Managing Information Systems In Xero: A Case Study

Effect of IS/IT technology on the project methodology selected

Business diversification and a rise in some various business projects, nowadays, due to globalization have been needed to support people involved in project activities. Hence managing information Systems or technology projects is highly essential.  Accurate and timely data about project plans, related and progress costs are vital for project managers and assure the project’s success.

To understand this, Xero, AU at Australia has been chosen as the case study here. The organization connects all aspects of business and their online accounting software inter-connects bookkeepers and accountants, banks and high range of companies.

In the following report, the present state of Xero’s IS/IT technology and its dependency is evaluated. Then its effect on the methodology selected for executing the project is analyzed. Next, it demonstrates how this project is aligned with the strategic aims of Xero along with project scope, essential features, limitations and problems regarding scope changes.

Accurate, timely and relevant information is vital to the decision-making process of the project and to depend on sufficient information system has put the plan at risk. Hence, knowledge is a significant resource for Xero’s project managers (Schwalbe, 2015). However, although these things are known, project managers have failed to provide kinds of information required to assure project success. Thus deploying a project management information system is an essential method to point out complex project information necessities.

As per the size of the project is considered, to implement the project case in the organizational context, there has been a loss of control found. This is around the systematic analysis of the data collected. However, the project is located to be late, over budget and of lower quality. For overcoming this data shortage, the managers made the size of the project organizations under a corporate organization (Marchewka, 2014). This has led to supplication and wastage of effort, time and money. After this problem statement, the project objectives have been to identify the needs, comparing the present situation with what is required to achieve the aim of PMIS set by the upper level of management. Then the gap must be bridged between the needs and what has been in place already.

The IT sector of Xero has witnessed a robust customer demand and upgrading of emerging services and products as primary contributors to positive sentiments. Revenue growth has been following suit. Moreover, an evolving market of tech labour has been continuing with current challenges and scopes. As per the employer demand for every tech talent supply of outstripping routinely is intended to force Xero in rethinking their approaches in various sectors. This includes talent management, training and recruiting (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017).

Alignment of the project with the strategic aims of Xero

With the balancing transformations and incrementalisms, Xero has pursued a rise in transitions, adding or upgrading piecemeal of technology that is followed by workflow adjustments. Their boardrooms and CEO around the economy has been aware of the reality that the approach is not sufficient under the rapid change in customer dynamics and industries. However, this has not necessarily indicated the chasing the ideas (Nicholas & Steyn, 2017). Instead, this has been denoted the embracing of organizational mindset and proactively planning the digital future. In this way, different complementary trends covering technology business, a dynamic of a workforce and macroeconomic situations has provided grounding and contexts.

Considering collective programming, distinguished members of community or group from another, management under any organization is constrained by cultural context. Since, it has been impossible to coordinate activities of people instead of in-depth understanding the expression, beliefs and values (Laudon & Laudon, 2015). Different cultural dimension model of Xero is popular to distinguish and analyse between national cultures. Here five significant dimensions are identified to investigate the separating the success and society.

Power distance	This is the extent to which members of Australian society accept the power in Xero is distinguished unequally.
Individualism and collectivism	These dimensions denote the issues of degree of interdependence maintained by society among people focusing on own self.
Avoiding uncertainty	This affects the way people have been building their organizations and institutions.
Long-term orientation	The project managers must be holding beliefs and values while staying in society and execute projects. Various project managers have been scoring distinctly on these dimensions (Park & Lee, 2014). As Xero is unable to relate those cultural dimensions to different leadership styles, they have failed to compare those societal dimensional to project leadership styles.

Thus it has been complicated to ascertain the study whether the dimensions has been in a relationship with traits and leadership competencies of project managers.

The effects of selected projects on the Xero’s success and society can be understood through analyzing the organizational situation through the following SWOT analysis.

Strengths: § Needed skills in-house § Proper budget assigned to project § New technologies or equipment in projects § Experience of project teams on same kinds of projects	Weakness: § Lack of a reliable estimate of available costs § Lack of budget to deliver contingency funding § Different parts of a project require to be outsourced § Unrealistic schedule of the project
Opportunities: § The project can be leveraged nationally and internationally § Weaknesses of competitors § Latest trends of industries § Imminent and new technology developments	Threats: § Lack of well-established competition in a marketplace § The experiences staffs are hard to replace § Testing new technologies § Effects of national and global economic conditions

For the current plan, agile methodology is chosen to empower people and their interactions earlier with consistent delivery of value to Xero. This kind of project management concentrates on delivering absolute value against different priorities of business in budget and time allowed. This is mainly to derive from providing what is higher than risk. The principles of Xero have included various factors. The project can break the requirements into smaller parts prioritised by groups regarding significance (Avgerou & Walsham, 2017). Moreover, it has been promoting collaborative tasks, particularly with customers. This has been reflecting, learning and adjusting at regular intervals to assure that client’s of Xero is always satisfied and delivers results that bring about benefits. They have been integrating planning of execution, permitting Xero to provide a mind to work. This helps their team to response smartly to various changes in requirements.

