British Computer Society - Human Resource - Lecture Notes, Study notes of Human Resource Management

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The British Computer Society

Code of Good Practice

Contents

• 1. Introduction
  • 1.1 Purpose
  • 1.2 Context
  • 1.3 How to use this Document
  • 1.4 Disclaimer
  • 1.5 Terminology
  • 1.6 Acknowledgements
    • of the Code of Practice 1.7 Responsibility for, and the Development and Maintenance
• 2. Practices Common to all Disciplines
• 3. Key IT Practices
  • 3.1 Programme/Project Management
  • 3.2 Relationship Management
  • 3.3 Security
  • 3.4 Safety Engineering
  • 3.5 Change Management
  • 3.6 Quality Management
• 4. Practices Specific to Education and Research Functions
  • 4.1 Education
  • 4.2 Research
• 5. Practices Specific to Business Functions
  • 5.1 Requirements Analysis and Specification
  • 5.2 Software Development
  • 5.3 System Installation
  • 5.4 Training
  • 5.5 System Operations
  • 5.6 Support and Maintenance

1.4 Disclaimer

The BCS accepts no responsibility for any errors and omissions in this Code of Good Practice. Furthermore, reference to another organisation's web site does not constitute a recommendation, or endorsement, of that organisation, site, or its content, by the BCS.

In the event of an apparent conflict in responsibilities, obligations or prescribed practice, please consult the Society's Registrar at the earliest opportunity.

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1.5 Terminology

1. Customer: Any person, organisation or department for whom the member undertakes to provide IT services, in any way; this includes other departments within the member's organisation.

2. Organisation: Any company, government department or other body for which the member as an individual undertakes professional practice. The member may be an employee, contractor, consultant, student or volunteer.

3. User: Any person, department, company or other body served by IT.

4. System: A group of electronic equipment and software which together provide a particular service. System may be interpreted as encompassing non-computer procedures such as clerical, manual, communication and electromechanical processes.

5. Information Technology (IT): IT is to be taken to include IS (Information Systems) and ICT (Information Communication Technology) where relevant.

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1.6 Acknowledgements

The BCS acknowledges the existence of many other Codes of Practice, applicable within the IT profession and other industries. Concepts and detailed practices have been drawn from these documents and it is hoped that the authors of these documents draw some satisfaction when seeing familiar ideas. Those of particular relevance are listed in Appendix A.

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1.7 Responsibility for, and the Development and Maintenance of the Code of Good Practice The operational responsibility for the Code of Good Practice lies with the BCS Registrar.

The development and maintenance of the Code of Good Practice are the responsibility of the Qualifications and Standards Board.

This Code of Good Practice is seen as a living document. In the rapidly changing IT world, it is expected to change to reflect new or revised practices. Members are encouraged to submit recommended changes to:

The Registrar BCS 1st Floor, Block D North Star House North Star Avenue Swindon, UK, SN2 1FA

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Act Professionally as a Specialist

‰ Maintain your knowledge of your specialism at the highest level by, for example, reading relevant literature, attending conferences and seminars, meeting and maintaining contact with other leading practitioners and through taking an active part in appropriate learned, professional and trade bodies. ‰ Evaluate new products, assess their potential benefit and recommend their use where appropriate. ‰ Keep in close touch with and contribute to current developments in the specialism, particularly within the organisation and your own industry. ‰ When competent, offer expert advice, both reactively and pro-actively, to those engaged in activities where the specialism is applicable; this includes budgetary and financial planning, litigation, legislation and health and safety. ‰ Understand the boundaries of your specialist knowledge; admit when you may be required to cross this boundary and seek advice from colleagues with the necessary expertise; do not make misleading claims about your expertise. ‰ Exercise a sense of social responsibility for the implications of your work. ‰ Keep colleagues informed of advances in technology, circulating appropriate documents, setting up libraries and arranging discussion groups. ‰ Be aware that most people within the organisation do not share your expertise; avoid technical jargon and express yourself clearly in terms they understand. ‰ Be aware of the risks and liabilities resulting from giving incorrect advice; if appropriate take out professional indemnity insurance.

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Use Appropriate Methods and Tools

‰ Keep up to date with new methods and the tools to support these methods ‰ Promote the effective use of methods and tools within the organisation. ‰ Recommend the adoption of new methods only when they have been demonstrated to be effective for the organisation and are supported by suitable tools. ‰ Explain to non-IT staff the purpose of any methods that have impact on their duties, so that they can understand the outputs and appreciate the benefits. ‰ Recognise the scope and applicability of methods and resist any pressure to use inappropriate methods.

