Technical Writing

Changing economic, increasing need for faster and more relational information, enhanced security and non- static technological conditions place put governments at the core of seeking out new, efficient efficient, long-term and reliable software. Software systems which engage government interests and incite inquirinquiryes should not necessarily be found within the software alone but in the forces behind the software. The art of the proposal, the importance of the interview, software selection , team preparation for installation, testing, maintenance and monitoring, as well as the exploration of successes and fail rates (the attributes of pros and cons) are determining factors for choosing which new software to initiate.

Steps to Preparing the Proper Request for Proposal for New Software Systems

The are several preliminary steps involved in requesting the proposal.

1) Understanding the reality that many software companies vie for governmental contracts. Only the most prepared and most competitive will stand at the door and have a voice.

· This requires building and establishing a firm presence in the form of a business profile/presence-this includes but not limited to your capabilities and knowledge in the area of skill you present with your product. This should be concise and strong detailing management, business and technical strengths, past performance history as well as any awards the company may ha e received. This should not be overwhelming but instead a one page summary highlighting the most important aspects.

· Understand the government is not a common buyers marketplace a governmental agencies use the North American Industry Classification System commonly referred to as NAICS to identify services and products by industry type using code. You must know the corresponding code for your product.

· Know SAM-SAM is short for System for Award Management and is searched by government agencies to learn/become aware of prospective companies. Registering in the system provided by SAM is necessary to participate as a seller in the governmental marketplace.

· Planning and writing the proper request for proposal

Developing the proper request for proposal which provides the bidders the proper knowledge of the government entity, the necessary deliverables, a proper bidders conference with question and answer time frames and a separate and well designed cost proposal section with both base bid pricing and add work is essential to the success of the external software selection and software team to perform the installation.

Deliverables section

The in-house team should develop and have approved deliverables (location, timing, software,

hardware, etc. estimated time frames, status meetings)

Necessary Representation and Warranties should be obtained in each successfully awarded contract with proper updates for insurance, performance bonds, key personnel to remain on the team along with financial statements of the entity providing the strength and history to perform long term installations.

Cost Section of the Request for Proposal

The cost section should be separate and opened after the qualified bidders deliverables are rated by a fair and unbiased team of in-house and at least one external expert.

Elements of a Successful Software and Hardware Installation

Once the successful bidder is awarded critical stages of the installation must be matched to the deliverable time frames.

· Essential status meetings with the software and hardware installers are necessary with internal teams on an interim basis to ensure progress goals are met and delays are resolved and dealt with.

Elements of the status meetings

Time and cost overruns

Interim testing and input

Installation modifications

Managers involved in technological change serve as both implementers and technical developers. Usually one organization develops the technology and then hands it off to users, who are less technically skilled but quite knowledgeable about their own areas of application. The user organization is often not able to take on responsibility for the technology at the point in its evolution at which the development group wants to hand it over. The person responsible for implementation—whether located in the developing organization, the user organization, or in some intermediary position—has to design the hand-off so that it is almost invisible. The implementation manager has to integrate the perspectives and the needs of both developers and users.

Adoption of a marketing perspective encourages implementation managers to seek user involvement in the: (1) early identification and enhancement of the fit between a product and user needs, (2) preparation of the user organization to receive the innovation, and (3) shifting of “ownership” of the innovation to users.

CONDUCTING PILOT OPERATIONS

There are two reasons for conducting a pilot operation before introducing an innovation across the board in a large organization: first, to serve as an experiment and prove technical feasibility to top management and, second, to serve as a credible demonstration model for other units in the organization. These two purposes are not always compatible.

In any case innovation needs a champion to nurture it. New technology capable of inspiring strong advocacy will also provoke opposition. Some of the most common reasons for opposition to a new technology are fear of the loss of skills or power and absence of an apparent personal benefit.

Essential elements after going live and installation

Key elements to a software system

The product integration process is a set of procedures used to combine

components into larger components, subsystems or final products and

systems. Product integration is used to enable the organization to observe all

important attributes that a product will have; functionality, quality and

performance. This is especially important for software systems as the integration process is the first occurrence where the full result of the product development effort is observed.

Practices for product and system development are described in a number of

standards and models such as ISO/IEC 12207 [2] and CMMI [3]. It is

noticeable that most standards and reference models deal with product and

system development without distinguishing software as a specific item.

Steve McConnel describes integration in [4] as “the software development

activity in which you combine separate software components into a single

system “.

With such intimate steps involved in the development process a thorough understanding of quality should be instilled in all personnel responsible for the deliverance of software components/instruction to ensure proper assistance when needed.

Tales of Fails

Million dollar glitch: County pulls plug on court software system Burned by old deal that cost $30 million, Marin supervisors seek new software contract

Tales of Succeses

Successes were a bit difficult to find. I’m going to look at governmental journals (via dissertations), specifically to help with this. The failures I pulled up are not government specific but are software examples.

I still have to insert citations which one is a journal reference.

Have not yet run it through plagiarism check due to not inserting any citations as of yet. Just wanted to get your view on these additions.

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