Handling Lifecycles in Software

As organizations grow and change, their information systems must change as well. Consider these examples:
Gazing more at the rowers on the [Schuylkill River] below than on the automobiles ahead, a [Center City Philadelphia] driver slams into the car in front of him, causing an accident that increases the ride home for many commuters—and sets in motion a series of legal and insurance steps. Such a traffic incident is only one of more than 70,000 automobile accidents reported each year in Philadelphia, and the city's police department prepares a report for each one. Accident reports are necessary for insurance companies to process claims and ultimately pay settlements to their customers. Until recently, processing an accident report was a costly, time-consuming process, taking up to six weeks for a paper copy to become available. Thanks to the efforts of a unique public/private partnership and the power of Internet technology, Philadelphia accident reports are now available to insurance companies in less than one week [Coghlan and on Mechow, 2004].

When Wacoal [Corporation] analyzed their information technology systems, what they found wasn't very encouraging. Their technology had been growing as the company grew—systems were added on an as needed basis, which resulted in a patchwork quilt of 32 independent legacy systems. Many of these legacy systems were more than 10 years old. To improve the quality of business-decision information, Wacoal sought a solution that would connect its disparate systems together in a seamless data flow. These system changes would allow the company to achieve operational efficiency and concentrate on its core competence. The question was how to accomplish a seemingly complex task of system and platform integration in a very short time frame with a limited project budget. The answer came from Wacoal's technology partner—Hitachi—and the freely available extensible

Business Reporting Language for General

Ledger (XBRL-GL), the Journal Taxonomy. [Hasegawa et al., 2004] Sources: T. Coghlan and T. vonMechow, "Driving Auto Accident Costs Down," Strategic Finance, January 2004; M. Hasegawa, T. Sakata, N. Sambuichi, and N. Hannon, "Breathing New Life into Old Systems with XBRL-GL: The Wacoal Story," Strategic Finance,March 2004. Considering either the accident report case or the information technology case, respond to the following questions:

a. How would workers in the case have used the SDLC to make the changes described?
b. Compare the "before" and "after" processes in the case you chose. How would you classify each one?
Using CMM?
c. Which macro- and micro-level factors for IT selection are indicated/implied in the case?