Legacy Systems' Impact on Tender Process - Essay Example

Legacy systems – what are they and what are the issues/ impact when engaging on the Invitation to Tender process and to whom? and Section # of course> This paper aims at analyzing what exactly is meant by legacy systems and how its presence influences the tender process in an organization intended to develop and deploy an information system to their organization. Legacy systems would primary be present in two forms i.e. either the legacy systems would be designed magnificently with extremely professional approach, considering not just the fulfillment of the user requirements but also leaving gaps to enhance the software beyond in the future, alongside the various flexibility factors present within this workflow. At the other extreme, the legacy system will have no proper documentation whatsoever to understand user requirements, let alone the comprehension of the language and codes utilized. Introduction: What are Legacy Systems? According to Martin (2008), the concept of information technology and enterprise resource planning tools may sound a relatively newer term to the globe today; however the concept of computer system dates back to somewhere in the 1800s where major businesses had deployed systems that catered to their needs. The then recognized as most technologically sophisticated systems have today turned to be nothing more than space occupying and low performance not-so-worthy giants, though their significance and contribution to the respective era cannot be denied by any means. These systems are often quoted as ‘legacy systems’. At the same time, it is worth mentioning that legacy systems are defined as historical systems but truly obsolete or outdate d ones that definitely need revamping. As the name suggests, this implies the historical technological set-ups that existed any time within the past; these maybe the immediate predecessor of the currently prevailing system or an even older version. These systems provide the support for the future work out. Similar to the fact that the strength of the root of a tree enhances its long term sustainability, along the similar lines, the present of an appropriate and well documented legacy system assists implementers of any current system to easily connect or join data from the legacy system to the advance version of the software. Impact and Issues for Tender Invitation Beck (1999) states that legacy systems are critical to handle; firstly, these are generally a decade or so old, implying that the terminology along with the technology would no longer be valid, nor understood by many, subsequently making the linkage of data (for migration) and translation of existing functions to user requirements becomes a difficult task. Additionally, organizations feel that the prevalent system is working all well, then there is no need to switch to another system that would have an association with a higher investment amount. Thirdly costs are higher, resistance to change can safely be assumed to be present, and also the newer system would need training and development of the steady brains who are readily stuck to the old software. The term legacy system comes into existence for a firm that plans to migrate itself from its existing system to a newer one, such as the rising trend of moving from customized solutions towards semi-customized implementation of Oracle or SAP. On a general note, even if a firm has a specialized IT department, it prefers having designated a particular vendor for the purchase and implementation of their advance version of the information system. Subsequently, the business goes for tender, launching tender and requesting invitations from interested parties for providing the bundle of services that the firm wants and needs. At this point in time, the legacy systems become critical or gain significant for both the parties i.e. the one inviting the tender and the one filling the tender. In accordance with Beck (2002), he view point of the inviter of the tender, the present of a strong legacy system with appropriate documentation, or even otherwise, gives them a commanding position over the prospect candidates because in such a scenario, appropriate documentation is present up to quite an extent, making the job easier for the consultant on grounds of easier documentation, easier linkage towards the new data, easier data migration, and most interestingly, the new consultants can use the existing documentation to understand the data requirements and processes and how these have evolved over a period of time. At the same time, the developer job would be easier as well since the utilization of the various connectivity features, the job, particularly related to data migration becomes a lot easier, since all maps and blue prints are present. If the example is chosen the other way around i.e. the presence of a weak legacy system would put the inviter on the back foot and the consultant’s job would also become difficult. The absence of a strong legacy system implies that analyses and user requirements are to be collected from scratch and not just that but data migration may become very difficult also leading to various fields being lost, and data being highly de-normal in nature. Such a complex and complicated circumstance would definitely enhance the tender price by the bidder. In addition to that, the firm may also experience a higher degree of resistance from the users on the whole as generally systems with lack of appropriate documentation is flexible to adapt any and all exceptions from individual/users. During the invitation to tender process, individual parties such as consultants tend to be very precise in terms of their quotation, tend to look at various circumstances and that too mainly due to the various circumstances. Firstly, bids submitted are to the best of the understanding and comprehension of the consultant or the bidder, whereby the party bidding understands the prevailing circumstances, and develops its own sets of scenarios to present the quotation. During the making of this tender quotation, a critical aspect talked about is the presence of legacy system, how well it has been designed, documented and how well it caters to the requirements of the firm. Legacy system screenshots and existing information is what is needed for developing quotation and other relevant documents for the tender. Many a times, particularly when talked about small and medium size businesses, it can be stated that the legacy systems are in the form of physical books that are used for record keeping purposes, and it stands at the same point i.e. if data is maintained in an appropriate manner than nothing can be done against it and the credit goes to the same data developer. Generally, legacy systems are fairly flexible with reduced checks and balance since the intent of the development of information systems a decade or so back were to develop systems that would ease the working of the concerned department or the organization rather than regularizing or standardizing work. Conclusion Based on the analytical discussion as presented in the previous sections of this essay, it can be concluded that the presence of a strong, valid and well documented legacy system is critical for the up-grading of the system. Following the same, another critical conclusion to be drawn is the fact that any information system being deployed should be well documented and appropriately kept ‘open’ for updates, and connectivity of inter-linked data. This is critical because today’s newest information system would then on become a legacy system for an information system that would come into existence tomorrow. The significant learning is what experience is learned out of presented case, as presented in the sections stated as above. References Kent Beck, Martin Fowler (1999) Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code Addison-Wesley Professional Kent Beck (2002) Test Driven Development: By Example. Addison-Wesley Professional Michael Feathers (2004) Working Effectively with Legacy Code. Prentice Hall Robert C. Martin (2008) Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship. Prentice Hall Read More