Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 1
Objectives
1.1
Introduction
This topic has grown from practice and is intended to serve practitioners. It has been
built upon nearly 20 years of experience in tests, acceptance and certification, when
implementing medium to large IT systems including complex software in industry
and other organisations in many countries. As is well known there exist different
methodologies with different characteristics having emanated from various schools
and consultancies to support such activities. However, it is obvious that—
depending on the organisational levels in companies—the rigor of application of
such methodologies suffers to the benefit of more pragmatic approaches. In view of
economic objectives this quite often is unavoidable. For this reason no new or
consolidated methodology shall be presented here but an approach oriented on
practical criteria coming close to reality and offering methods, which can provide
assistance on an individual basis.
After discussing objectives and the limits of this topic the subject itself will be
entered by outlining possible project organisations, which are suited for such
complex tasks. Within an overall organisation IT quality management is part of
it. The focus here is on processes in the context of software acceptance. Against this
backdrop IT quality management can be divided into separate sub-responsibilities.
Furthermore the basics of acceptance procedures will be outlined resulting in an
example for an acceptance directive or policy, which may serve as a template,
agreed upon both by customers and software providers.
Because quite often data migration is part of the introduction of new systems, it
will be discussed in a separate chapter. Other special considerations regard accep-
tance of interfaces, customising, building of test clients and performance. Eventu-
ally the subject of documentation will be touched upon within the framework of
software delivery. Finally short presentations of classical tools for project manage-
ment and IT project controlling will round up the topic.
