Critical Analysis of the Interfront Project - Theory Application

Critical Analysis of The Ideas you have Used

What Benefits (Or Otherwise) Did You Find Regarding Their Usefulness To Your Practice?

Why Do You Think This Is The Case? What Alternatives Did You Try Or Want To Try In The Future? Be Sure To Include Evidence To Support Your Assertions And Discussions.

What Has Been The Overall Impact Of Having Undertaken These Cycles Of Inquiry For Your Practice?

What Are The Next Steps For You In Terms Of Developing Your Practice With Regard To Your Studies? You Should Provide a Copy Of Your Original Scoping Proposal.

Interfront is considered to be one of the WCO and WTO compliant subsidy which has always delivered world class software products and hence based on this, my initiative for having a strategic plan mostly focused on several objectives revolving the project. These were, to develop and maintain a custom solution for SARS, to support the Luxembourg ADA, to readily respond to the requests from the customer solutions coming from the neighbouring countries in South Africa, to develop and maintain a sustainable and financially self sufficient organization for supporting the targeted sales of the customs solution and for selecting the targeted sales of the customs solutions to the selected global markets by using the dedicated resellers. My role as a Senior Manager with the operations department has made me take several decisions for reaching the above-mentioned objectives and implement ideas for reaching the specified goals, which I would reflect on and at the same time I would evaluate them critically according to their theoretical representation and my practical application. This would elaborate the stakeholders in the project, the incorporation of the ideas and their usefulness. The concepts of theories in managerial practices would also be evaluated critically. Then finally I would present my critique on the overall impact of the undertaken cycles in the practise and the next steps towards the development of the practices with regards to the studies that I performed.

Description of the work context: The project that was developed before was totally dependent on the development of an IT based solution for the organization of SARS or South African Revenue Services and its completely owned subsidiary called Interfront. The development was aiming at the IT based solution for the SARS customs modernization program and also for NCAP or the New Customs Act Program. The organization is looking forward to fulfilling five business objectives which can be listed as follows:

Brief Description of The Work Context, Your Role, and The Stakeholders Involved in your EBI

For developing and maintaining a customer solution for SARS.

For supporting Luxembourg ADA

For responding to the requests for the customs solution from the neighbouring countries around South Africa.

For building up a sustainable and financially self-sufficient organization

For building up a proper support for the targeted sales for the customs solution for selected global markets with the help of dedicated resellers.

My role: My role in this project is to work for the Operations Division as a Senior Manager and manage the Business Systems Analysis team consisting of twelve members in the team. My role would specifically be the management of the team such that there would be to engage the clients and provide them with appropriate support according to the requirements and objectives of the project.

Stakeholders involved in my EBI: The stakeholders that have been involved in this project for bringing in the organizational changes should be listed as below:

The direct line manager

The HR teams

The other line managers

The executive committee

My existing team

All the other employees that would be associated with the Organizational and Operational changes

As per the requirements and the business objectives that I needed to fulfil and the managing of the team that I required to have at the same time, I tried to understand what my individual goals that I need to fulfil as a Senior Manager the department would be. This is why would manage the business system analysis team with the help of a special note prepared for myself that I had represented as checklist that I need to follow for covering all the evidence based initiative or EBI performance. It is about the organisational initiative and I have divided it into 3 focus areas.

The first one was to have a strategic focus and change for operations. I considered the changes that the organisation would require and for this arrange a new team, procedures and processes as well so that I can integrate all the existing systems within the method project life cycle. The new software for the customs was to be developed through the software development life cycle. I also prepared my checklist to have my focus on the expected business outcomes. I realised that the approval of the design for the strategic focus changes the operation strategy. Therefore there was a requirement of Change Management within the organisation which would setup and new business operations environment within the business analysis and system analysis department. However, this was a difficult process as this is the only department that would directly interact with the software development life cycle. The new team that is about to be implemented within this section was the user interface or User experience that is the UX/UI team. The only problem was to integrate this well within the EBI, so that it could use the evidences found and incorporate them to have an outcome.

Usefulness (or otherwise) of The Concepts

The theory or model that was used in this section there were three theories specified which can be listed as follows:

The Operation Strategy: This is management plan which specifies the allocation of resources in an organisation that would support the infrastructure and production. I have realised that this would be e given by the overall business strategy and maximize the effectiveness. The allocation of a new team in this case is what I believe formulate the supporting of infrastructure by allocating resources in the form of human resource for this project.

The McKinsey 7s model: This is also an operational strategy where a management model is developed with the help of a tool to analyse the organisational design of the firm with the help of 7 internal elements which forms the primary concept. This internal elements are shared values, strategy, systems, structures, skills, staff and style. The strategic management is held for the effectiveness of the organisation and mostly these are aligned performing the foundation of the Change Management approach. I believe I would have the implementation of this particular theory for identifying the internal basic elements for having the project figure out all the important information that would be required for the implementation of the software.