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Manage Your Workload Efficiently

‰ Report any overruns to budget or timescales as they become apparent; do not assume that you will be able to recover them later. ‰ Ensure that your work is covered by Terms of Reference and be wary of exceeding them. ‰ Do not undertake, or commit to, more assignments than you can reasonably expect to meet in a given time. ‰ Ensure that you have the necessary resources to complete assignments within agreed time scales.

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Participate Maturely

‰ Provide constructive criticism of colleagues' work, aiming to improve the quality of the work without belittling your colleagues. ‰ Accept constructive criticism of your work, appreciating that your colleagues may have better solutions. ‰ Maintain good working relationships with colleagues, customers and users, even if you may strongly disagree with them; however, ensure that such disagreements are recorded. ‰ Ensure that the views of all participants are taken into the account and are fairly represented in the resulting list of actions. ‰ Follow up all actions placed on yourself, even in cases where you do not entirely agree with them. ‰ Utilise technical reviews as an aid to your professional judgement, seeking specialist advice where appropriate.

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Respect the Interests of your Customers

‰ Declare any personal gains, financial or otherwise, that you may make from any proposed work; do not falsify or conceal information for your own benefit. ‰ Accept only those assignments which you are qualified and competent to undertake; you have a particular responsibility when you consider an assignment to be of questionable value to your customer. ‰ Safeguard the confidentiality of all information concerning your customers. ‰ Refrain from acting for several customers with competing or conflicting interests without prior agreement from all parties. ‰ Utilise professional judgement and act with professional objectivity and independence at all times; in this respect "independence" is taken to mean "independence of relationships which might be taken to impair objectivity". ‰ Inform customers immediately of any interests or change of circumstances, which might prejudice the objectivity of the advice given. ‰ Disclose any interests in products which you may recommend to your customer. ‰ Do not disclose to any third party any confidential information about your customers or its competitors.

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Promote Good Practices within the Organisation

‰ Identify opportunities for increasing the awareness of IT throughout the organisation. ‰ Be aware of the interaction of your work with that of others involved in the same activity. ‰ Seek to identify potential hazards, failures and risks associated with your work or work place, and seek to ensure that they are appropriately addressed. ‰ Ensure that those working under your supervision or direction are competent, that they are made aware of their responsibilities and they accept personal responsibility for the work delegated to them. ‰ Help to promote a culture within the organisation which strives for continuous improvement; seek involvement and participation in best practices at all levels.

3 Key IT Practices

3.1 Programme/Project Management

When Managing a Programme of Work

‰ Make a clear distinction between projects that result in contract deliverables and programmes that provide your customer with process improvements and business benefits. ‰ Advise your customer if, in your opinion, any stage in the programme will not deliver the anticipated benefits. ‰ Work with your customer and supplier(s) to reach a common understanding of the programme structure in terms of projects, deliverables, costs, inter- project dependencies, external assumptions and responsibilities for each element of work. ‰ Adopt transparent reporting based on quantitative, objective measures that are shared by your customer and supplier(s) to ensure a common understanding of the status of the programme, the risks and any variances from plan. ‰ Review and agree with your customer any key external pressures and influences for business improvement, plans for organisational change, parallel programmes (with potential mutual dependencies) and the effect these may have on the programme.

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When Defining a New Project

‰ Encourage your customer to:

• Explain fully the corporate objectives that underpin the requirement, the scope, issues, constraints and risks to be addressed.
• Articulate clearly the desired business benefits and how they will be measured.
• Explain fully the project deliverables.
• Define the information and services that your customer will provide. ‰ Offer constructive challenge to your customer if:
• The requirement is unrealistic
• Any of your customer's expectations are unreasonable
• There is a better way of meeting the requirement
• A relatively minor change to the requirement might significantly reduce the cost, risk or timescale. ‰ Select and list appropriate quality standards and procedures. ‰ Devise an acceptance strategy that will fairly demonstrate that the requirements of the project have been met. ‰ List your assumptions, especially those that relate to goods or services provided by your customer, and gain your customer's approval of their validity. ‰ Define the escalation/exception procedures to be followed in the event of deviation from the plan.

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When Planning

‰ Ensure that the scope, deliverables, timescales, costs and responsibilities are agreed in advance. ‰ Seek out similar projects and benefit from the lessons learned. ‰ Make realistic estimates of the costs, timescales and resource requirements, wherever possible basing your estimates on recognised methods and/or experience of delivering similar solutions. ‰ Resist the pressure to accept estimates produced in earlier stages. ‰ Be aware of the pitfalls associated with estimating tools; use other methods to double-check the feasibility of the results. ‰ Assure yourself that you have the resources required to complete the work within the agreed costs and timescales. ‰ Do not depend on later contract changes to recover overspend.

