Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
state. However, in the software industry, product expansion is also carried out
under the caption of ''maintenance''. But such product expansions, carried out as
part of software maintenance, are usually minor in nature. When the product is
scaled up significantly, an upgrade project is undertaken. Such major upgrades are
necessitated from time to time and could be to use the newer technologies (such as
web enabling the applications) or newer business scenarios (such as mergers or
acquisitions or a major re-organization, etc.) For an upgrade project undertaken in
the
organization,
in-house,
the
requirements
would
evolve
in
the
following
manner.
1. Proposal by the functional department—The trigger for the functional
department to propose a major upgrade to the software product would be
external usually. The trigger may be availability of new technology, availability
of sparable funds, a change in the business scenario and so on. In such cases,
the functional department would define the scope of work for the product
upgrade and invite the IS department to propose a budget and obtains the
financial approval for the budget. The definition of the scope of work for the
expansion would be the initial set of requirements.
2. Use Requirements definition—Business Analysts would approach the exec-
utives of the functional department and elicit/gather the requirements. In this
case, the elicitation/gathering is limited the expanded functionality only. If the
upgrade is to convert the existing application from an existing platform to a
newer platform, this phase may be avoided altogether except to see if any
additional requirements are necessitated due to the change in the technical
platform. These requirements are analyzed and requirements are finalized for
the project.
3. Finalization of the requirements—These requirements are documented and
are forwarded to the functional department for approval. The functional
department accords approval after getting its feedback implemented in the
document by the IS department. This document is then subjected to the rigor of
the organizational configuration and change management.
Outsourced project—new project—The outsourced project in this context is
the project executed at the vendor's place for a client. An organization realized the
need for computerization of a set of its business processes, but decided to out-
source the software development portion of the project to a specialist software
development organization. Now, this project is proposed to be executed at the
organization specializing in software development. The requirements evolve in the
following manner in this scenario.
1. Project acquisition—The first step in the project execution is to acquire the
project from an outsourcer organization. The projects are outsourced in dif-
ferent combination of software development phases, such as (a) Requirements,
design, construction, testing and delivery; (b) Design, construction, testing and
delivery; (c) Construction, testing and delivery; (d) Testing and delivery and
any other combination. The projects may be on fixed-price contracts or time-
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