A Study of Distribution of IT-work in Norwegian Organizations

Abstract

The distribution of work in an organization s IT-department has been changing the last 20 years. More time is spent on maintenance than development. Maintenance has become agreat expense towards cost and time, but are often not prioritized. What is the reason for this? And are there other factors in the organizations influencing the distribution of work?This thesis is part of a replication study performed every fifth year since 1993. A survey was conducted in 2013 with 68 Norwegian organizations, gathering data about and in relevance to distribution of work in the IT-departments. The thesis presents the results and compares different factors up against each other to find correlations. Results are also compared to the other surveys in this replication study, in order to find trends and reasons for change over time. This study has also had a focus on differences between private and public organizationsThe main results of this thesis, was that maintenance has continued its increasing trend.When comparing maintenance and development work isolated, 78% was spent on maintenance. This is a significant increase since last study in 2008 when it was 66%. Applicationportfolio upkeep has also continued to increase, and was at 68% (2008 - 63%). The conclusion for these results, are the major use of outsourcing. Organizations outsource a large part of the development, but keep the maintenance in-house. This may be why there has been a decrease in application portfolio evolution and an increase in upkeep. This study has had a majority of public organizations, which outsourced more than the rest of the population.It is recommended to do further investigation on the use of outsourcing and on differences between public and private organizations.