  The information systems landscape is at first sight very different from how
it was 20 years ago. On the other hand, it seems that we are still struggling
with many of the same problems, including late or abandoned projects and
unfilled customer demands. In this article we present selected data from survey
investigations from 1993, 1998, 2003, 2008 and 2013 among Norwegian
organizations on how they conduct information systems development and
maintenance. In particular we compare data from 2008 and 2013 in more detail. A
major finding is that whereas main work distribution numbers was very stable
between 2003 and 2008, we see some changes as for time used on maintenance and
development between 2008 and 2013. Even if we witness large changes in the
underlying implementation technology and methods used, a number of aspects such
as application portfolio upkeep (the amount of work for keeping the application
portfolio operational) though are still on the same level as it has been the
last 15 years. On the other hand, because of the more complex infrastructures
supporting the application portfolio, and the increasing number of in
particular external users, an increasing amount of resources is used for other
tasks such as operations and user-support than in the first investigations,
although also this appears to have stabilised between the last investigations.