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When Managing Project Risks

‰ Seek out the real risks to the customer, the organisation and any suppliers. ‰ Resist the temptation to identify only the manageable risks. ‰ Openly and frankly discuss with your customer the options for allocating, managing, mitigating and insuring against the risks. ‰ Avoid accepting responsibility for a risk that would be better owned by your customer. ‰ Where risk is created by virtue of the scale or novelty of a solution for which there is no reliable benchmark for estimation, consider a modular or incremental approach to reduce risk. ‰ Devise mitigation actions that will reduce the chances of the most serious risks happening. ‰ Regularly review the risks and revise the mitigating actions. ‰ Make yourself aware of the differences between civil and criminal law in the treatment of risk

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When Managing and Deploying the Project Team

‰ Ensure that all team members are given written instructions on each task to be performed, with target completion dates. ‰ Monitor the deployment of individuals objectively to ensure that they are contributing effectively whilst developing skills and experience. ‰ Deal sensitively with team members who are not performing well; investigate the root causes and take effective measures.

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3.2 Relationship Management

When Seeking New Customers

‰ Ensure that a common understanding exists throughout the organisation of its corporate objectives, market position, product lines and development plans and that these form the basis of marketing strategy.

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When Selling to Prospective Customers

‰ Do not overstate the capabilities, performance and benefits of the proposed products or services. ‰ Ensure the organisation has the necessary resources available to deliver on schedule. ‰ Make your prospective customer aware of any risks in your proposed solution. ‰ Assure yourself that your prospective customer has the necessary skills, equipment and organisation to make effective use of your proposed solution. ‰ Identify to your prospective customer any additional costs or changes necessary to make effective use of the proposed products and services. ‰ Within the limits of the law, strive to understand what your competitors offer, make every effort to provide a superior solution, but resist the temptation to belittle the offerings of your competitors. ‰ Maintain contact with your prospective customer after conclusion of the sales activity; elicit any shortcomings in the sales activity and initiate remedial actions.

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When Negotiating Contracts and Service Levels

‰ Avoid later disappointment by negotiating achievable service levels at realistic prices. ‰ Avoid situations that could later be interpreted as corrupt (accepting or giving lavish gifts, entertainment, etc). ‰ Whilst aiming for a successful relationship, ensure the agreement of dispute resolution terms and processes that the organisation can afford if need be.

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When Managing Customer Relationships

‰ Instil in your customer a well-founded confidence in the products and services to be delivered, and your commitment to performance, risk, timescales and delivery. ‰ Set targets and monitor performance against these targets, aiming to exceed the contractual targets.

‰ Resist the temptation to hide overruns; do not assume that you will recover any lost time in later stages of the project. ‰ Keep your customer informed of any problems that might impact on the quality of the deliverables. ‰ Ensure that any strategic problems are identified at the earliest opportunity and that solutions are identified and implemented. ‰ Do not sub-contract out any of your responsibilities without prior agreement by your customer; if you do sub-contract, fulfil your responsibilities for the performance of the work. ‰ Actively represent your team, ensuring that effective relationships are built and maintained with your customer, suppliers and other departments in the organisation. ‰ Respond promptly to your customer's queries and complaints and ensure that all necessary actions are taken. ‰ Encourage your customer to participate in reviews to facilitate process improvement. ‰ Seek out and encourage changes to your customer's processes which will increase the benefits of your products and services. ‰ Resist the temptation to blame your customer for all misunderstandings. ‰ Ensure that the necessary processes and procedures are in place to maintain or recover the delivery of systems and services in the event of any physical, technical or environmental disaster or major outage, providing continuity of service to your customer.

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When Managing Supplier Relationships

‰ Act impartially when selecting new suppliers; establish evaluation criteria that are not biased towards a particular solution and apply the criteria rigorously to all proposals. ‰ Encourage resolution of any shortcomings in the service, through proper communication between all parties, rather than resorting to penalty clauses. ‰ Whilst representing the interests of your own organisation, act impartially in any dispute between the supplier and the users. ‰ Provide regular feedback to the supplier, so that any improvements can be made before any problems become serious.

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3.4 Safety Engineering

In General

‰ At all times, take all reasonable care to ensure that your work and the consequences of your work cause no unacceptable risk to safety. ‰ Take all reasonable steps to make your management, and those to whom they have a duty of care, aware of the risks you identify; make anyone overruling or neglecting your professional advice formally aware of the consequent risks.

