The Imperative of Technical Skilled Staff in Legacy Information System Management

Abstract

Technical skilled personnel and information systems are important for the success of contemporary firms as they face intense rivalry, globalization, and time-to-market pressures. They are an essential element that plays a critical role in an organisation’s ability to sense environmental change and respond efficiently and effectively to that change. Besides the technology components of an information system and the fast pace of technological innovation, the people involved in the design, operation and maintenance are essential elements of information systems. Most of the research work on deciding whether or not to continue with legacy information systems has been centred mainly on intrinsic agility factors. Extrinsic agility factors like technical skilled personnel have largely been overlooked. But, as information systems age or in the case of highly rigid processes, extrinsic agility factors like technical skilled personnel will start playing an important role in deciding whether to prolong the life cycle of the information system. However, human skills obsolescence is a growing problem for organizations that must support legacy systems. The technical skilled staff are either ageing out or upgrading their skills to a non-procedural programming paradigm due to market demand. It is, therefore, imperative to regularly assess the technical skilled personnel competency level of a legacy information system. This study evaluates and classifies the technical knowledge of skilled personnel using a developed online assessment system with test questions based on the legacy information system application program. The result obtained indicates that the technical skilled staff can still operate and maintain the case study information system.