New technologies require new skills. When
assessing the skills of the organization, look at the requirements to see if
there are any specific requirements that will call for new development or
testing skills. If a candidate architecture exists, consider this as well.
Typical scenarios which may indicate that
new skills must be acquired by the development organization include:
the first use of distributed or
cooperative processing
the first use of application programs on
programmable workstations in this client
changes in scale (for example, a large
network with centralized processing in a client with only departmental
systems installed)
communication with external
organizations such as clients or suppliers
first use of a new operating system
(e.g. UNIX) or communication protocols (e.g. OSI).
any special National Language (NLS)
requirements
the first use of cryptography
Skills that may need to be acquired
include:
Knowledge of unfamiliar or special hardware or software
Knowledge of an application package
Special industry knowledge
An exceptionally large design team
A multinational, dispersed, design team
Client/server skills
Exceptional security requirements
Be aware of the changing roles in
application development. To react quickly to changing business needs, end user
departments increasingly take an active role in application development.
Development teams consist of people from end user departments whose
responsibilities include the functional and usability aspects of the
application, while the IS department focuses on Client/Server infrastructure
aspects and the integration of in-house developed and off-the-shelf
applications. This may lead to new methodologies and tools being used for the
implementation of Client/Server applications.
Significant skill gaps should be identified
as significant project risks in the Artifact:
Risk List.
Identify new development facilities
Define any additional development facilities that will be required to support
the development effort:
What new tools will be used to develop and test the new
system?
What new skills will be needed to use these tools?
How will these be acquired - retraining existing staff or
hiring new?
How long will it take to create the development
environment?
How much of the development environment will need to be
retained for ongoing system maintenance?
Have the development functions been assigned to nodes?
Included in the sizing data?
Have the connections between the development and production
environments been defined in the system specification?
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