Jason Seibel

Dissertation

Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) Productivity Applications have provided a reliable, convenient, and consistent productivity environment for commercial, government, and personal users for over two decades. Vendors today, such as Microsoft and Adobe, typically deliver new capabilities as follow-on versions or upgrades to existing product lines. Annually, corporations needlessly spend millions of dollars investing in follow-on versions of currently deployed applications without adequately… Show more

Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) Productivity Applications have provided a reliable, convenient, and consistent productivity environment for commercial, government, and personal users for over two decades. Vendors today, such as Microsoft and Adobe, typically deliver new capabilities as follow-on versions or upgrades to existing product lines. Annually, corporations needlessly spend millions of dollars investing in follow-on versions of currently deployed applications without adequately evaluating upgrade decisions. Exacerbating the problem, vendors release new versions of their productivity applications with increasingly shorter intervals, advertising them as full of new and ‘‘must have’’ capabilities. The decision to upgrade is challenging. Unfortunately, there is a lack of ‘‘same vendor, version-to-version’’ upgrade decision support models to assist Information Technology (IT) decision-makers whether to upgrade or not. As a result, IT decision makers typically employ general strategies that are not based on clear, well-defined decision attributes, which, in turn, waste valuable IT resources. This research effort proposes an upgrade decision support model for COTS productivity applications based on a multivariable, scenario-based survey of IT professionals. Using logistic regression analysis, a model is developed using an iterative approach to isolate contributing survey attributes and to produce a statistically significant model. The proposed logistic regression model produces an output based on the probability of upgrading intended to assist an IT professional in productivity application upgrade decisions. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Eng 9: 296–312, 2006 Show less

This paper proposes a methodology that proactively and logically addresses the Design
Decisions and Obsolescence Planning challenges of a program. A case study is conducted using
a large-scale IT network system design and deployment program. The actual performance of the
system and change costs are analyzed using the Rapid Response and Technology Trade (R2T2)
model developed at Lockheed Martin Maritime Systems & Sensors to trade against other change
management alternatives… Show more

This paper proposes a methodology that proactively and logically addresses the Design
Decisions and Obsolescence Planning challenges of a program. A case study is conducted using
a large-scale IT network system design and deployment program. The actual performance of the
system and change costs are analyzed using the Rapid Response and Technology Trade (R2T2)
model developed at Lockheed Martin Maritime Systems & Sensors to trade against other change
management alternatives. The case study historical insight then provides the system designer
with a methodology for better modeling and planning of future IT-based designs. Show less