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The Situation: A programmer is given a
task to add a new feature to the company's software environment.
- Most companies have large backlogs of IT enhancements,
leading to frustrated and unsatisfied customers (both internal
and external).
- IT departmens may be unable to make vendor-supplied
software upgrades because of the difficulty of reintegrating
prior enhancements.
The Problem: The enhancement process is often slow and
tedious because the programmer has to learn and fully understand unfamiliar
code before making the enhancement.
- A typical company has 6 to 8 million lines of source code in production.
- 80% of that source code is purchased from outside vendors.
- The remaining 20% has been developed over many years by many programmers.
- An individual programmer may have written less than 1% of a company's source
code.
The Opportunity: Using RTPA, a programmer can dramatically
reduce the time required to learn unfamiliar software, giving the programmer
quick mastery over the code and saving time, money and energy.
| Audit Strategy |
Benefit |
| Audit Labels, File I/O, External References, Branches and
Conditional Operations to get an immediate overview of the
actual flow of the unfamiliar program. |
- No need to step through source listings.
- Shows actual flow - no guessing about conditions, branches,
etc.
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| Audit individual variables to identify where key
variables got changed. |
- No tedious breakpoints and stepping
- Limit unintended consequences of changing code
|
| Audit arithmetic operations to understand complex
calculations |
- No guessing how a program calculates its results
- Greater confidence in verifying changes
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In their own words:
As for the RTPA Package, since its installation the
IT Staff has been able to produce much quicker results with respect to
enhancing our new Warehouse Management System. Prior to RTPA, our staff had
to spend many days trying to understand how some of these extremely complex
programs worked. In today's highly competitive marketplace along with the
demands for Retailer Supply Chain Compliance, RTPA has provided Fishman and
Tobin with a quick response IT solution. The learning curve has been
significantly reduced and enhancements are made in hours rather than
days.
In my opinion, dollar for dollar, RTPA is one of the
best IT tools of the millennium! | |
