System architecture of a consulting engineering services firm and its application to information system development

Abstract

Building Information Systems (IS) requires employees to have a clear understanding of not only the daily work of the company, but of value delivery mechanisms throughout the firm. The three major success factors for IS projects are: user involvement, executive management support and a clear statement of requirements according to the Standish Group (The Standish Group International, 1994). Identifying these factors requires a holistic understanding of the organization. Existing literature contains numerous frameworks for the analysis of organizational structure, management guidelines, and strategic decision making processes of service organizations. This thesis uses system architecture, a Systems Engineering methodology involving the analysis of the entire firm, to study a consulting, engineering, construction and operations (CECO) service company. The resulting architecture document provides a model of the organization that is useful in the evaluation, justification, and definition phases of internal information technology (IT) projects. The model combines, in a single document, the firm's beneficiaries and goals and the functions, processes and forms created within the firm to achieve those goals. Results show that, when an internal IT project is proposed, the idea can be projected onto the system architectural model to clarify the proposal's support for organizational goals and functions and therefore, discern the project's value. During the early design phases of the internal IT project, the model helps identify stakeholders, beneficiaries, related existing systems, scope and needs. The model contributes to the project by determining value and by providing the three most important factors of project success; identification of users, stakeholders and requirements.