The above agile process is perfect for Xero’s project needing a series of iterations and versions required to e improved and reviewed until the ultimate product is ready for the prime time. Here, for instance, despite waiting for six months for a deliverable that has been flawed and not meeting the present perquisites. It has been helping to create drafts for instant feedback (Eason, 2014). From, here one Xero can develop every version till it gets finished. Moreover, there have been various benefits in using Agile. These are illustrated in Appendix.

Project scope, essential features, limitations, and problems regarding scope changes

For Xero, some of the benefits drawn are as follows. There have been improper approaches that are needed to be identified quickly. The agile has been emphasized over failing fast by showing the progress of business every time. Next, the decisions are being made very quickly. The different collocated business partners have empowered to undertake most effective choices. As their questions have been arising this has been common to gather people under flexible space for discussing those issues. Here there has rarely been any necessity to coordinate meetings taking various days to schedule. Then there has been a collaboration of results in multiple benefits. Since the business and technology groups of Xero have been accountable equally, there has been a share in the desire to gain success (Pearlson, Saunders & Galletta, 2016). Here the technology is well understood from the challenges felt by the business with present environments and thus the business resources are understood from different technical problems. The business resources have been recognized with various technical difficulties to create new applications. As these issues are surfaced, every people in the group are aware of them, and those solutions have been commonly determined by resources working on the complexity of various area of application. Moreover, the changes are defined as inevitable and embraced (Joseph, 2017).

The ultimate product has comprised of most essential elements. The participants of business in product evolution are active to determine the features that include values. Again, determination of the perquisites at the beginning of the project has been resulting in functionality that is developed. Here the scenario has been more appealing for millennial. Further, the production code is of higher quality. Also, the business has been more satisfied with the results. Technical documentation has been taking a long time and has been improper (Kavanagh & Johnson, 2017). As the literature has been limited to user stories and test cases, it has been denoting what has been created and what is planned. Further, the audit traceability has been better as the sign-offs are particular to different discrete elements. This is opposite to any original approval of excellent documentation. Moreover, maintenance of application is simple.

The Scrum project management, software development, applications for design collaboration and tools of prototypes has been useful for agile teams to get to the same page.  In Agile software development, the developing and designing teams have been required to work together to create high-quality products. Collaboration with Agile successfully has been leading to efficient outcomes. This comprises a lesser number of miss-understandings in under project hand-off, smarter product delivery and minor reworks (Binder, 2016).

Cultural context within Xero

However, receiving developers and designers in the similar page has not been straightforward. Moreover, a successful collaboration between the teams for agile scrum has needed proper tools. For instance, Atlassian Jira is a useful tool for tracking of issue and projects. It is a cross-platform agile software development and mechanisms of team collaboration (Tayeh, M., Al-Jarrah & Tarhini, 2015). This has been helpful for high-performing agile teams to track and plan projects and issues such that they can provide software on time and regularly. Next, slack is a secure communication taking place between the agile teams. This team chat application is helpful for Xero to be aware of issues. The units can chat and then share files, personalise conversations and make calls. Then there is ProductPlan for road mapping agile products. This is helpful for Xero since it is easy and creates plans and upgrades that at regular interval having drop and dragging features. This has indicated that every people at Xero have been upgraded for the following step in their journey towards the delivery of products. Lastly, Xero has comprised of document management and file sharing. It is a cloud based sharing, synchronising and hosting service (Hitomi, 2017). Moreover, it is helpful to collect feedbacks having comments on documents and generate a core workspace for resources. Besides, it is beneficial to work as a team at the same time with a powerhouse for collaboration across the organisation.

For the current project at Xero, the qTest can be deployed. This is robust enterprise management software needed particularly for agile teams. This can be customised depending on the necessities of a development team and is simple to use. This is because of its smart interface. These tools can be assimilated with various tools like JIRA and various other tools for automation. This has been helpful for software resting procedures for Xero, to get executed flawlessly and arrange documentation testing (Dawson, Leonard & Rahim, 2015). Their development team has been able to add perquisites and control test cases and complete those tests to find defects whenever the project gets set up. One can also import current test cases under the software for running. Here, the best part of those tools is its real-time reporting. This is helpful for teams to keep track of productivity, progress and quality of the projects.

