ADMAS UNIVERSITY

Migrating to new Technology

Individual Assignment

Mamitu Kebede
Id. No. 9973/10
Section 10-3EOA1
Program Extension
Entry Year 2010

Submitted to: Asferaw A.

August 2020
Q1. Sources for identifying new technology
New technologies are emerging in the market every day. It is important that IT professionals are
aware of how to identify new technologies that are appropriate for their organization. If you
decide to adopt these technologies in your organization you will need to acquire new skills in
response to the new technology before successfully implementing it. IT professionals need to
follow a systematic procedure to identify the implications of the new technology for all the
stakeholders.
Implementing new technology means change. It is expected that the new technology will make
life much easier for users by providing better mechanisms for performing and managing regular
organizational tasks. However, if we are to be successful in migrating to new technology then we
must anticipate how the new technology will impact all stakeholders. You should also be
mindful of the magnitude of the impact the technology will have on the enterprise. Finally, you
must bear in mind that user (stakeholder) acceptance is the key to successful implementation.
As an IT professional, you need be aware of the trends of new technology emerging in the
industry. The following are some sources amongst many others that will keep you up-to-date
with these changes.

Trade magazines
Trade and business magazines such as Technology and Business constantly introduce IT
professionals to new technologies.

The Internet
The Internet, giving access to World Wide Web, forums, newsgroups and mailing lists, is also a
valuable source of information about new technologies.

Networking
Socialising with other IT professionals and joining professional associations is also a good
source of identifying new technologies available. Suppliers and consultants will also keep you
updated with trends and information about new technology.

Formal training
Attending formal training courses will certainly expose you to new technologies available by
giving you an opportunity to identify new technologies — not only through the content of the
course but also by getting an opportunity to network with other IT professionals.
Q2.

Impact on Operating Costs

Small business owners can use technology to reduce business costs. Basic enterprise software
enables a firm to automate back office functions, such as record keeping, accounting and
payroll. Mobile tech allows home offices and field reps to interact in real time. For example,
field reps can use mobile apps to record their daily expenses as they incur them and have them
sync automatically with accounting software back at the office.

Securing Sensitive Information

Business owners can also use technology to create secure environments for maintaining
sensitive business or consumer information. Many types of business technology or software
programs are user-friendly and allow business owners with only minor backgrounds in
information technology to make the most of their tools and features.

Improved Communication Processes

Business technology helps small businesses improve their communication processes. Emails,
texting, websites and apps, for example, facilitate improved communication with consumers.
Using several types of information technology communication methods enable companies to
saturate the economic market with their message. Companies may also receive more consumer
feedback through these electronic communication methods.

Technology also improves inter-office communication as well. For example, social intranet
software gives employees a centralizes portal to access and update internal documents and
contracts and relay relevant data to other departments instantly. These methods also help
companies reach consumers through mobile devices in a real-time format.

Increased Employee Productivity

Small businesses can increase their employees' productivity through the use of technology.
Computer programs and business software usually allow employees to process more
information than manual methods. Business owners can also implement business technology to
reduce the amount of human labor in business functions. This allows small businesses to avoid
paying labor costs along with employee benefits.
Even fundamental business tech can have a major impact on employee performance. For
example, by placing employee-performance appraisal information in an online framework,
supervisors can easily create measurable goals for their employees to reach and sustain
company objectives. Business owners may also choose to expand operations using technology
rather than employees if the technology will provide better production output.

Broaden Customer Bases

Technology allows small businesses to reach new economic markets. Rather than just selling
consumer goods or services in the local market, small businesses can reach regional, national
and international markets. Retail websites are the most common way small businesses sell
products in several different economic markets.

Websites represent a low-cost option that consumers can access 24/7 when needing to purchase
goods or services. Small business owners can also use internet advertising to reach new
markets and customers through carefully placed web banners or ads.

