. The only skill that I have going for me is that I have people skills. I can get along with anybody. Therefore, my conclusion is that I would be a terrible project manager if ever.
Project Scheduler
Project Coordinator
Project Manager
To learn more about careers in project management go to www.monster.ca
If I was looking into a career in project management I will start of as being a project coordinator. A project coordinator is usually an entry-level position that focuses mainly on reporting, scheduling, and assisting the project management team. On the other hand, with the computer related work knowledge that that I have, I could start of as a project scheduler. A project scheduler is the one that inputs all of the project details and seldom has any management responsibilities. Based on my research, project manager is one of the most complex roles in any organization. It is the most vital position in a project team. project manager/team leader is directly responsible to the owner of the project and for bringing the project to completion on time and within budget. The person is also responsible for blending the team together to work on a common goal towards the success of the project. Furthermore, it’s essential for a project manager’s success to have interpersonal and negotiating skills.
Education and experience is required for many of the positions in project management. Most of the positions requires a bachelors degree. Ideal candidates must possess business and administrative experience with strong analytical, interpersonal, verbal, written and communication skills. Years of experience matters in securing a position in project management. Upper level positions requires 4 to 8 years of experience.
After all the researched that I have done, do I want a career in project management? My answer is no. I know a career in project management sounds very promising and just the thought of being a project manager excites me. But on the other hand, I don’t think that I can be a successful manager because I lack the skill on time management. As I recall most of the project that I started in high school, I never finished them. The main reason why is time constraint (unable to manage time) and just plain laziness. Furthermore, I can’t be a project manager because I lack one of the predominant skill that a project manager should have, keeping within budget. The budget that I have set up for food, gas, cell phone, and going out money I never follows them. I usually go over the budget. The only skill that I have going for me is that I have people skills. I can get along with anybody. Therefore, my conclusion is that I would be a terrible project manager if ever.
Project Scheduler
Project Coordinator
Project Manager
To learn more about careers in project management go to www.monster.ca
BP1 – WEEK 1 (BPEL) Business Process Execution Language
Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) defines a notation for specifying business process behaviour based on Web Services. To my understanding BPEL is an XML-based language for the formal specification of business processes and business interaction protocols. It allows the extension of Web Services interaction model which in turn enables it to support business transactions. Thanks to the collaboration of IBM, BEA and Microsoft for making a cross-company initiative to develop a universally supported process- related language which is known today as BPEL.
Based on my research, I know for a fact that BPEL is a business process language that is executable. It is a programming language that have an inherent intelligence and implicitly autonomic control. BPEL enables facilities to send and receive messages. In addition, it also supports XML and WSDL typed variables, a property-based message correlation mechanism, serialized scopes to control concurrent access to variables, an extensible language plug-in model to allow writing expressions and queries in multiple languages.
BPEL design goals is to interact with external entities through Web Service, to provide data manipulation functions for the simple manipulation of data needed to define process data and control flow, to use Web Services as the model for process decomposition and assembly and to build on Web services standards.
Web services is a describes a standardized way of integrating Web-based applications using the XML, SOAP, WSDL and UDDI open standards over an Internet protocol backbone. It is used mainly as a way for businesses to communicate with each other and with clients. It also allow organizations to communicate data without intimate knowledge of each other's IT systems behind the firewall. Web services is great because it allows different applications from different sources to communicate with each other without time-consuming custom coding.
Technology lock in is a strategy that a company use to force customers to buy additional products. This happens when company intentionally designs a product where certain features are incorporated within the design to only work with products made by the same company. BPEL comes into play in this situation by providing a universally supported process- related language and a common standard of communication.
In my opinion, BPEL is the most popular standard today because Web services is clearly vital in the field of e-business and integration. More and more businesses are relying on their website to provide services to their customer and increase revenue. BPEL comes into play in this situation by providing a common standard on how to publish multiple services orchestrate them into business processes and audit and manage the results. In addition, it also increase the efficiency and effectiveness of businesses by giving them access to Web service-enabled applications. It is also enables company’s to quickly adapt or create new business processes to its trading partner. That is why BPEL is the most popular standard today.
Websites visited:
http://www.dmreview.com/article_sub.cfm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Process_Execution_Language
http://www.webreference.com/js/column96/3.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_service
Based on my research, I know for a fact that BPEL is a business process language that is executable. It is a programming language that have an inherent intelligence and implicitly autonomic control. BPEL enables facilities to send and receive messages. In addition, it also supports XML and WSDL typed variables, a property-based message correlation mechanism, serialized scopes to control concurrent access to variables, an extensible language plug-in model to allow writing expressions and queries in multiple languages.
BPEL design goals is to interact with external entities through Web Service, to provide data manipulation functions for the simple manipulation of data needed to define process data and control flow, to use Web Services as the model for process decomposition and assembly and to build on Web services standards.