Strategic objectives for costs and budgets	They should launch and create new products, rise customer conversion, become market leader, focus on customer satisfaction, receive market position, explore new customer segments, rise in revenues, attract investments, return on assets, dividend of shareholders, increase diversified revenue streams and amount of products within portfolio (Hogue et al., 2015).
Strategic goals for growth and learning	This includes developing internal communications, a rise of online and updates that are in person, amount of reporting tools, amount of internal newsletter a week, skills of communication with training programs, surveying teams and creating momentum. This has also included communication skills training programs, surveying teams, creating dynamics, deploy performance review and various reward systems (Galliers & Leidner, 2014). Next, culture is to be designed and then aligned across organisations. Next, new locations are opened and move towards becoming international. This includes a percentage of sales locally and at abroad and the number of intended products. Further, training programs are to be implemented and created and decline employee turnover. Then the rate of employee utilization is to be balanced and develop training programs.
Strategic goals for customers	This help[s in developing customer satisfaction, declining amount of product returns, rise net promoter scores, percentage of defaults on predicts, reacting time to complaints, increasing number of attractors over social media, rise in number of returning customers, developing service approach for existing and new customers, building strategic partnerships, developing measurement if effects, time of customer delivery and rise in number of new customers (Lloyd, 2017).
Strategic goals for business process	This includes rise in web traffic, number of publications, number of backlinks, vendor performances, restructuring organization, implementing software projects, rise through acquisition, rise in value of projects and control costs, lowering costs of productions, creating future capacity, declining defects, developing supplier relationships, rising web traffics, amount of publications, backlinks, vendor performances, restructuring Xero, deploying software projects, rise in acquisition, rise in value of project value and controlling growths, lowering cost of productions, declining defects, improving relationships of suppliers, increase in team size and finding new volunteers (Cassidy, 2016). Then there has been launching and completing specific projects, per unit yield, per unit costs, research and development time, developing resource allocating and decreasing industrial wastes.

The essential characteristics and scope changes are identified through the following user stories.

Using the most straightforward tools	Here, the index cards would be helpful to work with and having an including a technique of modeling.
Remembering non-functional requirements	Here the stories can be utilized describing a broad variety of various types of conditions.
Indicating estimated size	This can be done by assigning user story points for every card having a relative indication of how long it has been taking programmers to deploy the story.

Agile project management for Xero’s projects

The acceptance test evaluates different project scopes. Here, encouragement of closer collaboration between develops and customers, domains and users is to be done. This must entail that the business perquisites are expressed (Conforto & Amaral, 2016). Next, providing unambiguous and clear contracts between developers and customers should be refining current tests and propose the new ones as needed. Further, there is a decline in the chance and severity of new defects and various regressions.

However, it must be kept in mind that the acceptance tests have been focused unduly over technical deployments. Thus it runs risks of failing because of minor modifications. This is really never have any effect on the behavior of the product (Peltier, 2016).

This is illustrated through the following Time schedule plan.

Task Name	Duration	Start	Finish	Predecessors
Planning schedule management	5 days	Fri 5/12/17	Thu 5/18/17
Defining activities	6 days	Fri 5/19/17	Fri 5/26/17	2
Sequencing activities	7 days	Mon 5/29/17	Tue 6/6/17	3
Developing the project plan	7 days	Wed 6/7/17	Thu 6/15/17	4
Reviewing the software capabilities.	7 days	Fri 6/16/17	Mon 6/26/17	5
Estimating activity resources	1 day	Tue 6/27/17	Tue 6/27/17	7
Estimating activity durations	20 days	Tue 6/27/17	Mon 7/24/17	7
Developing of schedule	5 days	Tue 7/25/17	Mon 7/31/17	9
Controlling of schedule	5 days	Tue 8/1/17	Mon 8/7/17	11

Figure 1: “Gantt Chart for the estimated project plan for Xero”

Source: (Created by Author)

Setting and acknowledging milestones	This would show how the clients are expected to make progress. This also indicates how they see and approve tasks before moving to every subsequent sign.
Providing regular upgrades and demos to various stakeholders	This is to regular sending reminders to clients for future deadlines.
Planning for potential conflicts and problems	During controlling projects and deadlines, potential resources and challenges of technology have been emerging. This must be done.
Creating a realistic schedule	This must be done from the active date and must be permitted for slippage in schedule instead of communicating that to the team.

Failures	Justifications	Methods of prevention
Lack of Top Level Buy-In	The project can be on track for delivering superior outcomes before the estimated date. However, as the senior management has not been on board, or not included, there can be various issues	The senior managers must be informed regarding all kind of challenges, successes and concerns (Liggins II, Hall & Llinas, 2017).
Unrealistic Requirements and Schedules	Having the proper information upfront, various time-consuming and complicated problems can be avoided for down the line	Here, this has been secure to assume the timelines are incredibly demanding. They must be asked for more time to plan stages and assure that every detail is needed to progress.
Lack of resources	This has been vital to anticipate shortages of supplies from the client side for finding as they are unable to sustain project schedule or deliverables	They should analyse the lack of resources affecting the tasks of critical paths (Piotrowicz & Cuthbertson, 2014).

Conclusion: 

The above-selected project of Xero to manage IT has provided an in-depth analysis. This is done by considering various aspects of disciplines of project management. The project managers have needed to balance the competing goals in managing project management. The above study has shown that the project managers have required to restore the competing goals like cost, time and scopes. The project management artefacts used is helpful to adjust the constraints. Moreover, the study has shown the nature and extent of the IT project of Xero, where the closeout is the needed step for considering support mode of customers. Various project closeouts, turnovers and additional mechanisms are helpful to create the ongoing life of the project.  This must assure that the ends get in place and as any topic arises again, there is an effective reference point regarding the details of the plans. Lastly, it must e reminded that the proposed solution could be easy. However, it is complicated to implement in real life scenario for yielding the intended performance levels at a time for the proper place.

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