The Challenge Of Managing And Developing A Very Large and Dynamic Management Information System

Abstract

General Bernard Randolph once said, according to Alton Marsh writing in Government Executive [1], that he retired as Commander of the Air Force Systems Command without ever completing a software project on time. His reference was to embedded systems. But frankly, there is little evidence to suggest that anyone, or a very fortunate few, can say they have completed a software development project of any real size or kind on schedule and within cost In her presentation at the National CASECON in 1989 [2], Lois Zells reported that she found estimates for Management Information Systems (MIS) development are commonly off by 400 to 1000 percent before a detailed analysis is completed In addition, her extensive research showed an average 50 percent error in cost estimates, even after a detailed design is completed. No wonder quality, costs, schedule, usability, meeting user requirements, etc., are of continuing constant concern when developing a MIS.

Many people have lived through the challenge and “excitement” of building and continuing to build the Air Force Requirements Data Bank (RDB). Many people contributed ideas, worked at ironing out problems, tuning concepts, and integrating the approaches discussed here. This author has simply the privilege of documenting others’ ideas, hard work and efforts. Special acknowledgment is given to Donald E. Harter, BDM RDB Program Manager and Mark Filteau, formerly of BDM, for the vision to plan and implement the concepts in this paper. Even now, with two years to go, the challenges are ever present and the management intense.