The Accounting Information System - Assignment Example

The Accounting Information System Number: Introduction Account information system (AIS) refers to a structure that businesses entities use to collect, store, manage, process, retrieve and reports their financial data so that it can be used by consultants, accountants, managers, business analysts, chief financial officers, auditors, as well as tax and regulatory agencies (Hall, 2013). Accountants use AIS so as to ensure that business’s record keeping and all financial transactions are accurate and that they are easily accessible by persons and agencies who are legitimate to obtain them. Account information system also plays another major role of ensuring that all the above types of records and data are safe (OBrien & Marakas, George, 2006). However, this is not always the case; there have been numerous cases of AIS failure in various business organizations, a factor that has made some of the organizations even to face legal actions. This research paper will explore the failure of AIS and answer the questions listed below while using the FBI’s Virtual Case File as a case study. Question 1 There are numerous possible factors that might have attributed to the failure of the Virtual Case File, an accounting information system that had been developed using more than $170 million dollars. However, there are a number of factors that many analysts seem to agree on as primary factors that led to its failure. Lack of IT technical and management know how is one of the main factors that many attribute to the failure of the Virtual Case File. According to reports that were released by various governments and agencies, lack of IT expertise by the FBI officials was the root cause of the failure since the project was undertaken in a period when the agency had a severe shortage of proficient IT experts and managers. Back then, most of the FBI officials and senior managers did not have strong IT backgrounds. The second factor that led to the failure of the system was the application of the poorly defined and slowly evolving design requirement. As a matter of its highest priority, FBI failed to make a viable design that would clearly define the expected AIS goals, mission as well as requirements that could be connected through information technology to their processes and operations. In addition, FBI’s efforts and outcomes in the field of enterprise architecture were late and limited thus falling extremely short of what was required (Konigsberg, 2007). The third cause of the Virtual Case File system failure was the use of overly ambitious schedules (Pearlson & Saunders, 2013). The software development team applied a rapid development approach, a strategy that substantially compressed the project schedule thus compromising the quality of the final product. The team was moving from one phase to another without testing the software, hoping that every stage of the project was successful. Other factors that are believed to have led to the failure of the system include lack of a plan to monitor hardware purchases, network deployments, software development for the bureau, and application of poor approaches and processes in the development of the bureau’s IT applications and infrastructures. The FBI agency did not have ‘uservetted prototypes’ in its applications development processes, a factor that affected the outcomes significantly. The development team should have used extensive prototyping while at the same time doing usability testing with real users rather than anticipating for all the functional requirements and specifications (Pearlson & Saunders, 2013). Question 2 The senior management of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is believed to have significantly contributed to the failure of the Virtual Case File project. Sources show that the system failed as a result of a series of mistakes that were triggered by factors of which a high percentage of them could have be prevented (Sauer, 2013). Poor management by the senior officials of the bureau appears to be the main cause of the project failure. FBI’s top management failed to use IT experts to manage the project, a factor that resulted to poor monitoring of hardware purchases and network deployments and ultimately jeopardized the whole project. Mismanagement also led to application of poor approaches and processes in the development of the bureau’s IT applications and infrastructure (Denning, Gunderson & Hayes-Roth, 2008). Another mistake that the management made was allowing the development team to proceed to the next stages of the system development without adequately testing the completed parts. The development team was using a rapid development approach as mentioned earlier, a strategy that compressed project time thus leading to omission and skipping of crucial software development steps (Posner, 2005). However, this was likely to be the case because the development team was under intense pressure from the government and the citizens because of terror attacks that were threatening the security of the country. For the project to have succeeded, top FBI management was supposed to ensure that the software was adequately tested in every stage before the team could proceed to the next phases. This would have in effect implemented a prototype throughout the agency where users would most likely be the testers after every implementation (Charette, 2005). In addition, FBI management had a duty of ensuring that the agency had adequate and well trained human resource before undertaking the project, or else they would have hired professionals as they did but also delegate management roles to those experts (Turner & Weickgenannt, 2008). As mentioned earlier, FBI had an extreme deficiency of experienced contract managers, project managers, and senior IT managers who possessed good communication skills back then. This forced the agency to hire highly qualified external IT professionals whose unfair charges made the project cost to skyrocket tremendously and become one of the most expensive IT projects to have been undertaken (Daniels & LaMarsh, 2007). Question 3 For the Virtual Case File project, the most significant failure appears to have occurred during the design and implementation phase. According to the design that had been released, the proposed system was very promising though it finally ended up being the most complex and user unfriendly software (Eggen& Witte, 2006). Back then technology was not advanced that much to a point of creating such a system considering the fact that only a few professionals were in this field. However, the worst failure occurred during the implementation stage as explained earlier because of mismanagement, lack of know-how and application of poor methodologies. The failure could have been prevented if only the management could have accepted to delegate the management of the project to IT experts and also give them time to do the projects in a slow but sure manner without skipping important steps. Question 4 Implementing the right practices could have reduced chances of failure since crucial steps would not have been omitted. In the recent past, there have been numerous AIS projects that have been undertaken successfully simply because the projects managements and development teams involved were aware of the system development practices, and were willing to adhere to them. System development practices are a list of rules (steps) that have been tested and proven by experts (Goldstein, 2005). Therefore, failure to adhere to them marks the beginning of an automatic failure. For instance, if the management and the development team were observing the rule that requires the system to be tested after completion of every bit/phase, then the project could have greater chances of becoming successful since the crew would have been able to identify the Virtual Case File weaknesses long enough and rectified them before moving to the next phases. Question 5 There a number of practices/factors that many studies have found to be common in all successful AIS projects. All these practices/factors can be summarized into three critical dynamics thus making AIS projects to be termed as tripods by some experts (Information Resources Management Association & Khosrow-Pour, 2008). They suggest that that projects under development should be viewed as a tripod where all the legs of the tripod must be in place for it to stand firmly. The three factors include the aspect of top management support, applying a sound methodology as well as having a solid technical leadership from a person who has successfully done a similar project. Without each of these factors solidly in place, the tripod would topple and the project would ultimately fail (Gelinas, Dull & Wheeler, 2011). Top Management Support All the studies that have been conducted about system success or failure have shown that top management is a critical factor for a project to succeed. Projects tend to fail whenever problems arise (as they inevitably do) especially if the top management was not committed fully. Organizations’ management personnel should always be aware that the undertaken project will encounter problems hence prepare appropriately for the envisaged challenges; otherwise the project would be doomed to failure. This has been proven in various organizations whereby project implementations were going poorly to a point that file users and rank were about to revolt, but the projects finally succeed because of the managements’ commitment. There have also been cases of systems projects that were going on well, but end up failing when management is changed. This means that it is very difficult for a project to be successful unless management keenly focus on it and give it all the inputs it requires. Managers need to know when they should be expecting to see the results and to what extent. Otherwise, they can end up killing a project that was going on well only that they were too impatient (Gregor & ANU E Press, 2007). It is however very unfortunate that most of the projects are managed by managers who have no IT knowledge thus rely on opinions they get from advisors. This kind of mismanagement prompts to misunderstandings between the development team and the management thus jeopardizing the whole process. Development Methodology For a project to be successful, management and the development team have to come together and make a clear and concise system development methodology/approach. However, this is not always the case because development teams just embark on the project without even having clear plans most of the time. Poor planning and application of inappropriate methodologies lead to omission of crucial system development steps and parts of the user needs (Goldstein, 2005). This results to the need for rewriting large amounts of code because the system under development does not meet consumer’s requirements in the first time round. In case the project is completed; the system starts being used even before adequate testing is done. Without a well-planned process, chances of successfully completing the project are minimal and if it is completed successfully, it only does so as a result of substantial rewrites and cost overruns. However, there is no any given methodology that can be claimed to be better than the rest, all experts advocate for is ensuring that the project is well organized. Various methodologies gather similar information though organized in a different way. There are various ways in which a system development project can be approached such as object-oriented, rapid prototyping and waterfall just to mention a few (Neimat, 2005). Technical Leadership Technical lead is a crucial element that any system development project cannot afford to lack. The technical leader of any project acts like the architect of a project and should be fully conversant with the design and what exactly is needed out of that particular project. He or she should also be in control to ensure that there all the separately developed parts of the system are compatible with one another. The technical lead is required to be well experienced and to have undertaken a similar or a closely related project there before. In addition, for a project to be successful, the development team must consider the four major interdependent factors of a project namely cost, quality, speed and risk (Charette, 2005). All these factors should be considered in order for the system developed to meet all user needs though risk and quality are the main factors that developers must always consider during the development process. Other factors that might be essential for a system to be successful include implementation and data migration. Data migration should be planned earlier and treated as a project on its own (Ripin & Sayles, 2009). The development team should ensure that implementation phase of any project is given extra attention. Studies have shown that any project under development has 10 to 20 percent probability of failing irrespective of how well-crafted and documented it is simply because of poor handling of the implementation stage. In most cases, poor implementation occurs as a result of poor training of the users, lack of user support to the newly introduced system as well as poor transitioning from the old to the new system (Gelinas, Dull & Wheeler, 2011). Question 6 Principle of Plan Acquisitions This is a significant principle that managements and development teams cannot overlook. It was the root cause of Virtual Case File project failure and it appears to be a key attribute of failure for the most of the accounting information systems (AIS) among other types of projects. As a matter of fact, developers and managers cannot afford to ignore this crucial step. They should avoid rushing to implement a system development project without first describing how the implementation process would be executed successfully since failure to do so would lead to an automatic failure (Ripin & Sayles, 2009). Principle of committing resources Managements have a role of ensuring that all necessary resources are available and in the right amounts so as to avoid inconveniences during the implementation phase. FBI started a project without putting all the needed resources like proficient labor force, a factor that ultimately led to the failure of the project (Howcroft & Trauth, 2005). Firms should always avoid starting AIS projects among other types of projects until they are assured that all the needed resources are present and in the right quantity. They should also avoid assigning project’s management and implementation to persons who cannot deliver them 100 percent (Cammer & Carrington, 2010). Principles of testing and conducting reviews regularly Firms should ensure that thorough testing of each stage of the project is carried out and rectifications made if necessary so as to avoid unnecessary amounts of coding and cost. They should always avoid the rapid development approach that hinders this crucial step (Prasad, 2007). System projects should be tested with real users and figure out whether the designed software are meeting the desired user requirements. In addition, for a AIS project to be successful, firms should ensure that they are conducting regular reviews of the project in order to access whether it is being undertaken as per the initial design. Continuous attention to active and disciplined risk management, communication, and value management activities guarantees project success (Cammer & Carrington, 2010). This can be done by independent third parties especially firms that are experts in that particular field. Firms should always avoid rushing to get the end product since rapid development of a project has been found to compromise quality of the final products not only for the case of FBI Virtual Case File, but also for many other projects. References Top of Form Bottom of Form Top of Form Bottom of Form Top of Form Bottom of Form Top of Form Bottom of Form Top of Form Bottom of Form Top of Form Bottom of Form Top of Form Bottom of Form Top of Form Bottom of Form Top of Form Bottom of Form Top of Form Bottom of Form Top of Form Bottom of Form Top of Form Bottom of Form Al Neimat, T. (2005). Why IT projects fail. online in Project Perfect Project Management Software. 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Turner, L., & Weickgenannt, A. (2008). Accounting information systems: Controls and the processes. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley. Read More