44.493201 Issues in Technology and Security

home > unit 3: developing evaluation criteria

Phase 2. Identify and test solutions
Finding reasonable solutions to identify and test. Helps to study experience of others who've face similar problems. Develop alternatives. Low-cost, low-risk tests:

• Best and current practice research.
  ".. key is to specify, as clearly and narrowly as you can, the questions you want to answer, and then to evaluate critically what you read and hear."
• environment scan
  determine what's happening in overall environment that may affect project.
• Benchmarking and building technology awareness
  go to trade shows, demos, vendor presentations.
• Understand implementation environment
  Specify modest, moderate, elaborate solutions "that seem to fit well with the context, problem, and stakeholder analyses from Phase 1 as well as the information you gathered and evaluated from other places"
• list key elements of a solution
  "will vary according to your objective, but some common elements are the means of customer access, response time, degree of customization, level of security, extent of manual data handling, and degree of integration with other processes or systems."

• modest:
  describe how a minimally useful solution would address each of these elements.
• moderate:
  "..offers greater functionality, more convenience, or other improvements over the modest level.
• elaborate:
  "..most advanced solution that an organization might attempt.

• Finally, for all three alternative solutions, state benefits and who receives them:
  • quantifiable ones such as dollar or time savings
  • qualitative ones that improve service quality or availability.
• Prototype when possible
  May "start by gathering and comparing performance data from existing projects that are operating elsewhere. If all the alternatives are operationally feasible, then testing the concept with appropriate stakeholders may be sufficient. If the proposals involve some real unknowns, then try to create test conditions that are as close to real life as possible, such as building one or more prototype systems tested under field conditions in a controlled experiment. Also remember that the more costly the solution (in dollars, effort, and change to the status quo) the more reason you have to conduct a life-like field test.

"One surprising result of these tests may be the extent to which non-technology solutions fill your needs. Often significant improvements in business processes or information flow go a long way toward meeting your objectives, even without the application of new technologies. In one agency we worked with, $3 million had been set aside for an imaging system to improve customer service transactions. After successfully building and testing a prototype that reflected completely revamped business processes, the agency decided not to spend the money on new technology. Why? The prototype effort showed that most of the benefits could be obtained by process improvements alone." (my emphasis)

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