Research Paper on:
IT Consulting for System Design

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
and Ciotti (1992) observe that the traditional tool of choice - the request for proposal (RFP) - often "automatically" adds increased costs to the procurement of any information technology (IT)  system, addition, upgrade or other significant change. The RFP process is costly, labor-intensive, and often lack all of the information that potential vendors need to design and implement what  the customer believes is "the" desired system. Braley (n.d.) agrees that the RFP route often is not one to be desired, and also notes that often the RFP "gets  confused with the concept of a system specification which served an entirely different purpose for many years." By nature the RFP must present what the issuing company wants as  an end product. Defining Needs A wise approach is to begin the decision-making process with a hierarchical decomposition of the current system, relative  to identified needs for both the present and the future. Martin, Brown, DeHayes and Hoffer (2002) give a concise definition of hierarchical decomposition. The authors describe "the system"  as "a set of interrelated components" (Martin, et al., 2002; p. 318), and that any one of the components making up the larger system can itself be viewed as a  system. In turn, this subsystem can further be broken down into a more narrowly-defined set of components, which also may be able to be viewed as subsystems themselves.  Martin, et al. (2002) explain that there are five primary goals of hierarchical decomposition: * Break the larger system down into more manageable and understandable segments; * Analyze or change  only part of - rather than all - a system; * Allow chronological design or construction of a specific subsystem; * Allow targeted use of a specific subsystem; and *