Business Analysis Exam 1 Study Guide

Chapter One & Elder Methodology                                                                 

• What is the SDLC? Why was it created? What is the goal?        
•         SDLC known as systems development life cycle is a series of steps used to mark the phases of development for an information system, which is used by organizations to develop and support their information systems.It consists of four steps: 1. Planning and selection, 2. Analysis, 3. design, and 4.implementation and operation. With these four steps, its goal is to improve organizational systems by developing or acquiring application software and training employees in its use. Application software, or a system, supports organizational functions or processes.

• Identify the four/five major phases of the SDLC and the major output of each step.
•         Phase1:  Planning and Selection: 1st phase of the SDLC , in which an organization’s total information systems needs are analyzed and arranged, nad in which a potential information systems project is identified and an argument for continuing or not continuing with the project is presented.

• Two Primary activities: identifies the need for a new or enhanced system and to investigate the system and determine the proposed system’s scope.
• 1. Identifies the need for a new or enhanced system

• Comes about because request to deal with problems in current procedures, desire to perform additional task, realization that info technology could be used to capitalize on an existing opportunity.
• an organization determines whether resources should be devoted to the development or enhancement of each info system under consideration
• feasibility study is conducted before the second phase to determine the economic and organizational impact of the system.  

• 2. Investigate the system and determine the proposed system’s scope.

• team of systems analysts then produces a specific plan for the proposal project for the team to follow.
• baseline project plan customizes the standardized SDLC & specifies the time & resources needed for its execution.
• the plan for proceeding with the subsequent project phases is usually made by the project leader and other team members.

Phase 2: Systems Analysis, a analyst thoroughly studies the organization’s current procedures and the info systems used to perform task such as general ledger, shipping, order entry, machine scheduling, and payroll (current system is studied and alternative replacement systems are proposed).

• Subphases:

• Subphase One - involves determining the requirements of the system, which analysts work with users to determine what the users want from a proposed system. This phase also involves a careful study of any current systems, manual and computerized, that might be replaced or enhanced as part of this project.
• Subphase Two: Structuring , you generate alternative intital designs to match the requirements within the cost, labor, and technical levels the organization is willing to commit to the development process. Here one studies the requirements and structure them according to their interrelationships, eliminating any redundancies.
• Output: a description of the alternative solution recommended by the analysis team. If the recommendation is accepted, then one can make plans to acquire any hardware and system software necessary to build or operate the system as proposed.

        Phase 3: Systems Design (pg.15) analysts convert the description of the recommended alternative solution into logical and then physical system specifications.

• Logical Design is not tied to any specific hardware and systems software platform. It concentrates on the business aspects of the system, which is how the system will impact the functional units within the organization.

• decisions have to be made to move from the logical model to the physical product here, which is similar to the information systems.

• Physical design the logical design into physical, or technical, specifications. That is to convert diagrams that map the origin, flow, and processing of data in a system into a structured systems design that can then be broken down into smaller and smaller units for conversion to instruction written in a programming language.

• analyst team decides which programing language the computer instruction will be written in
• which database systems and file structures will be used for the data, and which hardware platform, operating system, and network environment the system will run under.
• Output: the physical system specifications, presented in a form, such as a diagram or written report, ready to be turned over to programmers and other system builders.  

Phase 4: Systems Implementation and Operation, a two step process, turns system specifications into a working system that is tested and then put into use, and is systematically repaired and improved.

• Implementation includes: coding, testing, and installation.

• During coding, programmers write the programs that make up the system.
• Testing involves programmers and analysts test individual programs and the entire system in order to find and correct errors.
• Installation involves putting the new system into part of the daily activities of the organization.
• Begin planning for both testing and installation as early as the project planning and selection phase , because they both require extensive analysis in order to develop exactly the right approach.
• involves initial user support such as the finalization of documentation, training programs, and ongoing user assistance.
• documentation and training programs are finalized during implementation; documentation is produced throughout the life cycle, and training(and education) occurs from the inception of a project.
• not a simple process, many well-designed systems have failed because the installation process was faulty.

