Quality Issues In System Development :: essays research papers fc

Quality Issues In trunk DevelopmentThe period between the 1970s and 1980s was a time of great feeler in calculator hardware technology which took an industry still in its infancy, to alevel of much sophistication and which ultimately revelutionised the information retentiveness and processing needs of every other industry and that of the entireworld. However, it was withal during this period when the shortcomings ofimplementing such technology became apparent. A significant number of discipline projects failed which resulted with disastrous consequences, notonly of an economic nature, but social aswell. Seemingly, although hardwaretechnolgy was readily available and ever improving, what was inhibiting theindustry was in the methods of implementing large organizations. Consequently, all(prenominal)kinds of limited approaches materialized that avoided the costs and risksinherent in big- bodys developments.Times have changed, and with it our disposition and experience as howbest to develop large systems. Todays large systems way out greater benefits forless cost than those of previous decades. Large systems provide better, much(prenominal)timely information, the talent to integrate and correlate internal and externalinformation, the ability to integrate and facilitate streamlined businessprocesses. Unfortunately, not every system that information workers develop arewell implemented this means that the computer system which was originallyintended to make a company more efficient, productive and cost-effective, is inthe end doing the exact opposite - namely, wasting time, notes and valuablemanpower. So even with all the lessons learned from the 70s and 80s, ourvastly crack methodologies and knowledge of the 90s is still proving to befallible, as suggested in the following examples. formation Development FailuresIn Britain, 1993, an incident occurred which forced the capital of the United KingdomAmbulance Service to cast aside its emergency system aft er it performeddisastrously on delivery, causing delays in answering calls. An independentinquiry ordered by British politics agencies found that the ambulance servicehad accepted a suspiciously low stamp from a small and inexperienced supplier. Theinquiry report, released in February 1993, determined that the system was fartoo small to cope with the data load. For an emergency service, the system errorwould not only cause the loss of money, but more essentially, fail to dispatchambulances correctly and promptly upon the arising of critical situations. Thus,the implications of such a failure are apparently obvious, both socially andeconomically. Since the failures, the ambulance service has reverted to a paper-based system that will remain in place for the foreseeable future.Another failure was the collapse of the Taurus trading system of theLondon Stock Exchange. Taurus would have replaced the shuffling of six sorts of