Chapter 1: Introduction

A Hypothetical Scenario

Imagine that you are an application programmer working for a midsize firm in the automobile industry that maintains numerous offices in a number of European countries. Your firm is pursuing the strategy of developing its own business applications in house. At first glance such a strategy may seem rather odd. But extreme competition and increasing cost pressures now demand a high level of flexibility and stability from the development team, and your division leader has guaranteed that the software systems developed will have these characteristics, and this is the justification for management's decision to support in-house development.

Up to now each office has installed and maintained its own software system, since the development teams in each branch have been working independently of one another.