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When Building a System

‰ Examine the proposed use of proprietary digital communication systems and seek out common-cause failures between control and protection functions. ‰ Beware of novel approaches to specification, design and implementation of knowledge-based computing and control systems; be attentive to their attendant problems of verification, validation and the effect on safety- related operation. ‰ Be aware that, whilst distributed systems involving communications systems are relatively easy to assemble from standard commercial components, it is difficult to predict their overall operational behaviour and there may well be hidden complexities. ‰ Determine the adequacy of the protection and control systems for remote plant; enumerate the hazards to which the plant may be subjected and relate each to the proposed protection and control systems. ‰ Be aware of the intended operational environment of integrated modular systems. ‰ Establish that the proposed integration of the mechanical structures (moving parts) with micro-electromechanical (MEMS) components is based on components intended for mechanical operation based on computer control. ‰ Treat any proposed integration of a new system with an existing system to a thorough examination. ‰ Be aware that the overall behaviour of systems based on software components of unknown or uncertain pedigree (SOUP) and commercial off- the-shelf products (COTS) will be affected by software components not specifically designed for safety purposes.

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When Assessing Complexity

‰ Only use evaluated and validated software languages or accredited components for control systems. ‰ Establish/determine practicable software development methods and validation tools for embedded software, particularly in small systems. ‰ Establish how well the sensing devices and software within programmable electronic systems (PES) are compatible with the human form.

‰ Apply ‘proven in use’ analysis to achieve the appropriate level of safety integrity for opto-electronic components/techniques used for the sensing of personnel presence. ‰ Be aware that increased complexity of smart sensors increases the possibility of systematic failure; that there is a need for software and firmware version control; that, operationally, there is a dependence on configuration management by the user.

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3.5 Change Management

When Advising on Business Change

‰ Appreciate the implications of new processes on both people and the organisation; identify the activities necessary to ensure a smooth transition to the new processes. ‰ Strive to understand the underlying resistance to change and, if unfounded, be re-assuring of the benefits. ‰ Challenge any apparent malpractices and investigate the root causes. ‰ Appreciate that not all improvements need technological solutions; significant benefits can often be achieved through procedural or organisational changes. ‰ Highlight the drawbacks as well as the benefits of proposed changes. ‰ Modify your approach and style to obtain co-operation and commitment and resolve potential conflict. ‰ Show sensitivity to political and cultural issues as well as technical and business effectiveness targets. ‰ Monitor the progress of the changes, learning from any mistakes made and, where possible, resolving any problems encountered.

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When Controlling Changes

‰ Promote the importance of a structured change management process, where all changes are prioritised, assessed and tracked. ‰ Ensure that the appropriate impact analysis is conducted before any change is authorised. ‰ Seek out and resolve any conflicts between changes and ensure that the totality of the changes is in keeping with the organisation's goals. ‰ Check each change provides a cost-effective solution to a technical and/or business need, and is prioritised accordingly. ‰ Keep to a minimum the number of changes to be made at a given time.

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When Conducting Quality Audits

‰ Create a programme of audits to demonstrate that the organisation's Quality System is operating effectively and providing management with sufficient control and visibility ‰ Welcome external auditors into the organisation; benefit from their experience rather than just hide shortcomings from them to pass the audit. ‰ Remind those being audited that the audit is there to help them do their jobs better, rather than pick fault with their work. ‰ Encourage those being audited to prepare well for the audit; let their preparation become part of the improvement process, not just a mechanism to get through the audit. ‰ Use your experience of problem areas and the history of previous audits to select areas to audit; do not appear to be biased. ‰ Follow up the audits and make sure actions are being taken to make real improvements.

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4 Practices Specific to Education and Research Functions

4.1 Education

When Preparing Courses

‰ Ensure the curriculum is founded upon your research, practice and/or scholarship. ‰ In designing curricula, ensure that learning outcomes take into account external benchmarks, such as those issued by the Engineering Council UK and the Science Council. ‰ Ensure students are equipped with the necessary underpinning to comprehend future developments. ‰ Expose students within the curriculum to legal, social, cultural and ethical issues.

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When Delivering Courses

‰ Develop in each student an independence of thought and learning ability and thus prepare students for career progression and ongoing CPD beyond the confines of this educational experience. ‰ Make explicit to all stakeholders the outcomes to be expected from engaging in the study.

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When Assessing Student Ability

‰ Ensure that assessment is fair in its discriminatory function. ‰ Ensure feedback to each student is sufficient to identify strengths and enable weaknesses to be addressed. ‰ Develop yourself as a reflective and reflexive educational practitioner, building on student feedback as appropriate

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When Tutoring Students

‰ Encourage students to join a professional body, either now or later, as part of their career plan. ‰ Ensure that students are made aware of codes of conduct and practice and emphasise the importance of adhering to them, whether or not they join a professional body. ‰ Ensure that students are made aware that their courses cannot cover all the technical details of specific topics in computing and that their technical knowledge will need to be constantly refreshed through CPD as a result of ongoing developments in the subject.