The Systems Life Cycle

The Systems Life Cycle

1. Why build new IT systems

   • A new IT system may be commissioned for a number of reason
     • The company might want to improve the quality of a repetitive task. Doing the sam ething over and over is very tiring and tedious for a person. A robotic system may be able to help with this. For instance the car industry makes heavy use of robots in their factories
     • A new part of the company needs IT support e.g. a new customer service help desk
     • The organisation has grown and the current system can't cope with the increased demands placed on it.Perhaps the company had only a few customers to start with but now it needs to be able to deal with hundreds of accounts
     • A competitor has developed a new system or process and the organisation needs something similar in order to offer the same service to customers
     • Technology might have moved on and new things are possible that couldn't be done with the previous system
     • The current one is out of date and no longer doing its job effectively
   • IT Systems are used to make the lives of businesses easier
     • Supermarkets
       • Payroll systems
       • Stock control systems
     • Government
       • Online census information
       • Online tax payment system
     • Hospitals
       • Appointment systems for outpatients
       • Pharmacy systems for keeping track of drugs and creating printed prescritions
     • Banks
       • Systems for approving or rejecting mortgage applications
       • Systems for ATM machines
       • Customer record systems

2. Problems with new IT systems

   • A survey of over 14,000 organisations showed that where new IT systems were being developed:
     • 80-90% of systems fail to meet performance goals
     • 80% of systems are late and over budget
     • 40% of systems fail or are abandoned
     • Just 10-20% of business meet all their success criteria
   • As people have learnt from mistakes, a model has been developed and refined over the years to try and maximise the chances of a successful project.
     • The Systems Life Cycle

3. The System Life Cycle is a process of stages which occur during the development of a new ICT system

   • If organisations follow the stages of the System Life Cycle, they should be able to avoid many problems.
   • Stages of the System Life Cycle
     • Definition
     • Investigation and analysis
     • Design
     • Implementation
     • Testing
     • Installation
     • Documentation
     • Evaluation
     • Maintenance