Authors: Jon W. Beard
Tags: 2020
The Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is generally portrayed as several consecutive and/or overlapping phases, including: Planning, Analysis, Design, Development, Testing, Implementation, and Maintenance (sometimes called Operations and Maintenance, or O&M). While initially an outgrowth of the traditional or waterfall approach, the SDLC has expanded to include more Agile efforts at development, including methodologies such as Scrum and DevOps. Whether sequential or iterative development, much of the emphasis and attention, and a majority of the research, has addressed issues related to the SDLC phases up through Implementation. The attention is appropriate, for a failure to successfully accomplish these earlier life-cycle phases will yield a system that is incompletely or incorrectly designed. Yet the last phase of the SDLC, i.e., Operations & Maintenance, ranging from immediately after the implementation and user-migration efforts through to ultimate system shutdown (either due to an upgrade to a new version of the system or a transition to an entirely new environment), is (typically) the longest in duration over the useful life of the system and is the most expensive phase in terms of actual capital spending, perhaps more than all previous phases combined. O&M is perhaps the least well documented and researched phase of our systems development efforts, and the individual and organizational impacts are not always well understood. Further, the increasing use of iterative methods and continuous implementation have added complexity to an already-challenging environment. Using an approach derived from Brand’s (1994) intriguing exploration of “How Buildings Learn,” this inquiry is directed toward exploring the characteristics and key features of how Information Technology (IT) ‘learns,’ i.e., how IT systems change and evolve during O&M and the subsequent impacts on individuals and organizations. Results from semi-structured interviews of practitioners are being used to identify patterns and pitfalls as our IT learns.
Cite as:
Beard J.W. (2020). “How IT Learns: What Happens After Its Built,” in AIS SIGSAND, Virtually in West Palm Beach, FL, United States, May 22, 2020.
