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There are three ways to approach the creation of a new system?

Develop a custom application in house
Buy a packaged system and customise it
Rely on external party to build it

Describe each of these three design choices and suggest what criteria should be used when making a selection.

When you create a new system there things you need to take into considerations, importantly the users of your system since all your design and UI’s will be based off of that.

Here are the three things I can offer:

1. Research about the system you’re trying to create if it’s already existing, that way you save time in creating functionalities, many of the application systems now have open-source version you might want to look at these first since it’s free.

2. Find out any API’s available to extend that existing system other wise you may have to build your own.

3 Design is most important (not the appearance) but the user experience, the simpler it is for user the better system it is. Then you can modify and enhance cosmetics as you go along.

Is there any particular system you’re trying to build?

Hope this helps

This entry was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 6:47 pm and is filed under system approach. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “There are three ways to approach the creation of a new system?”

  1. Page Spike Says:
    February 9th, 2010 at 12:04 am

    When you create a new system there things you need to take into considerations, importantly the users of your system since all your design and UI’s will be based off of that.

    Here are the three things I can offer:

    1. Research about the system you’re trying to create if it’s already existing, that way you save time in creating functionalities, many of the application systems now have open-source version you might want to look at these first since it’s free.

    2. Find out any API’s available to extend that existing system other wise you may have to build your own.

    3 Design is most important (not the appearance) but the user experience, the simpler it is for user the better system it is. Then you can modify and enhance cosmetics as you go along.

    Is there any particular system you’re trying to build?

    Hope this helps
    References :
    pagespike.com, SEO and web development

  2. si105 Says:
    February 9th, 2010 at 12:12 am

    Lol i was in a class when the teacher was teaching this to a 6th form group, I’m sure that external parties advantage is it’s exactly what you want and disadvantage is cost.
    References :

  3. misty Says:
    February 9th, 2010 at 12:19 am

    This sounds like homework to me.

    Ok here goes -

    Develop in house – means you have to employ expensive IT professionals, and keep at least some of them on to support it after it’s built. Advantage is you can get the system to do exactly what you want. However, if you need to train your IT staff in a particular area before they can do this, it may take longer.

    Buy an off the shelf package and customise it – won’t be exactly what you want. It may be difficult to find a package you can customise sufficiently for your needs which means you may have to make compromises on functionality. If you customise it too much, then when you need to upgrade to the next version of the package (which you might need to do if you upgrade your operating system, or any other software it interacts with, e.g. MS Office software, Internet Explorer – a lot of package vendors will tell you the version of their package you are using isn’t compatible with the new version of IE etc so you have to upgrade to their latest version) – then you will have to spend time and effort reapplying your customisations, with the risk of introducing errors, so much more testing will be required. You may also find that if you customise too much, the vendor will refuse to support the package.

    Get an external party to build the software for you – can be quite expensive, and you don’t have so much control over what you get. Misunderstandings can creep in between you specifying your requirements for the system and them delivering it. You would also need to worry about who’s going to support it after it’s finished. Will they continue to support it or will you be on your own, and again have to employ people to do it ?

    So criteria for selection:-
    Budget – is there a maximum price you’re willing to pay for this?
    Time scale – is there a fixed deadline?
    How flexible are you on functionality?
    How much testing are you prepared to do before it goes live?
    Who do you want to support it after it goes live?
    Are upgrades to the software going to be needed in the near future ? If so, who will do them?
    References :

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