New Hanover County Information Technology Department	Issued:  01/29/02
	Policy Number:  1-06
Subject:  Application Development

PURPOSE AND SCOPE:

This document is intended as a general guideline for the Application Development staff of the New Hanover County Information Technology department and applies to all application systems under their custodial care.

CHANGE SUMMARY:

            None:  Original document

POLICY:

 The Application Development staff is responsible for developing and maintaining critical countywide administrative computing systems.  Given the rapidly changing state of information technologies, and the wide variety of parameters affecting application systems, we have chosen to implement a very flexible, yet robust and auditable process, which includes the following steps:

·        Application Development staff must adhere to standards, guidelines, and procedures as established by IT management.

·        Functional and technical system requirements must be jointly developed and approved by user management and IT.

·        User management and IT jointly evaluate potential systems, with a preference for buying vendor solutions instead of developing them in-house.

·        Funding for the purchase, development, installation, and ongoing maintenance costs of the system must be secured prior to purchase or development decisions.

·        Application development and implementation plans must be jointly developed by user management and IT in a timely manner in order to allow sufficient time for the necessary activities.

·        IT is responsible for proper technical and production documentation of the systems.  User management is responsible for usage documentation and user training.

·        Formal walkthroughs must be conducted at each milestone during the system design, development, test, and implementation phases.

PROCEDURE:

 The following documents contain standards, guidelines, and procedures, which should be used by the Application Development staff.

·        Application Testing Guidelines

·        Data Management Guidelines

·        Problem Resolution Guidelines

·        Security Guidelines

·        Device Independent JCL Procedures

OTHER INFORMATION:

REFERENCES:

CHANGE HISTORY:

Version	Date	Comments
A	01/29/02	Original Document