• Operation programmers make the changes that users ask for and modify the system to reflect changing business conditions. Changes are necessary to keep the system running and useful.

• amount of time and effort devoted to system enhancements during operation depends a great deal on the performance of the previous phases of the life cycle.

• What are the three major types of designs that we do in a typical SDLC?

• Physical Design: is a graphical representation of a system showing the system’s internal and external entities and the flows of data into out of these entities. Internal entities being a person, place, or thing within the system that transforms data.
• Logical Design: pertains to an abstract representation of the data flows, inputs, and outputs of the system. It’s often conducted via modeling, using an over-abstract model of the actual system. This design is a graphical representation of a system showing the system’s processes and the flows of data into and out of the processes.
• Process Design: is concerned with how data moves through the system, and with how and where it is validated, secured and/or transformed as it flows into, through and out of the system.
• Logical design of a system is actually an abstraction of the data flows, inputs,and outputs whereas, physical design is actually related to the actual input and output process of the system, total absence of abstraction here.

• Compare a tool, a technique and a methodology.

• Tool (pg. 5) computer programs, such as computer-aided software engineering tools (CASE), that make it easy to use specific techniques.
• Techniques are processes that you, as an analyst, will follow to help ensure that your work is well thought-out, complete, and comprehensible to others on your project team.

• Provide support for a wide range of tasks, including conducting thorough interviews with current and future users of the information system to determine what your system should do, planning and managing the activities in a systems development project, diagramming how the system will function, and design reports.

• Methodologies are a sequence of step-by-step approaches that help develop your final product: the information system.

• Incorporate several development techniques, such as direct observation and interviews with users of the current system.

these three work together to form an organizational approach to systems analysis and design.

• Chapter Five

• Provide a list of the most widely used techniques of information gathering. (pg. 126 & 127)

• Impertinence: you should question everything. Ask such questions as “are all transaction processed the same way?” could you anyone be charged something other than the standard price?
• Impartiality: your role is to find the best solution to a business problem or opportunity. One must consider issues raised by all parties and try to find the best organizational solution.
• Relaxing of constraints: Assume anything is possible and eliminate the infeasible. For example, never accept this statement, “ We Have always done it that way, so we have to continue the practice.” Traditions are probably started for a good reason ,but as the organization and its environment change, they may turn into habits rather than sensible procedures.
• Attention to details: Every fact must fit with every other fact. One element out of place means that the ultimate system will fail at some time.
• Reframing: analysis is a creative process. You must challenge yourself to look at the organization in new ways. consider how each user views his or her requirements. Do not jump to conclusions.

When is prototyping most useful for requirements determination?        

• Prototyping is a repetitive process in which analysts and users build a rudimentary version of an information system based on user feedback. It’s most useful for requirements determination when the user request are not clear, few user are involved in the system, designs are complex and require concrete form to evaluate fully, history of communication problems between analysts and users, or tools are readily available to build prototype

Identify two advantages of prototyping

• allows you to quickly convert basic requirements into a working, though limited, version of the desired information system.
• since it is very repetitive process, the chances are good that you will be able to better capture a system’s requirements.

• žDrawbacks
• ›Tendency to avoid formal documentation
• ›Difficult to adapt to more general user audience
• ›Sharing data with other systems is often not considered

When would you want to observe an existing system? (pg.133)

• One would want to observe an existing system because of the following reasons:  people cannot always be trusted to interpret and report their own actions reliably over a phone, and managers work in a fragmented manner , focusing on a problem or a communication for only a short time, which would not effectively support the actual work environment in which that manager find itself. Thus, it allows a person to obtain more firsthand and objective measures of employee interaction with information systems. It allows for more accurate behavioral measure within a work setting. Although,  observation and obtaining objective measures are desirable ways to collect pertinent information, such methods are not always possible in real organizational settings, which make these methods unbiased, just as no one data-gathering method is unbiased.

Why do we analyze systems top-down?