Challenges of shared decision-making: A multiple case study of agile software development
Integrated Systems in State Government – A Project Manager’s Perspective
Prepared by Ed Watson
“People cannot discover new lands until they have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
-- Andre Gide
Opening Statement
Sylvia Vaught peered out of her 5th story office window and watched a tugboat slowly navigate the Mississippi River, pushing its load of barges (7 barges long and 3 barges wide). It never ceased to amaze Sylvia that such a small boat could move such a large load, much less control it. This got Sylvia to thinking about the Integrated Statewide Information Systems (ISIS) project she had been working on for the past several months. She felt like the little tugboat trying to push its huge load. She remembered instances when a load of barges had broken free from their tow and scattered across the river, thrown about their separate ways by the vagaries of the currents. Whenever this happened, river traffic slowed to a crawl. What a mess! This also reminded her of her current situation, trying to pull together disparate information systems into a single, integrated system. As the tone on her desktop computer sounded, Sylvia’s attention turned to her email “Probably a reply from my contact at SAP AG to a query I posted earlier in the morning,” she uttered to herself. As she quickly confirmed this, she considered the difference in speed of old economy processes as illustrated by that slow moving barge traffic and new economy processes as illustrated by the integrated systems project. At the moment Sylvia felt a bit overwhelmed by the challenges and difficulties as the project director of this particular integrated systems implementation in Louisiana; the first state government to go live on SAP R/3.
Introduction
Integrated Systems
The concept of Integrated Systems was not new in the State of Louisiana. Even as early as the mid 1970s, it was evident that integrated financial planning systems were necessary to exercise tighter control over
Prepared by Ed Watson
“People cannot discover new lands until they have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
-- Andre Gide
Opening Statement
Sylvia Vaught peered out of her 5th story office window and watched a tugboat slowly navigate the Mississippi River, pushing its load of barges (7 barges long and 3 barges wide). It never ceased to amaze Sylvia that such a small boat could move such a large load, much less control it. This got Sylvia to thinking about the Integrated Statewide Information Systems (ISIS) project she had been working on for the past several months. She felt like the little tugboat trying to push its huge load. She remembered instances when a load of barges had broken free from their tow and scattered across the river, thrown about their separate ways by the vagaries of the currents. Whenever this happened, river traffic slowed to a crawl. What a mess! This also reminded her of her current situation, trying to pull together disparate information systems into a single, integrated system. As the tone on her desktop computer sounded, Sylvia’s attention turned to her email “Probably a reply from my contact at SAP AG to a query I posted earlier in the morning,” she uttered to herself. As she quickly confirmed this, she considered the difference in speed of old economy processes as illustrated by that slow moving barge traffic and new economy processes as illustrated by the integrated systems project. At the moment Sylvia felt a bit overwhelmed by the challenges and difficulties as the project director of this particular integrated systems implementation in Louisiana; the first state government to go live on SAP R/3.
Introduction
Integrated Systems
The concept of Integrated Systems was not new in the State of Louisiana. Even as early as the mid 1970s, it was evident that integrated financial planning systems were necessary to exercise tighter control over
References: Bancroft, Nancy H., Seip, Henning, Sprengel, Andrea (1998) Implementing SAP R/3: How to Introduce a Large System Into a Large Organization, 2nd Edition, Manning Publications (Greenwich, Connecticut). Davenport, Thomas H. (1998) “Putting the Enterprise into the Enterprise System,” Harvard Business Review, July – August, pp. 121 – 131. Miranda, Rowan (1999) “The Rise of ERP Technology in the Public Sector”, Government Finance Review, August, pp. 9-17. Exhibit 1: Overview of an Enterprise System1 1Adapted from [Davenport, 1998]