Summary › The Challenges of Software Management

The Challenges of Software Management

In today's highly sophisticated CA IDMS environment, managing development activities and operations can be extremely complex and unpredictable. Hundreds of environmental changes are evaluated, tested and implemented monthly, and sometimes weekly, to keep up with growing business demands. While these efforts are essential to controlling application backlogs, they require increasing numbers of skilled personnel— each with clearly defined responsibilities and each with specific requirements for controlling change:

• Development and Maintenance groups develop and maintain software systems to meet both internal service requirements and external competitive demands. They are involved with tracking and analyzing the impact of change and are concerned with preventing concurrent updates as they juggle parallel development activities.
• Technical Services and Production Control are responsible for maximizing system availability— and quickly identifying and solving problems which affect uptime. In addition, these groups typically manage vendor releases and seek secure and reliable ways to automate promotion control.
• Auditors and Security groups are involved with ensuring system and data integrity and recoverability. Consequently, they are concerned with controlling security access and establishing audit trails of who did what and when.
• Database Administrators and Quality Assurance personnel are responsible for developing effective and consistent procedures for testing and promoting applications throughout the development life-cycle. These groups require methods for controlling problem correction and preventing regression.