A preliminary review of legacy information systems evaluation models

Abstract

Some organisations own information systems (IS) whose age are more than ten years old to support their businesses. These systems are known as legacy information systems (LIS). LIS are still in use because they bring high business values. On the other hand, LIS normally lead to maintainability problems due to lack of experts who understand the systems, high maintenance costs and lack of documentation. This requires organisations to decide whether to continue maintaining LIS, discard them totally, replace them or perform reengineering. To make such decisions, organisations need guidance on LIS evaluation. This study therefore reviewed the available LIS evaluation models in order to identify gaps and insufficiencies in them. Four models were reviewed and qualitatively analysed using content analysis. The models include ISO 25010, ISO 25012, Hierarchical Models and Renaissance Method. Based on the analysis, the common aspects of LIS evaluation found are business value, technical quality and organisational characteristics. This study has provided some potential areas that could be explored further by future studies in LIS evaluation.