Four stage model: This particular theory describes the strategic role within the operations of an organisation mostly used for integration system planning. As per the theory suggest I would like to use the four stage model lesser then the other two models as this would not make me go through all the detailed information about the the implementation of the software.

While utilising all the three theories in management practice, I would like to to implement that the McKinsey 7s theory can be regarded as the best theoretical model of the concepts implemented in the real life scenario. The McKinsey 7s model helps a manager to get ahead and faster with achieving the goals as there are 7 integral internal information about the organisation that is achievable while utilising this theory into practice. It is not just a situation where the 7s model can be utilised only for implementing the custom software development life cycle. I believe that if I am able to achieve the different concepts about the organisation while performing this particular project implementation, I would be able together the the exact information that I wood required for any project that I would like to implement further according to the requirement of the organisation. I have come into terms with the McKinsey 7s model as a flexible theoretical strategy and this is why and utilising this for improving the performance of the organisation by determine the best way to implement the change.

Theories in Managerial Practice

One of the primary requirement was to have a fully engage to workforce, making a staff be aware and understand their roles and responsibilities for the expectation that the organisation is required for them to deliver and achieve the company goals. It is not just about the creation of the team but also implementing a change within the new team so that the team can achieve all the goals that the organisation is requiring right now. The team development as per the other development theory follows the team development strategies like forming, storming, norming and performing. However this would not just be the only company goal that is trying to be achieved right now. It is also necessary that the team works together and produces the best strategy that would bring out the individual skills of each of the team members working in such a way that the best possible outcome is implemented. As per the McKinsey 7s Framework, the seven elements can be recognised as both hard and soft elements. While the hard elements are the strategy, structure and system; the soft elements are shared values, skills, style and staff.

Figure 1: The McKinsey 7S Model

With all these information, I can easily see that all the information that I required about the organisation with the McKinsey 7s Framework does not include the implementation of my strategy for the software development life cycle but also has the skills and staff information. This would provide me with a great detailed information about all the staff and their skills with the shared values about every employee within the organisation who have been working as a team for this project. For these are inclined to one another and also interconnected, I would state that the utilisation of this particular would be absolutely essential and appropriate in this particular section.

The utilisation of these theories in the evening practice have resulted into to a successful implementation that consisted of the Change management that I was focusing on for creating a strategic focus and change operations. I understood that the expected business outcome that was being expected from me as a senior manager was to change the entire outcome of the organisation which formed the basic issue that need to be addressed. I understood that the problem with user interface what's the primary requirement that would have a custom solution for the South African revenue service. The implementation of a new software with the enhanced user interface would be required to the most importance for all the aspects of software implementation. Since the Research and Analysis, Rapid prototyping and enhancing time to market, front end design and usability testing of the products where all included, the McKinsey 7s model and other theories utilised in the EBI practice would have been the best possible theory along with the operations strategy and the four stage model. With the utilisation of all these theory the results would always be successful as the implementation of of these theories would bring about all the alignment of the internal elements of the organisation and the the delivering of the best possible skills by each and every team member.

The cycles of enquiry that has been used in this project report was my my own creation as I thought that including these would make sure that my overall implementation of the undertaken steps have been essentially fallen into place. I thought that all these theories that I am trying to put into practice would be extremely essential as I would have a proper utilisation of of all my understandings of the issues and at the same time it would not be difficult for me to ensure how the theories would be essentially included into real life scenario. I have understood that the undertaken cycles when necessary for the practice so that the implementation of organisational change and operational change would come through the identification of the issues and solving them at the same time with the utilisation of models and theories.

The next step that I am trying to implement within this particular project is to make sure that all the issues have been identified in this space and at the same time the organisational changes have been identified. There are several cases where the project managers often fail to understand the different requirements of the project according to the resources provided by the organisation to bring about the Change management and change culture. Often there are staff that do not understand how Change management can be brought about so that they can work accordingly with their skills. I would identify these issues and motivate the employees next so that they understand the organisational needs and give their full potential to implement the software and what for this project forefather implementation and maintenance plans.

Conclusion

Therefore in conclusion it can be said that as the senior manager I have taken into consideration about all the problems that would be necessary to understand and implement it into practical world as per the given scenario. This provides me with enough information about how and organisational performance depends upon the managerial theories and how it can be implemented into the real life scenario based on the information provided within an organisation and change is brought about.

References

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Gökdeniz, Ä°., Kartal, C. and Kömürcü, K., 2017. Strategic assessment based on 7S McKinsey model for a business by using analytic network process (ANP). International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 7(6), pp.2222-6990.

Putra, R.P., Syah, T.Y.R., Pusaka, S. and Indradewa, R., 2019. Human Resources Implementation Using the McKinsey 7S Method for Business Startup: Duck Nugget Frozen Food. Journal of Multidisciplinary Academic, 3(3), pp.11-14.

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