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Why Software Systems Fail
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Why Software Systems Fail
Pancham Bansal 1.0 Introduction In this report I will be concentrating on the failure of software systems. To understand why software systems fail we need to understand what are software systems. Software systems are a type of information system. This is because a software system is basically a means for hardware to process information. Flynn’s definition of an information system is: "An information system provides procedures to record and make available information, concerning part of an organization, to assist organization-related activities." Humans have been processing information manually for thousands of years, but with the vast increase of demand for knowledge this century has meant that a new method of information processing has been needed. Software systems have provided a new means that is much faster and efficient. As a result a huge number of organisations have become software dependent. Some of these systems are used to safeguard the lives of many people. This means that if these systems were to fail they could lead to devastating consequences. Here are some examples of where software systems are used heavily and could be very dangerous if they were to fail - aviation, hospitals, space exploration, nuclear power stations and communications. I will be looking at some examples of actual software failure in these fields to explain the reasons why systems fail. 2.0 Reasons for Systems Failure If software systems failure ca...
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