Question 1:
Technically speaking, a system is a set of both things and processes that comes together to be able to do something. The successful development of systems involves several players. First, users must be involved in the development as these would be the end users. There must be consulted and their desires must be satisfied. When we say users, this includes all the users from the novice users, the middle managers to the top management. The next important things that must be involved are of course the tea of developers. These are the ones who will be interpreting the needs of the user and the processes to be able to come up with a functional and usable system. Of course the business processes are also involved and hardware components are also taken into consideration.
System development involves seven phases which must be done to be able to come up with a successful system. These are the planning, analysis, design, development, testing, implementation and maintenance. Like any other problem solving situation, system development must start with the problem definition and its analysis which falls in the planning and analysis phases. This is very crucial as a wrong definition of the problem can result in a wrong system developed. For me the first two phases are the most important. (umich.edu)
Question 2:
Software piracy has been a perennial problem among software developers. The problem has scaled in such a way that it has caused massive economic and social effects. Not only software piracy is illegal but it has caused massive losses in the businesses of software developers. More than half of what they are supposed to earn go to their users for free because of piracy. You can download proprietary software over the internet with just one click and without even spending a single cent for it.
What’s more hurting is that sometimes institutions themselves use pirated software in their daily operations. With the current situation, the society tends to have the impression that software development is that easy since everything is available on the net without even giving credit to its developers. This downgrades the capacity of the developers who have put effort in coming up with such software.
References:
umich.edu (2013). The Systems Development Life Cycle. Retrieved from http://www.med.umich.edu/finance/financialsystems/files/pdf/SystemsDevelopmentLifeCycle.pdf
