Post 1

What I took from the readings for weeks 1 and 2 was sticker shock.

I could not read, the twelve-step "Software System Development Life Cycle Model" of Cohen et al. without keeping a rough total of how much all the model's parts cost. I wonder how upstart software developers, with fewer than the 100 to 10,000-plus employed by the firms Cohen et al. studied, possibly compete.

Nor, reading Merali et al., could I help totaling the costs that lie in solving information systems firms' "Key Challenges:" "Strategic Advantage," "Top management's role," "alignment with Business Strategy," "outsourcing."

I work in a budget-conscious library in the budget-conscious federal government. I cannot imagine having enough money to navigate that life cycle, to manage all those challenges--or having enough money to pay for the information architecture that, at whatever cost, is the upshot of all this. Such is the cheap luxury, I suppose, of having someone else draw up the contracts.

References

Cohen, S., Hann, U. D., & Dori, D. (2010). A software system development life cycle model for improved stakeholders' communication and collaboration. International Journal of Computers, Communications & Control, 5(1), 20-41.

Merali, Y, Papadopoulos, T., & Nadkarni, T. (2012). Information systems strategy: Past, present, future? Journal of Strategic Information, 21(2), 125-153.