Related Content: CS605 - VU Lectures, Handouts, PPT Slides, Assignments, Quizzes, Papers & Books of Software Engineering II
The legacy system also needs to be assessed from an environment’s perspective. This involves looking at the supplier, failure rate, age, performance, support requirements, maintenance cost, and interoperability.
These angles are elaborated in the following paragraph:
Supplier stability: Is the supplier still in existence? Is the supplier financially stable and likely to continue in existence? If the supplier is no longer in business, is the system maintained by someone else?
Read more: CS605 - Software Engineering II - Lecture Handout 39
In 1776, Adam Smith questioned the prevailing Mercantilist ideas on trade and developed the theory of Absolute Advantage. Smith reasoned that if trade were unrestricted, each country would specialize in those products in which it had a competitive advantage. Each country’s resources would shift to the efficient industries because the country could not compete in the inefficient ones. Through specialization, countries could improve their efficiency because 1) labor could become more skilled by repeating the same tasks, 2) labor would not lose time in switching among production of different products, and 3) long production runs would provide incentives for the development of more efficient working methods.
A country may have a natural advantage in some products because of climate or other natural resources (labor, minerals, etc.).
In manufactured goods, countries usually have acquired an advantage in either their product or process technology.
Figure 5.2 illustrates how the United States has an absolute advantage in wheat, while Sri Lanka has an absolute advantage in tea. By the U.S. specializing in wheat production and Sri Lanka specializing in tea production, the global production of tea and wheat can be increased.
Read more: MGT520 - International Business - Lecture Handout 21