7.1 Overview of Development Strategy

After the team makes a decision to develop a system, then we need to decide which development strategies is the best. There are two main approaches; outsourcing and in-house development. Each of this approach has its own strengths and weaknesses and different cases require different approaches. Selecting the best development strategies is an important decision that requires organizations to think of. In this topic, we'll explain these two types on approaches of development strategies. We need to decide which type of development strategies will be applied in the system development project. But, for the rest of the course explanation, we assume that the team applied in-house development; where the system is being developed by people inside the organizations.

There are several reasons why organization does outsourcing. Most of the organizations choose to outsource the tasks as a way to reduce cost. They prefer to outsource the tasks since its not only can reduce the cost of development, but it can save their time of the entire system development project. Other reason of outsourcing is maybe they don't have enough expertise inside their organization to do the tasks. So, instead of hiring a staff, paying their salaries and any other costs involved, and the easiest solution that they have is outsource the project.

A firm that offers outsourcing is refers to service provider. Some service providers are concentrates on specific software applications; others offer business services such as purchase, and order processing. There are two popular outsourcing options :

7.1 Overview of Development Strategy

	Application service provider
	This is the most basic reason why we need a new or enhanced system. A new or enhanced system is important to improve services for customers or users within the organization. Allowing students to register subjects online, driving license renewal via web-based are example on how organization used a system to increase their customer satisfaction.
	Internet business services
	Internet business services provide powerful web-based support for transaction such as purchase and order processing, billing. Another type of IBS is managed hosting. IBS is an attractive solution since it offers online data center support and provide online access to users.

7.1 Overview of Development Strategy

6.1.1.2 Technical Feasibility

Technical feasibility is a measure of the practically of a technical solution and the availability of technical resources and expertise. Normally, technical feasibility addresses three major issues :

	Are the proposed system and the technology used practical enough?
	Do we currently posses the necessary technology?
	Do we have the necessary technical expertise?

6.1.1.3 Economical Feasibility

Economic feasibility is a measure to identify the financial benefits and costs related with the development project. Lots of people focus more on economic feasibility. At the early stage of system development project, the cost analysis amount is too little. It's impossible to estimate the cost at the early stage of the system development because the system requirement has not been identified and the development did not started yet. Normally, the cost estimation should be worth it with the benefits got from the system. However, as soon as specific requirement and the proposed system have identified, the system analyst can weigh the cost and benefits of each alternative. This is referred to cost-benefit analysis.

7.1 Overview of Development Strategy

6.1.1.4 Schedule Feasibility

Schedule feasibility measure of how reasonable a project timetable is. We ask the technical expertise, is the project can be completed within the deadlines? During the schedule feasibility analysis, it's important to define the deadlines for every phase if there is any.

6.1.1.5 Cultural Feasibility

Cultural feasibility also refers as political feasibility. This is related with operational feasibility. But, the operational feasibility deals more on how well the solution meets the system requirement but the cultural feasibility deals with how the end users feel about the proposed system. We can say that operational feasibility concerns with whether the system can work in solving the problem and cultural feasibility concerns with whether the system can be adapted in the organizational environment.

The following questions can help the team when doing cultural feasibility :

	Does the management support the system?
	How do the end users feel about their role in the proposed system?
	What end users or managers may resist or not use the system?
	How will the working environment of the end users can change with the proposed system?

7.1 Overview of Development Strategy

6.1.1.6 Legal Feasibility

Information system has a legal impact. Legal feasibility is a measure of how well a solution can be implemented within existing legal and organization's policy. It's also regarding copyright issues. For example, if we need certain software in develop the system; we have to make sure that we use the licensed software.