System Administration and Maintenance, Slides of Information Technology

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Maintenance

Introduction

 The maintenance phase involves performing changes,

corrections, additions, and upgrades to ensure the system

continues to meet the business goals.

 This phase continues for the life of the system.

 The system must change as the business evolves and its needs

change, demanding constant monitoring, supporting the new

system with frequent minor changes (for example, new reports

or information capturing), and reviewing the system to be sure it

is moving the organization toward its strategic goals.

Supporting Information Systems

Users.

Automating Support.  (^) Automating the support system to catch-up with the growing demand for additional support services.  (^) Online support forums provide users access to information on new releases, bugs, and tips for more effective usage.  (^) Voice-response systems allow users to navigate option menus that lead to prerecorded messages about usage, problems, and workarounds.  (^) Electronic support services that enable users to access the vendor’s knowledge base.  (^) Electronic support services that are tailored specifically for the corporation.  (^) With priority access, corporate workers can always get help via telephone or e- mail from a person at the vendor company

Supporting Information Systems

Users.

Automating support is appropriate in organizations where:

 a wide variety of a particular vendor’s products is in use

 most in-house application development either uses the

vendor’s products as components of the larger system

 the vendor’s products are themselves used as the basis for

applications.

Support Issues for the analyst to

Consider

 (^) Support also provides recovery and backup, disaster recovery, and PC maintenance.  (^) It’s the analyst responsibility to make sure that all form of support is provided.  (^) For most medium to large organization, they deal with this issue centrally.  (^) central information systems unit provide back-up software, scheduled routine backup, initiating recovery procedures, disaster recovery plans, PC maintenance  (^) If new system is rolled out. New training for the support staff must be conducted, make sure the documentation of the new system is available.

Support Issues for the analyst to

Consider

 If IS support unit does not exist. Those activities will fall to the

users by department.

 (^) You may have to write backup and recovery procedures and schedules for your users to be responsible for the maintenance.

 In some cases, software and hardware maintenance may have to

be outsourced to vendors or other capable professionals.

Why Implementation Sometimes

fails?

Conventional wisdom state, there are at least two conditions necessary for a successful implementation effort:  (^) Management support of the system under development.  (^) The involvement of users in the development process. They say if both of these conditions are met, you should have a successful implementation. BUT… They may be overrated compared to other factors that are also important.

Why Implementation Sometimes

fails?

Research shown that  (^) User involvement can reduce the risk of failure when the system is complex  (^) BUT user participation in development process can increase the chance of failure, especially if there are financial and time constraint. There are also other factors, such as(according to Ginzberg):  (^) Commitment to the project,  (^) Commitment to change,  (^) and the extent of project definition and planning.

Why Implementation Sometimes

fails?

Another important factor related to implementation success is user expectations  (^) The more realistic a user’s early expectations about a new system and its capabilities are, the more likely it is that the user will be satisfied with the new system and actually use it. There are two most common determinant that the implementation is successful.  (^) The extent to which the system is used  (^) and the Users’ satisfaction with the system.

Why Implementation Sometimes

fails?

Six factors that influence the extent to which a system is used o (^) User’s personal stake.  (^) how relevant the system is to the work the user performs.  (^) The higher the level of management support and the more urgent the problem, the higher the user’s personal stake in the system. o (^) System characteristics.  (^) Includes aspects of the system’s design such as ease of use, reliability, and relevance to the task the system supports. o (^) User demographics.  (^) Characteristics of the user, such as age and degree of computer experience.

The Relationship between the different factors defined by Henry C. Lucas on his book Information Technology for Management, 1997.

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