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Approach to Dissertation. Timeframe – When?. Year 1 Taught part Sept 1996 – June 1997 Project proposal June 1997 Year 2 Break Year 3 June 1998 – June 1999 Research Write-up. What?. Original idea How do you solve legacy systems? Criticism Too broad Changes
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Timeframe – When? • Year 1 • Taught part Sept 1996 – June 1997 • Project proposal June 1997 • Year 2 • Break • Year 3 • June 1998 – June 1999 • Research • Write-up
What? • Original idea • How do you solve legacy systems? • Criticism • Too broad • Changes • Legacy business systems in the state sector in Ireland
How? • What is a legacy system? • What are the categories of causes? • What are the categories of effects? • How do causal categories relate to effect categories? • Definition of legacy status • Investigation into solution space • Categories of solution components • Problems mapping to solution components • Study of suitability of SAP R/3 as a solution
What Is a Legacy System? • Journal search • ‘Inspec’ search • Collected ALL references relating to legacy systems • Trawled for definitions • With help of Dennis Kelly, differentiated between causes and effects.
What Are the Categories of Causes? • Extracting from • Repeated definitions in literature • Personal experience • Came up with • 3 dimensions • Legacy Causal Criteria Framework
What Are the Categories of Effects? • Extracting from • Repeated definitions in literature • Abstract and generalise • 4 categories • Came up with • Legacy Effect Determination Framework
How Do Causal Categories Relate to Effect Categories? • Major research into Causal criteria • Worked backwards • Best practices in the area • What problems are these practices trying to solve? • What are the problems? • Also cross-referenced to previous research. • Legacy Assessment through Cause and Effect (LACE) Framework
Definition of Legacy Status • How ‘legacy’ is a legacy system? • Measurement of legacy status, rather than a yes/no answer to ‘Is the system legacy?’ • Brought together into a definition • Advice of Dr. Bing Wu, supervisor.
Investigation Into Solution Space • Looked up solutions • MILLIONS of them! • Tried to isolate components of solutions • Less components than solutions
Categories of Solution Components • Deal with them • Gradually / big bang • In-house / outsource • Data/code reuse • Reengineer the code • Wrap application • Iterative enhancement / software restructure / re-host • Reengineer the business process
Problems Mapping to Solution Components • Not as well researched • Referenced to best practices in first part of document • Unproven
Study of suitability of SAP R/3 as a solution • Given a generic application, how SAP R/3 matches
Thorough assessment of SAP R/3 against the causal criteria framework System suitability System suitability to business process C Business process to organisational mission C System technology to organisational environment C Underlying platform suitability Hardware suitability E Network suitability C Development environment suitability(including OS) I Data management suitability C Software quality Quality of software written into components E Quality of static design of current system E Quality of change management I
Journal search • MIS Quarterly • Communications of the ACM • Management Science • IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering • Information and Management • Journal of Management Information Systems • Sloan Management Review • Datamation • Computer (IEEE)