Web services is a describes a standardized way of integrating Web-based applications using the XML, SOAP, WSDL and UDDI open standards over an Internet protocol backbone. It is used mainly as a way for businesses to communicate with each other and with clients. It also allow organizations to communicate data without intimate knowledge of each other's IT systems behind the firewall. Web services is great because it allows different applications from different sources to communicate with each other without time-consuming custom coding.
Technology lock in is a strategy that a company use to force customers to buy additional products. This happens when company intentionally designs a product where certain features are incorporated within the design to only work with products made by the same company. BPEL comes into play in this situation by providing a universally supported process- related language and a common standard of communication.
In my opinion, BPEL is the most popular standard today because Web services is clearly vital in the field of e-business and integration. More and more businesses are relying on their website to provide services to their customer and increase revenue. BPEL comes into play in this situation by providing a common standard on how to publish multiple services orchestrate them into business processes and audit and manage the results. In addition, it also increase the efficiency and effectiveness of businesses by giving them access to Web service-enabled applications. It is also enables company’s to quickly adapt or create new business processes to its trading partner. That is why BPEL is the most popular standard today.
Websites visited:
http://www.dmreview.com/article_sub.cfm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Process_Execution_Language
http://www.webreference.com/js/column96/3.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_service
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
XBRL Blog
My research will be based on why my company (Ronnie & Associates) should use XBRL.
XBRL is a language for the electronic communication of business and financial data which provides major benefits in the preparation, analysis and communication of business information. Instead of reading information as a block text XBRL provides an identifying tag for each individual item of data.
Three reasons why my company should use XBRL are as follows;
- XBRL provides more efficient way in preparing financial statements because they will be created one time and rendered as printed reports.
- XBRL financial information can be rendered in a variety of formats based upon the user's request, this will reduce the costs associated with report preparation.
- XBRL eliminates manual information gathering and consolidation tasks. This will allow reporting or analytical software to instantly re-use information .
XBRL can be use in enhancing internal financial operational reporting by providing a universally accepted data format to investors, customers, and regulatory authorities from which they may all share. XBRL can be use as a way of distributing information via web to companies and executives replacing spreadsheets and e-mail. It can also be use in collecting more and more data from more and more data sources. XBRL can be use to automate data reporting .
Necessary steps needed in starting the use of XBRL.
-Contact a local XBRL organization or local jurisdiction.
-Buy the necessary software.
-Set up the parameters required by the software to develop an instance document
-Tag selected information like financial statements.
-Complete the tagging using the extended taxonomy.
-Upload the XBRL tag document to your Website.
Accountants can stay up to date on XBRL standards by going to www.xbrl.org website and clicking the link Latest News. The latest news page provides highlights of latest, major XBRL news. http://www.xbrl.org/frontend.aspx?clk=LK&val=29
Sites visited:
http://www.pwc.com/extweb/service.nsf/docid/5D8ABE95DED0433880256E5800396FCE
http://www.ey.com/global/content.nsf/International/XBRL-Internal_Reporting
http://www.xbrl.org/frontend.aspx?clk=LK&val=29
http://www.xbrl.ca/e/pdf/15EasyStepstoGetStartedwithXBRLTagging.doc
XBRL is a language for the electronic communication of business and financial data which provides major benefits in the preparation, analysis and communication of business information. Instead of reading information as a block text XBRL provides an identifying tag for each individual item of data.
Three reasons why my company should use XBRL are as follows;
- XBRL provides more efficient way in preparing financial statements because they will be created one time and rendered as printed reports.
- XBRL financial information can be rendered in a variety of formats based upon the user's request, this will reduce the costs associated with report preparation.
- XBRL eliminates manual information gathering and consolidation tasks. This will allow reporting or analytical software to instantly re-use information .
XBRL can be use in enhancing internal financial operational reporting by providing a universally accepted data format to investors, customers, and regulatory authorities from which they may all share. XBRL can be use as a way of distributing information via web to companies and executives replacing spreadsheets and e-mail. It can also be use in collecting more and more data from more and more data sources. XBRL can be use to automate data reporting .
Necessary steps needed in starting the use of XBRL.
-Contact a local XBRL organization or local jurisdiction.
-Buy the necessary software.
-Set up the parameters required by the software to develop an instance document
-Tag selected information like financial statements.
-Complete the tagging using the extended taxonomy.
-Upload the XBRL tag document to your Website.
Accountants can stay up to date on XBRL standards by going to www.xbrl.org website and clicking the link Latest News. The latest news page provides highlights of latest, major XBRL news. http://www.xbrl.org/frontend.aspx?clk=LK&val=29
Sites visited:
http://www.pwc.com/extweb/service.nsf/docid/5D8ABE95DED0433880256E5800396FCE
http://www.ey.com/global/content.nsf/International/XBRL-Internal_Reporting
http://www.xbrl.org/frontend.aspx?clk=LK&val=29
http://www.xbrl.ca/e/pdf/15EasyStepstoGetStartedwithXBRLTagging.doc
Monday, September 10, 2007
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