Firm Description

The Firm is a decentralized software development company. Independently managed groups develop the Firm's products. Each group supports its own computing needs and infrastructure. The Firm provides only a few universal information technology (IT) services. Each group is responsible for providing and supporting their other IT needs. The groups use Internet access and domain name service the most. Each group contains 25 to 250 people who work on a specific product at their site. Smaller groups work as collectives of individuals, while larger groups tend to have one or two levels of management with associated isolation of resources.

One group is working on a new product code named Prospect-J. The Prospect-J development has a critical time-to-market requirement, known internally as “the impossible deadline.” Deadline pressure is causing the developers to work on the product interactively and nearly continuously.

The Firm does not have raised floors, hardened data centers, or a central operations control center for monitoring critical IT services.