Collaboration and Outsourcing

Business technology allows companies to outsource business functions to other businesses in

the national and international business environment. Outsourcing can help companies lower
costs and focus on completing the business function they do best. Technical support and
customer service are two common function companies outsource.

Small business owners may consider outsourcing some operations if they do not have the
proper facilities or available manpower. Outsourcing technology also allows businesses to
outsource function to the least expensive areas possible, including foreign countries.

Q3.
Introducing technological change into an organization presents a different set of challenges to
management than does the work of competent project administration. Frequently, however, the
managers responsible for shepherding a technical innovation into routine use are much better
equipped by education and experience to guide that innovation’s development than to manage its
implementation.

A Dual Role

Those who manage technological change must often serve as both technical developers and
implementers. As a rule, 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. In
practice, however, the user organization is often not willing—or 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. That is, before the baton changes hands, the runners should have been running in parallel
for a long time. The implementation manager has to integrate the perspectives and the needs of
both developers and users.

Marketing Perspective

That involving users in a new technology’s design phase boosts user satisfaction is quite well
known, but the proper extent, timing, and type of user involvement will vary greatly from company
to company. For example, software developers in an electronic office equipment company
established a user design group to work with developers on a strategically important piece of
applications software when the program was still in the prototype stage. Prospective users could try
out the software on the same computer employed by the program’s developers. The extremely tight
communication loop that resulted allowed daily feedback from users to designers on their
preferences and problems. This degree of immediacy may be unusual, but managers can almost
always get some information from potential users that will improve product design.

Framework for Information

Just as marketing managers carefully plan the research through which they will gather critical
product information, so implementation managers must develop an iterative, almost accordion-like
framework to guide decisions about when and how to collect needed information from all groups
affected by an innovation. We say “accordion-like” because the process necessarily involves a
search for information, a pause to digest it, and then another active period of search—cycle after
cycle. What information is important—and who has it—may vary at different stages of the
implementation process, but someone must coordinate the iterative work of gathering it—and that
someone is the implementation manager.

Multiple Internal Markets

The higher the organizational level at which managers define a problem or a need, the greater the
probability of successful implementation. At the same time, however, the closer the definition and
solution of problems or needs are to end-users, the greater the probability of success.
Implementation managers must draw up their internal marketing plans in light of this apparent
paradox.

Promotion vs. Hype

Many a technology developer will confess bewilderment that innovations do not win automatic
acceptance. It may be overly optimistic to believe that an innovation will sell itself, but it is equally
dangerous to oversell the new system. Novel and exotic technologies are especially vulnerable to
hype.

Q4.
A test plan documents the strategy that will be used to verify and ensure that a product or system
meets its design specifications and other requirements. A test plan is usually prepared by or with
significant input from test engineers.
Depending on the product and the responsibility of the organization to which the test plan
applies, a test plan may include a strategy for one or more of the following:

 Design Verification or Compliance test – to be performed during the development or

approval stages of the product, typically on a small sample of units.
 Manufacturing or Production test – to be performed during preparation or assembly of
the product in an ongoing manner for purposes of performance verification and quality
control.
 Acceptance or Commissioning test – to be performed at the time of delivery or
installation of the product.
 Service and Repair test – to be performed as required over the service life of the product.
 Regression test – to be performed on an existing operational product, to verify that
existing functionality was not negatively affected when other aspects of the environment
were changed (e.g., upgrading the platform on which an existing application runs).
A complex system may have a high-level test plan to address the overall requirements and
supporting test plans to address the design details of subsystems and components.
Test plan document formats can be as varied as the products and organizations to which they
apply. There are three major elements that should be described in the test plan: Test Coverage,
Test Methods, and Test Responsibilities. These are also used in a formal test strategy.
Q5.

