Life Cycle Perspective on Information System Technology

The purpose of this paper is to investigate several of the issues that have restricted success in the development and deployment of software and use this foundation to review software development teams and drawing efforts. As software becomes more complex it evolves containing new, modified, existing, and legacy parts and with this conglomerate of portions modified and kluged any software development effort is confronted with a host of issues often leading to failure, regardless of having had a well-developed project plan and exceptional communications. With an understanding of development and deployment issues as a starting point, the specific area of drawings and software development teams will be reviewed using systemic insights. Drawing and software development teams were chosen for review as drawings represent a huge investment in time and cost and their creation and usage can be found both in acquisition and sustainment of ships. Likewise, software development teams were chosen as they are at the heart of the development and deployment of software supporting all maritime maintenance processes. Unfortunately, many software developments do not treat the effort as dealing with complex or system of systems, nor does the effort follow a life cycle framework. Hence, many of the restrictions that may be described as issues leading to failures found either during or after software development can be ascribed to the lack of understanding of the underlying systemic propositions rather than more of the same panacea treatments developed by individuals who looked at software development issues and provided a quick, proscriptive fix