How to succeed with mergers by software systems

Common questions when this happens are: Shall we phase out one of the systems and develop another? Or is it possible to take parts from the different systems and create a new? A new study from Mälardalen University in Sweden offers help to future organizations to avoid pitfalls like these.

Rikard Land, Departement of Computer Science and Electronics at Mälardalen University, defends his thesis “How to Succeed with In-House Software Systems Integration and Merge – Observations concerning Architecture and Process” on the 15th of September.

In the thesis Land presents two trends: partly an increased use of software both in products and as a support for different activities, partly the constant organizational changes in society of today. Land recognise a problem in these trends; it is common that no one in the new organization has knowledge about more than one of the existing systems well, neither as an user, nor as an architect.

Land presents studies of organizations in this kind of situation and presents advices for how to organize an evaluation process. He also presents which aspects are most important to evaluate and which work procedures are most effective. The focus of Land’s thesis is the architecture of the software, that is its fundamental choice of structure, technologies and computer model.

The public defence of the thesis takes place on Friday the 15th of September in the Zeta hall of Mälardalen University, 10:00.