Product Design Development Should Determineâ€Myassignmenthelp.Com

Question: Discuss About The Product Design Development Should Determine? Answer: Ethical Issue Identification In most cases, firms dealing with product design and development should determine a products readiness for release. This step takes place after spending resources such as money, time, and labor to identify a problem, create a solution, and test the system. In this video, a manager is pressurizing an employee to launch a system without undertaking tests on it to meet a clients deadline (Al-Saggaf, 2016). Sometimes, product launch does not depend on a new application being ready. However, it involves informing the world that the product has been released and ready for use. Clients start loading information into the software database since they believe it is secure and bug-free. Edwards and Steinke (2008) notes that software errors and bugs are a normal part of an IT application. As such, many program vendors provide no expectation of correctness or guarantee of reliability when releasing a software. Additionally, companies find it easier to launch a product, spend more resources on marketing, and then fix bugs after complaints from users. Edwards and Steinke (2008) argues that the ICT vendor has the ethical responsibility for testing and correcting a product. Implications of the Ethical Problem The manager believes that the team should release the product without testing to impress the client and avoid losing business. However, the employee responsible for the launch believes that the piece of software should be tested first to ascertain that it works properly and meets user requirements. On the contrary, it can damage the reputation of the product vendor for launching an untested product. For instance, the software can suddenly crush or spit out the wrong output that may lead to loss of trust due to the presence of bugs on the code. Moreover, client may lose critical data through a program that has defects. As a result, a bug-plagued software can become costly for both the client and service provider. Previous studies have shown that this unethical move in ICT has been prevalent and detrimental and has led to an annual loss of $59.5 billion in America (Waychal and Capretz, 2016). The costs are borne by the developer and users. In some cases, if the program is installed in a medical equipment, it can be dangerous or cause death. A software product is prone to errors due to its overwhelming sophistication. In includes millions of lines of codes that are prone to defects. As such, developers should be given enough time to identify and correct bugs to prevent future loss or damage on firms reputation. According to Richardson and Gwaltney (2005), improved testing enables earlier identification and correction of software bugs and can eliminate a third of defect-related loss. Unfortunately, most software developers are driven by greed to release products early without proper testing. Al-Saggaf, Burmeister, and Weckert (2015) reasonably argued that human weakness could push them to exploit product vulnerabilities to obtain a capital gain. Their study found that greed factor triggered unethical conduct in the field of ICT. Ineffective corporate and IT policies can lead to abuse of workers and company assets by those in power for personal gains. As a result, more than half of software errors are discovered after form al product launch. An example of the impact of this ethical issue involves the 2013 Healthcare.gov massive system failure caused by lack of rigorous evaluation before implementation (Roy, 2013). The healthcare exchange product was rolled out to support Affordable Care Act. However, the government stifled effective agile development and appropriate testing caused the development cost to swell three times from the budgeted amount. In contrast, if the defect was identified earlier, fixing it would have been cheaper. Solution to the Ethical Problem During the development process, the project team should test a product to identify bugs. Developers can deploy an online tracking solution to record defects and implement a streamlined approach to resolving such defects. Identified bugs should be ranked according to their severity and impact. In this case, the developer in the video can choose to delay the launch date to ensure that the system is tested for release. The system is only considered safe and reliable after the defect triage is complete and the developers have completed correcting the defects. This live software is now guaranteed to be free from defects and can be adopted by a client. Staying ahead of this ethical issue requires integrity and vigilance. The firm should implement a measure makes clients data safety paramount, resisting scenarios of greed and corruption. Notably, meeting such standards can be challenging for firm managers and owners who focus on revenue creation and sales improvement. On the other side, the developer should bring up such ethical issues in early stages of product development for the CEO to communicate to the client before the deadline. Apparently, ethical imagination is required for products that are used by different stakeholders. The developer should consciously use some imagination and avoid assuming that users will think in a similar way. In other words, a programmer should think of a way that a client will use a properly developed software improperly. Imagining a worst case scenario in the early stages will help launch a bug-free system on time. When faced with an ethical dilemma such as the one presented in the video, the developers primary obligation is to communicate on the manner and share his or her concerns with management. As such, the firm should ensure that they have implemented internal processes that encourage sharing of challenges and concerns. Similarly, the management is required to listen to the employee to create a solution. The concerns and facts should be documented for future reference. This ethical issue can be solved through a teleological theory that focuses on the actions and the consequences (Guy, 1990). The manager and the developer should choose an action, among a set, that will lead to a greatest good and least harm. The set of actions, according to the YouTube video, include letting the system go live, developer resigning, or fighting back. From this discussion, it is hard to negotiate ethical issues involving an active decision. It gets more challenging when the challenge involves a problem that can be postponed and labeled a task that can be fixed later after a product has been launched. However, a company should avoid launching un-tested programs since a single bug can cause inconceivable harm and loss. References Al-Saggaf, Y. (2016, October 20). IT management: Select action end of video and see its consequence [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mugeCY3vbxo Al-Saggaf, Y., Burmeister, O., Weckert, J. (2015). Reasons behind unethical behavior in the Australian ICT workplace: An empirical investigation. Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, 13(3/4), 235-255. Edwards, J. N., Steinke, G. (2008). Ethical issues in the software quality assurance function. Communication of the IIMA, 8(1), 53-58. Guy, M. E. (1990). Ethical decision making in everyday work situations. New York: Quorum Books.management. Richardson, J., Gwaltney, J. W. (2005). Ship it! A practical guide to successful software projects. Pragmatic Bookshelf. Roy, A. (2013). Obamacares website is crashing because it doesnt want you to know how costly its plans are. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/10/14/obamacares-website-is-crashing-because-it-doesnt-want-you-to-know-health-plans-true-costs/#464665f57a5f Waychal, P. K., Capretz, L. F. (2016). Why a testing career is not the first choices of engineers. 123rd Annual Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education, 14994.