[solved]-Limited Management Resources Available Pressure Deploy New Business Solutions Quickly Meas Q39684582
With limited management resources available and the pressure todeploy new business solutions quickly, measuring productivity insystems development often becomes a low priority for manyorganizations. IT departments at smaller companies in particularseem reluctant to institute policies to track the performance ofdevelopment projects. Some companies, however, have been forced toadopt productivity measurement methods, and are reaping rewards fordoing so. For example, national retailer Belk Inc. had to adoptproductivity metrics as a means of reducing devastating systemfailures. Aubrey, the veteran IT consultant that Belk hired, wasused to nursing client organisations through crashes thatperiodically downed their systems. But nothing had prepared Aubreyfor the failure rate at Belk. Soon after joining the company assenior VP for systems development, Aubrey discovered that Belk’sbatch systems went down an astounding 800 times a month. TheCharlotte, North Carolina, outfit, a private company with estimatedannual revenue of $1.7 billion, paid a heavy price for the constantbandaging: In 1997, Belk spent $1.1 million of its $30 million ITbudget on unplanned maintenance. To steady the systems, Aubreyinstituted a series of tracking measures. Programmers began loggingtheir time. Required software functions were carefully counted inapplication development projects. Belk compared its cycle time,defect rates, and productivity with competitors’ figures. Andsystems managers were required to draw up blueprints for reducingthe crashes—with the results reviewed in their performanceevaluations. The transition to tracking the IT department’sperformance was painful but worthwhile. Belk’s systems became morestable—monthly disruptions dropped to 480 incidents, a figure Aubreyhopes to slash by another 30 percent. Unplanned maintenance costsalso have been brought under control, with initial cuts inunplanned maintenance expenses of $800,000. Discuss the basic stepsin the traditional systems development life cycle?
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