Chapter 13- Acquiring Information Systems & Applications

• Technical debt


  Debt incurred when software solutions take shortcuts to expedite delivery, resulting in the need for future rework
• Southwest incurred significant technical debt
• Organizations can better manage systems development to avoid technical debt
• IT planning process


  Includes organizational strategic plan, IT architecture, and IT strategic plan
• IT strategic plan


  • Must be aligned with the organization's strategic plan
  • Must provide for an IT architecture that seamlessly networks users, applications, and databases
  • Must efficiently allocate IS development resources among competing projects
• Typical IS operational plan

  Includes mission statement, IS environment, objectives of the IS function, constraints of the IS function, the application portfolio, and resource allocation and project management
• Cost-benefit analysis


  Assessing the costs and benefits of IT investment
• Four common approaches to cost-benefit analysis

  • Net present value (NPV)
  • Return on investment (ROI)
  • Breakeven analysis
  • Business case approach
• Fundamental decisions in acquiring IT applications


  • How much computer code the company wants to write
  • How the company will pay for the application
  • Where the application will run
  • Where the application will originate
• Advantages and limitations of the buy option

  • Many different types of off-the-shelf software are available
  • The company can try out the software before purchasing it
  • The company can save time by buying rather than building
  • The company can know what it is getting before it invests in the product
  • Purchased software may eliminate the need to hire personnel specifically dedicated to a project
  • Software may not exactly meet the company's needs
  • Software may be difficult or impossible to modify, or it may require huge business process changes to implement
  • The company will not have control over software improvements and new versions
  • Purchased software can be difficult to integrate with existing systems
  • Vendors may discontinue a product or go out of business
  • The software is controlled by another company with its own priorities and business considerations
  • The purchasing company lacks intimate knowledge about how and why the software functions as it does
• Application service provider (ASP)


  Provides access to software applications and related services over the internet
• Software-as-a-service (SaaS)


  A software distribution model in which a third-party provider hosts applications and makes them available to customers over the internet
• Stages of the traditional systems development life cycle (SDLC)

  • Systems investigation
  • Systems analysis
  • Systems design
  • Programming and testing
  • Implementation
  • Operation and maintenance
• Systems investigation stage


  • Includes three basic solutions, a feasibility study (technical, economic, and behavioral), and a go/no go decision
• Systems analysis


  The process whereby systems analysts examine the business problem that the organization plans to solve with an IS
• Systems design


  Describes how the system will resolve the business problem
• Scope creep


  The tendency for the scope of a project to expand beyond what was originally planned
• Major conversion strategies


  • Direct conversion
  • Pilot conversion
  • Phased conversion
  • Parallel conversion
• Systems maintenance


  Includes debugging, updating, and adding
• Joint Application Design (JAD)

  A structured process for determining user requirements
• Rapid Application Development (RAD)


  A software development methodology that uses minimal planning in favor of rapid prototyping
• Agile development


  An iterative approach to software development that builds software incrementally from the start of the project, instead of trying to deliver it all at once near the end
• DevOps


  A set of practices that combines software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops), with the goal of shortening the systems development life cycle and providing continuous delivery of high-quality software
• End-user development


  The activity, tools, and techniques that allow people who are not professional developers to create or modify a software artifact
• Tools for systems development

  • Design thinking
  • Prototyping
  • Integrated computer-assisted software engineering (CASE) tools
  • Component-based development
  • Object-oriented development
  • Containers
  • Low-code development platform
• Robotic Process Automation (RPA)


  The use of software robots to automate repetitive, rules-based tasks
• Low-code programming


  A software development approach that enables the creation of complete applications with minimal hand-coding
• No-code programming


  A software development approach that allows the creation of applications through graphical user interfaces and configuration instead of traditional hand-coding