Prototyping concepts and applications in article review

¶ … Prototyping That Surprised You the Most

A brief summary of why it surprised you

A description of the purpose of prototyping within the example in the chosen article

The article 'Could prototyping be the new policy? By Dan McQuillan (28 May 2012) talks about the ease of prototyping and directs one to online programs that can help the user prototype. In the usual sense, one would have to send much time in filling out an application and grant and then waiting for it to be approved. The author, however, points out that from his experience prototyping the model can take much faster than filling out an application and approval comes faster too. All sorts of organizations, he says, are using online prototyping, and some of these organizations are credible as well as questionable. Government institutions have joined the bandwagon too.

The aspect of prototyping that surprised me the most was actually this entire idea that it can bypass the aggravating and frustrating web of bureaucracy that holds projects up and prevents one form moving forward. McQuillan borrows original Jargon File of geek slang for defining a hacker as: "one who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations." He applies this to prototyping and when seen this way prototyping becomes a stimulating adventure. Some companies do present exorbitant claims such as Kickstarter that claims that it will disburse more money than the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts. McQuillan mentions that crowdfunding, which is the essence of prototyping will not uncork all bottlenecks. However, it goes a long way in helping people tackle their problems and in establishing startups without waiting for help and continuance form incumbent institutions. The author describes how he used prototyping for starting his "Social Innovation Camp weekends to kick off social projects." He combined prototyping with asset-based community development using the internet to aggregate ideas on social action. He concludes by saying that prototyping can be used towards all purposes, nefarious and meaningless as well as positive. He urges us to use prototyping for social good

(2) Explain the four stages of the BPM process and summarize the activities in each.

The main four activities of the BPM (business process management) process are:

Design

This refers to modeling the management process where stakeholders and management sit down, plan, and collaborate on how they will design and implement process

Execution

Running the process according to the plan and according to deadlines

Monitoring

Checking for problems both during the running of process and by a review that follows implementation. Stakeholders are constantly kept informed.

Optimization

Monitoring process and updating it when necessary and at regular periods. It also involves making the process better

BPM is an integrated collection of critical software technologies that enables control and management of business processes. The Management process emphasizes business user involvement in the entire business process improvement life cycle, from design through implementation, deployment, monitoring and ongoing optimization. BPM integrates input of employees together with input from software and helps make the business transparent and auditable.

BPM is also helpful in that it helps business stakeholders monitor interactions between human, system and information resources and optimize behavior to get the most out of dynamic market events and to improve business performance outcomes. (Chegg. BPM process)

(3) Describe the five major challenges to systems development.

The five major challenges to systems development are the following:

An Information System project may fail before delivery _ the project was completed and the system was, a t the last moment, discovered to be faulty or incomplete

An Information System may fail after delivery - it is only when users are using system that system is discovered to be faulty / incomplete