Quality Issues In System Development :: essays research papers fc

Quality Issues In System DevelopmentThe period between the 1970s and 1980s was a time of capital advancement incomputer hardware technology which took an industry steady in its infancy, to alevel of much sophistication and which ultimately revelutionised the trainingstorage and processing needs of both other industry and that of the spotlessworld. However, it was also during this period when the shortcomings ofimplementing such technology became apparent. A significant piece ofdevelopment projects failed which resulted with disastrous consequences, notonly of an economic nature, just tender aswell. Seemingly, although hardwaretechnolgy was readily available and ever improving, what was inhibiting theindustry was in the methods of implementing colossal dusts. Consequently, allkinds of limited approaches materialized that avoided the costs and risksinherent in big-systems developments.Times puzzle changed, and with it our understanding and experience as howbest to develop medium-large systems. Todays large systems yield greater benefits forless cost than those of previous decades. Large systems tin better, moretimely information, the ability to integrate and correlate internal and out-of-doorinformation, the ability to integrate and facilitate streamlined businessprocesses. Unfortunately, not every system that information workers develop arewell implemented this factor that the computer system which was originallyintended to make a go with more efficient, productive and cost-effective, is inthe end doing the exact opposite - namely, use time, money and valuablemanpower. So even with all the lessons learned from the 70s and 80s, our vastly superior methodologies and knowledge of the 90s is still proving to befallible, as suggested in the future(a) examples.System Development FailuresIn Britain, 1993, an incident occurred which forced the LondonAmbulance advantage to abandon its speck system after it performeddisastrously on delivery, create delays in answering calls. An independentinquiry ordered by British government agencies found that the ambulance improvementhad accepted a suspiciously confused bid from a small and inexperienced supplier. Theinquiry report, released in February 1993, fixed 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 regularize 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