DST system scores with Scrum and Application lifecycle management

what were some of the problems with DST systems' old software development environment?

Some of the problem with DST Systems’ old software development environment is the managers unable to easily determine how resources were being allocated, which of their employees were working on certain projects, and the status of specific assets. 

DST System struggled to update its important product, AWD, in a timely fashion which the time schedule was to release a new version once every two years, but the competitors were releasing the version faster. The DST System traditional “waterfall” method in software development which the progression flows sequentially from one step to the next like a waterfall, with each step unable to start until the previous step has been completed.

how did Scrum development help solve some of those problems?

Scrum development which is a framework for agile software development in which projects progress via a series of iterations called sprints. Scrum supported by a ScrumMaster and a product owner. The ScrumMaster acts as a coach for the team while product owner represents the business, customers or users in guiding the team toward building the right product. The Scrum development helps in accelerate the development cycle for DST Automated Work Distributor, business process management and workflow software that's been around for nearly 20 years. 

Financial services companies use AWD to process financial transactions. Healthcare organizations use it to process insurance claims. It's a mature, sophisticated product with lots of features. To remain competitive, we needed to speed things up. The team members need to have seven key factors to make the Scrum development effectively.

 The seven key factors are common purpose which get everyone at the same pages, commitment that do what’s necessary to get the job done, establish trust, understand the process by master the tools and processes before coding begin, communications make knowledge and information share constantly, having adequate resources and last is leadership which ensure leaders are in place to make technical or business decisions.

what other adjustments did DST make to use Scrum more effectively in its software projects? what people, organization, and technology issues had to be addressed?

CollabNet is a developer of software development and application lifecycle management tools. CollabNet specializes in software designed to work well with agile software development methods such as Scrum. So what I think from the article is DST adapted Collabnet's subversion product to help with the management control of changes to project documents, programs, and other information stored as computer files. 

Application lifecycle management environments, which previously were focused on version control, now offer all of these social elements in a single, integrated hub or platform. These capabilities combine to enable a social community that can self-direct and deliver robust products, as open source environments like GitHub have proven. The idea of communities is based on the strong heritage of CollabNet in the open source community. Software development happens within the context of a team. The team must interact constantly not only with each other but with the code. Social coding requires the ability to provide collaborative authoring, using tools like wikis that are tied to specific artifacts, to the code. SourceForge and GitHub, are migrating to the enterprise market, as companies recognize that even their internal projects can be managed as self-directed open source efforts.

Software must provide facilities or capabilities to users, enabling them to achieve the specified organizational objectives. Nevertheless, the inappropriate specification of requirements is still considered one of the reasons for the failure of software development projects. Good requirements are only assured by the right combination of three dimensions: people, organization and technology. People that have a good attitude like concentrate while doing their job, have enough technical skills to handle all the projects and tools is important for a company to continue release a new version of software system .

Organization issues include organizational structure which existence of unit(s)/structure(s) designed to provide oversight and alignment of first-year efforts, integration will degree the organizational structure results in an integrated approach that crosses division/unit lines , evaluation will degree evaluation results have been used to improve organizational structure performance and resource allocation consistent financial resources to support organizational oversight. Technology is important to create new software and improve the software that already exists. Technology can be used for good, but with new developments come new challenges issues. The digital divide is one such issue, one that people are actively trying to overcome.