1.Why selecting a systems development approach is an important business decision? Who should participate in the selection process?

Selecting a system development approach is an important business decision because it can have a big impact on the the time, cost, and end product of the systems development. Depends on the willingness and capability of the organizational change that can be involved in system development different level of risk and return should be taken into consideration. Businesses today required to build applications rapidly to stay competitive. This involves a lot of different departments in requirements gathering and most of cases produces the need of business processes change during identification of pain points and deciding which way to go to resolve problems. Managers should be aware of the different ways of approaches, evaluate and choose the right one depending on the type of organization, it's own resources and desired controls over the process. All stakeholders should participate in the selection process.
During the Business Process Reengineering the first step of identifying which business processes need improvement and have a highest priority requires a strategic analysis and pain points determination by Senior Management. Identifying and describing existing processes, understanding the process costs and process duration bring to the next step of decision how to improve these processes and can involve different layers of organization and even multiple companies if they are part of the shared processes.

2.Some have said that the best way to reduce system development costs is to use application software packages. Do you agree? Why or why not?

If the organization doesn't have internal resources and have pretty standard business processes that can easily be set up in the application software package, it is a good way to go in case of right choice of the best vendor solution. Some vendors are specialize in industry preset solutions for their systems. If organization has an unique requirements, then customizing the packages can be very costly and create a hassle for the future software upgrade and maintenance.