Manual Testing

Manual testing includes testing a software manually, i.e., without using any automated tool or
any script. In this type, the tester takes over the role of an end-user and tests the software to
identify any unexpected behavior or bug. There are different stages for manual testing such as
unit testing, integration testing, system testing, and user acceptance testing.
Testers use test plans, test cases, or test scenarios to test a software to ensure the completeness
of testing. Manual testing also includes exploratory testing, as testers explore the software to
identify errors in it.

Automation Testing

Automation testing, which is also known as Test Automation, is when the tester writes scripts
and uses another software to test the product. This process involves automation of a manual
process. Automation Testing is used to re-run the test scenarios that were performed manually,
quickly, and repeatedly.
Apart from regression testing, automation testing is also used to test the application from load,
performance, and stress point of view. It increases the test coverage, improves accuracy, and
saves time and money in comparison to manual testing.

Q6.
Some Positive effects:

1. Increased overall efficiency

2. More entertainment (games, movies, etc.…)
3. Easier time learning things (information, web, search)
4. Better quality of life, longer lives due to modern medicine and technology, etc.…
5. Increased safety. Better police response times, GPS, surveillance/cameras, etc.…
6. Easier communication. Phones, internet, IM, email.
7. Ability to do away with paper in large part, saving the forests from being cut down.
8. Decreased emissions and a greener environment keeping the Earth, and people,
healthier.

Some Negative effects:

1. Decreasing use of our own memory (less able to remember phone numbers for
example)
2. Decreased use of simple math calculations by hand (less able to do quick simple
calculations without a phone/calculator app).
3. More reliance on GPS to navigate. Less direction senses. I already notice this among
my own kids versus myself when I was their age.
4. Laziness. Gaining weight due to inactivity.
5. Kids, and adults, addicted to screens, social media, games, tv’s…. (which also leads
to #4).
6. Decreased attention spans due to the massive amount of information today.
Q7.

Operational metrics

Online application performance. The average time it takes to render a screen or page. It is also
important to measure the variability of performance (discussed further in the supplemental
operational metrics section).

Online application availability. The percentage of time the application is functioning properly.
This can be difficult to define. If the application is available for some users but not all, is it
"available?" What if most functions are working but a minor function is not? To address this
problem, I like to define the primary functions an application performs. Then, if any of these
functions are unavailable, the application is considered down even if most of the application is
usable. Also, if the application is primarily used during business hours, I like to have separate
metrics for that time versus other times. So, the metrics might be: primary functions during
business hours; all functions during business hours; primary functions 24x7; and all functions
24x7.

Batch SLAs met. The percentage of key batch jobs that finish on time.

Production incidents. The number of production problems by severity.

Supplemental operational metrics. Other metrics that might be used to enhance operational
effectiveness include the number of unscheduled changes to the production systems, the
throughput of batch processes, complexity scores for major applications (indicating how difficult
they are to maintain), architectural integrity (the percent of applications on preferred
technologies, another indication of how difficult applications are to maintain) and the variability
of online application performance.

Project satisfaction. The average score from post project surveys completed by business partners.
After each project, it is important to solicit feedback from the business. The survey should
contain one summary question for the project satisfaction metric (e.g., what is your overall
satisfaction with this project on a scale of one to five?), a few more specific questions and an
area for written comments. The survey should also be completed by the technology group to gain
further insights on the areas that could be improved moving forward, but these scores are not
included in the metric as they tend to be biased on the high side.

Project delivery. The percentage of projects delivered on time. "On time" is another tricky
concept. For projects using the waterfall methodology, the projected delivery date can vary
greatly once the team engages in the design process. I have found it useful to make sure business
partners know that the delivery date is not set until design is done and therefore, this metric uses
that date for a target. For Agile projects, this metric is not relevant as the delivery date is almost
always met by adjusting scope.  

Project cost. The percentage of projects delivered within the cost estimate. For this metric, I also
use the post design cost estimate for the same reasons noted in the previous section. Again, Agile
projects are less likely to benefit from this metric.
Q8.

