A model that I notice many times is to Outsource Applcation Development, and keep Legacy Systems Support in-house (the day that an Application goes live is, by definition, a Legacy System). Also, expensive consultants are often used to define and manage the building of new Applications.
What if this model was turned on it's head?
If you used your staff to define, build, test and deliver new Applcations/Systems, and outsourced the Application Support, the benfits would be:
- Delivery if a Fit-for-purpose application built by staff that understand your business
- Increased staff morale (retention), as staff get to do the 'sexy' new stuff
- Reduction in support costs, which should be outsourced in a fixed-price basis
- Reduced risk of delivery failure due to application knoweldge being retained in-house
The majority of IT spend goes on IT Production Systems Support. Surely we have a duty of care in the industry to seriously consider acheiving savings in an area that consumes the largest part of our budget?
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Paul makes some good points but for me the main reason it is not this way is that Software development is often a very complex task requiring a highly competent team and that most organisations are not large enough to sustain this capability. Also more applications today are highly configurable and a businesses requirements can be met through configuration and not development
James makes an excellent point.
No one solution fits all, and if a company is 'progressive' enough to be able to get business benefits from configuration of COTS without bespoking, then this is truly a fit-for-purpose approach. By 'progressive' in this context, I mean that sometimes an ounce of Business Change is often far more cost-effective than a pound of Application Bespoke coding to force an application suite to perfectly fit currently existing business processes because a company may not be politically or strucurally capable of embracing painful changes required to acheive the benefits.
Change is only a bend in the road - unless you fail to make the turn ...
Configuration could be considered Development - and such configuration still requires a detailed knowledge of the business at that point in time, and defined acceptance criteria to be met to acheive the required business benefits.