| Best-Practice Guides
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Business systems project framework
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This template provides a graphical view of every action in an IT project – the key deliverables, who should run each project element and who should sign every element off.
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Guide to project planning
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The project plan is the backbone of all project management. It defines what is to be done, how it is to be done and
when it is to be done. The project plan identifies responsibilities for providing the specific products that will ultimately
deliver real business benefit.
A poorly planned project may be delivered late and cause frustration to everybody involved. Needless to say, a poorly
managed project will probably be more expensive to deliver than a well-planned one.
1. Project plan overview.
A detailed project plan will add gravitas and credibility to all decisions made during the life of the project.
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Guide to investment appraisal
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Many businesses have numerous project requests which need to be prioritised and assessed, and every business
wants to quantify the financial benefits of a project before proceeding.
There are a number of ways of evaluating projects and this document outlines the most common methods – using
capital and ongoing project costs and comparing them with projected business benefits.
As with any model, the results are only as good as the quality of data provided in the first place. It is important that all
project costs (internal as well as external) are captured and that the business benefit numbers are supported by the
associated managers.
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Business requirements document
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This is a key document for the whole project. It defines the most important measure against which everything else must
be benchmarked – business value.
The Business Requirements Document defines the business need and the commercial opportunity. Before considering
technology or other solutions, it is essential that business managers are clear about the business outcome they want to
achieve and why.
The problem or opportunity should be described in business terms and should be clear enough to enable someone with
no previous knowledge of the business to understand the context of the requirement.
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Template for an information management strategy: In-Form Consult
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All too often organisations have a fragmented approach to information management, data is duplicated in many places
and users are expected to enter the same information many times. Developing an information management (IM)
strategy is the foundation stone that should be in place before considering cost justifying or implementing electronic
document and records management systems (EDRMS).
We live in a society where information is abundant. Having the ‘right’ information when it is required is essential if your
organisation is to carry out its duties in an efficient and effective manner. The aim of an IM strategy (IMS) is to support
the work of your organisation by improving the management of the information and enabling the exchange of
information with external bodies.
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Template for forms design (Part 1): Alan McSweeney
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Paper-based forms are still a fact of life for many organisations. The implementation of any form-based data capture
systems should always be prefixed with a project to eliminate paper and employ systems and procedures to allow
electronic data capture – web-based systems, PC tablets, etc. However, there will always be paper containing
information that needs to be entered.
Computer aided data entry (CADE) or forms processing is the automated processing of forms-based data entry. Using a
combination of document image processing and recognition technologies, CADE enables data entry operators to be
more productive than is possible with traditional ‘heads down’ data entry.
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Template for forms design (Part 2): Alan McSweeney
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Continued from Part 1 above.
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