Managing IT Systems, Development in Context

The Systems Development Life Cycle methodology is [OR is not] excessively formal and rigid and should be [OR should not be] more flexible and unstructured?

Introduction
The System Development Life Cycle Methodology is indeed excessively formal and rigid and should be made more flexible and unstructured. This stand is taken to agree with the notion that the system development life cycle model is formal and needs to be made flexible. The position that the System Development Life Cycle methodology is excessively formal and rigid has been taken due to the below reasons.
Slow and Cumbersome Procedure: It can be determined that the application of the system development life cycle is …show more content…

In most cases, it would be expected that the construction of any system should be so informal that the knowledge on basic operation will not be limited to only a few people. This is because such situations always cause delays when the right people to attend to the system cannot be accessed at a given point in time.
Counterarguments
There are several schools of thought who have also come up with their versions of arguments, wanting to create the impression that the system development life cycle methodology is indeed not formal and rigid. People belonging to this school of thought argue on three major stands in justification of the structure of the stages and procedures with the system. The arguments they put forth have briefly been described below:
Clear Project Objectives: It is argued that the system development life cycle works according to well defined and clearly stated project objectives. It will be observed that in the project management principle, project objectives are very important in explicitly stating what the project wants to achieve as well as the timelines for achievement and in some cases the amount of money that would go into achieving the particular objective. Because the system development life cycle is linear in nature and has specifically stated stages that need to