Environmental Considerations:

Products or services that “have a lesser or reduced effect on human health and the environment
when compared with competing products or services that serve the same purpose.” This
comparison may consider raw materials acquisition, production, manufacturing, packaging,
distribution, reuse, operation, maintenance or disposal of the product or service.

Our solicitations focus on five environmental consideration areas which are;

 toxic reduction;
 water conservation;
 waste and reduction management;
 energy conservation and;
 environmental considerations for the purchase and serving of food. 

Q9.

What is customer feedback?

Customer feedback is the information, insights, issues, and input shared by your community about
their experiences with your company, product, or services. This feedback guides improvements of
the customer experience and can empower positive change in any business — even (and
especially) when it’s negative.

The 7 most effective customer feedback methods

1. Customer feedback surveys

Developing a useful customer survey may be more challenging than you think. There are a ton of
questions you could ask customers. The good news: you can choose between short slider surveys
(which help you target specific issues) that pop up on your site or longer, traditional surveys.
 2. Email and customer contact forms

Email is one of the easiest ways to gather candid customer feedback. Because it’s a support
channel for most companies, you can use each interaction as an opportunity to gather feedback.
To maximize the likelihood of hearing back from a customer, do these three things:

3. Usability tests

For usability testing to bring deep insights to your company, it requires more upfront planning.
With a clear strategy, though, you can uncover challenges that customers don’t know they’re
facing and actionable insights that make their experiences better. You may even want to consider
rewarding your user research participants the way Google does.

At Help Scout, we leverage usability testing to refine design details or new features. When we’re
90% finished with the updates, these tests guarantee we get that last 10% right. When our
team prepared to launch major improvements to our Beacon product, they opened Beacon 2.0 to a
small number of beta participants based on their current implementation of Beacon 1.0. We
transformed their feedback into product adjustments that improved the product before we rolled it
out to everyone.

4. Exploratory customer interviews

Does direct outreach translate to beneficial feedback from customers? Absolutely! Reaching out
to customers directly opens up conversations that otherwise wouldn’t happen.

Qualitative stories from customers bring color and nuance to quantitative feedback (data). These
personal experiences help a team understand the feelings behind customer decisions and the
community response to a company’s brand or decisions. When you conduct customer interviews,
you create the opportunity to challenge false assumptions that developed over time.

Keep the following tips in mind when you sit down to talk to customers:

 Start an open-ended dialogue. When you’re talking to customers, open-ended questions

are your best friend. These queries give your customers the flexibility to dig into their experiences
with more detail. Plus, they’re less likely to be biased or leading questions.

 Get more specific as you go. Begin the conversation with wider impressions and get more
detailed in your questions as the dialogue evolves. Every piece of feedback they give you is an
opportunity for another more specific follow-up.
 Practice active listening. To receive insights that can help your team, you need to be open
and receptive. Maintain eye contact and mirror back the key takeaways you’re hearing from
clients, always keeping the spotlight on them.

Don’t let distance stop you either. Help Scout uses Zoom to speak to a diverse group of customers
no matter where they are.

5. Social media

Social listening can give you access to an otherwise untapped reservoir of candid feedback from
customers. Direct comments or mentions on social networks aren’t the only way for your business
to collect customer feedback either — many networks include built-in polling tools.

6. On-site activity (via analytics)

Analytics reveal what customers don’t know about how they use your product. Especially if you
sell a digital product or service, you benefit from leveraging analytics to understand how users
interact with your company. For example, if you offer self-service content as a form of customer
service, you could see the number of people visiting each article.

7. Instant feedback from your website

With an embeddable on-site widget like Beacon, you can collect instant customer feedback
without asking the customer any questions.

At Help Scout, for example, we pulled nine articles into a webpage that could be valuable to
potential customers on the page. Instead of asking customers which articles they preferred,
Beacon collected the data on the most popular articles. If none of the articles helped, the customer
could email the team — and that’s valuable information, too.