12 Billion Pounds NHS Computer Scheme Project Essay

12 Billion Pounds NHS Computer Scheme Project - Essay Example The IT system was integrated and new medical systems was enabled at individual hospitals. The NHS started as one of the largest public healthcare system implementation, which was needed for improving the overall service of the health care industry. Mintzberg et al (2005, p.8) comment ‘Strategy is a pattern, that is, consistency in behaviour over time. A company that perpetually markets the most expensive products in its industry pursues what is commonly called a high-end strategy, just as a person who always accepts the most challenging of jobs may be described as pursuing a high-risk strategy.’ The Project Management Process and Planning If the organization moves from simple system to complex, its environment and a number of other aspects needed to be modified. Employee and staff relationship is also important in this regard where the new relationships, departments and new skills are defined (Appleton, 1999). Change leads to resistance and confusion (Glover et al., 1999 ). The â€Å"Connecting for health† was the brand name given for automating and integrating the heath care service in UK. The plan was to automate a range of functions, including mundane services such as enabling members to use online system to making book appointments having their GPs (general practitioners). Clinically sensitive functions such as maintaining patient records and managing scans were part of the project. The whole system already posed a range of software system, which achieved few functions but these systems were not integrated fully. The common model for implementation involved questions such as What are we trying to accomplish? How we consider change is an improvement What changes can be achieved for improvement The project implementation processes involves - Study, Plan, Act and Do. The project lifecycle of NHS was determined through gateways such as the following- Strategic assessment (The earliest stage was to set up the business strategies and to make th e initial feasibility study) Business justification (After the development of program brief and business case, the business justification was identified, which requires detailed analysis of the project, capital investments, cash flow, operating expenditure such as salaries, maintenance materials, lease and revenue) Delivery strategy The investment decision Readiness for service (The project manager opts for implementation method for minimizing changes and improving coordination with interfaces from different stakeholders and suppliers is determined) Assessment of project, operational review and benefit realisation (The project should be able to provide benefits for decades) The security system of the project was developed with the help of Spine, which is the provider of security, and security measures were also compiled in the early stage of development. Wells (1996, p. 80) states ‘Sub organizations should create lower-level measurement plans that link with the corporate strat egic measurement plan. If the sub-organization has a separate strategic plan, then it will also need a separate strategic measurement plan. If the sub organization’s strategic plan starts at the strategy or objective level, it needs to have measures that link directly to the corporate strategic measurements. In the event that only a few measures can be linked, the sub organization should create additional strategic measurements that better describe its outcomes.’ The portfolio approach has been adopted by the project management teams for managing software development risk (McFarlan, 1981). Prior to this, risk was only considered from the technological perspective (Anderson and Narasumhan, 1979) and from the software development view (Barki, et al. 1993). For IT implementation the project should