Adoption

Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting of another, usually a child, from that person's biological or legal parent or parents, and, in so doing, permanently transfers all rights and responsibilities, along with filiation, from the biological parent or parents. Unlike guardianship or other systems designed for the care of the young, adoption is intended to effect a permanent change in status and as such requires societal recognition, either through legal or religious sanction. Historically, some societies have enacted specific laws governing adoption; where others have tried to achieve adoption through less formal means, notably via contracts that specified inheritance rights and parental responsibilities without an accompanying transfer of filiation. Modern systems of adoption, arising in the 20th century, tend to be governed by comprehensive statutes and regulations.

History

Antiquity

While the modern form of adoption emerged in the United States, forms of the practice appeared throughout history. The Code of Hammurabi, for example, details the rights of adopters and the responsibilities of adopted individuals at length. The practice of adoption in ancient Rome is well documented in the Codex Justinianus.

Adoption (software implementation)

In computing, adoption means the transfer (conversion) between an old system and a target system in an organization (or more broadly, by anyone).

If a company works with an old software system, it may want to use a new system which is more efficient, has more work capacity, etc. So then a new system needs to be adopted, after which it can be used by users.

There are several adoption strategies that can be used to implement a system in an organization. The main strategies are big bang adoption, parallel adoption and phased adoption. "Big bang" is a metaphor for the cosmological theory of the same name, in which the start of the cosmos happened at one moment in time. This is also the case with the big bang adoption approach, in which the new system is supposed to be adopted wholesale on one date. In the case of parallel adoption, the old and the new system are run in parallel initially, so that all the users can get used to the new system, but still can do their work using the old system if they want to or need to do so. Phased adoption means that the adoption happens in several phases, so that after each phase the system is a little closer to being fully adopted by the organization.

Adoption (disambiguation)

Adoption may refer to: