Delhi Business Review ?Vol. 1, No. 2, July - December 2000 INFORMATION SYSTEM AND PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT LIFE CYCLE Sandip C. Patel Suneel K. Maheshwari NTRODUCTION In today’s technologically challenged competitive environment an effective information system is critical to the success of a business. The performance of such information system is vital to its success. The performance of an implemented information system is many times the single most important aspect of an information system for a business. However, the measurement of an information systems’ performance is elusive and is sometimes overlooked during the actual system development cycle. SDLC has following phases – planning, analysis, design, implementation, support and maintenance. 1 The measurement of the systems’ performance is restricted to the implementation phase of the traditional system development life cycle (SDLC). The measurement tools are designed to measure the performance of applications or the subsystems only. These tools are thus burdened with the task of evaluating the entire systems’ performance for which they are not equipped. To make matters worse the rigidity of the process does not allow the systems programmer/analyst to easily incorporate the changes suggested by the outcome of performance measurement. The problem is that the cost to incorporate changes suggested by the outcomes of the performance measurements increases as the SDLC advances. This is because the stages of SDLC will have to be repeated to implement the desired changes. Boehm (1981) supports the contention of adverse financial implications of such changes at later stages in the SDLC. We examine SDLC and focus on its performance measurement phase. The paper evaluates various performance measurement tools and their role in the implementation phase of the SDLC. We recognize the importance of performance of the information system and suggest a performance cycle parallel to the SDLC starting with the planning phase. Specifically, the paper suggests the introduction of a Performance Measurement Life Cycle (PMLC) which parallels the SDLC. The new PMLC introduces the performance measurement tools earlier than the SDLC does. This would lead to not only the effective use of measurement tools but also will facilitate the process of implementing changes suggested by the performance tools. In the following sections we look at the tools used for the performance measurement in the SDLC. We have categorized these performance measurement tools into two groups: system performance benchmarks and the system performance products. The study of tools is followed by the description of the proposed PMLC and conclusions. I 1 Planning involves identifying business problems and planning the goals to be achieved by the information system. System analysis involves analyzing business processes, problems, and suggesting solutions. In the design stage technical details for the solution proposed in the analysis phase is developed. System implementation puts the developed solutions into operation followed by the system support and maintenance stage.