The biggest challenge in planning large-scale systems development is scheduling. Describe the three approaches that organizations can take to address this challenge

What will be an ideal response?

The first approach that organizations can take to address the challenge of scheduling large-scale systems development projects is to avoid all major schedule risks by never developing software in-house. Instead, they can license software from vendors. However, if no suitable software exists, companies can take one of two remaining approaches. They can admit the impossibility of systems development scheduling and plan accordingly. They can abandon the systems development life cycle and decide to invest a certain level of resources into a project, manage it as best as they can, and take the schedule that produces results. The third approach is to attempt to schedule the development project in spite of all difficulties. Several different estimation techniques can be used. If the project is similar to a past project, the schedule data from that past project can be used for planning. When such similar past projects exist, this technique can produce quality schedule estimates. If there is no such past project, managers can estimate the number of lines of code that will need to be written. Then they can use industry or company averages to estimate the time required. Another technique is to estimate the function points in a program, use each function point to determine the number of lines of code, and use that number to estimate schedules.