Author: De Beer, Sarnell
Supervisor: Mr. Ernst Swanepoel
Date: March 2008

ABSA Corporate and Merchant Bank (ACMB) is a division of ABSA, and perform the treasury and merchant banking needs of ABSA clients. ACMB follows it’s own Information Technology strategy to a large extent since the nature of its corporate business and it’s customer base is unique in the ABSA context.

ACMB executives believe that an organization of the future need to be able to create an environment which can adapt within expected timeframes at all levels of the organization, in strategic direction, tactical deployment and operational capabilities.

For financial institutions (apart from product delivery to clients); legislative, political and global external factors impact heavily on information technology. By default all of this has an impact on the quality of software solutions that are delivered.

Against this background the research problem reads as follows: “Business priorities adversely impacting IT software development quality”.

In support of the research problem, the research question for this dissertation reads as follows: “How can IT software development quality be maintained regardless of business priorities changing?”

Research was conducted using the case study method to determine the adverse impact of business priorities on IT software development quality. The underlying questions that were addressed are: “Do business priorities adversely impact on IT software development quality?” “What can be improved in current processes to ensure good software development quality?” The research showed that quality is planned into a project, regardless of whether it is in the delivery to the client or in the code itself. Implementing the necessary processes and methods enables IT to successfully analyse and design workable and technically feasible solutions that are sustainable in the long term regardless of time pressure. Technical planning and change control processes are of extreme importance and reduce the impact of business priority changes on IT software development quality.