Module 2
Module 2
OVERVIEW:
Systems Analysis and Design (SAD) is an exciting, active field in which analysts continually
learn new techniques and approaches to develop systems more effectively and efficiently.
However, there is a core set of skills that all analysts need to know no matter what approach
or methodology is used. All information systems projects move through the four phases of
planning, analysis, design, and implementation; all projects require analysts to gather
requirements, model the business needs, and create blueprints for how the system should be
built; and all projects require an understanding of organizational behavior concepts like change
management and team building.
MODULE OUTCOMES
Explain the role played in information systems development by the systems analyst
Describe the fundamental systems development life cycle and its four phases
Explain how organizations identify IS development projects
Explain the importance of linking the information system to business needs
Be able to create a system request
Describe technical, economic, and organizational feasibility assessment
Information systems are at the core of underway and those that are awaiting approval. The soft-
Sabre Holdings Corporation. The Sabre reservation system is ware helps prioritize projects, allocate employees, moni-
the booking system of choice for travel agencies worldwide. tor projects in real time, flag cost and time variances,
Sabre is also the parent company of Travelocity. com, the measure the ROI, and help the IT department objectively
second largest online travel agency in the United States. measure the efficiency and efficacy of IT investments.
Like many companies, Sabre’s IT department strug- Primavera Systems’ PPM software has enabled
gles with many more project requests than it has resources Sabre Holdings to update its queue of projects regularly,
to accomplish—as many as 1500 proposals for 600 funded and projects are now prioritized quarterly instead of
projects annually. Because of the volatile, competitive annually. A study of users of Hewlett Packard’s PPM Cen-
nature of the travel industry, Sabre is especially challenged ter software found that in all cases, the investment in the
to be certain that IT is doing the right projects under software paid for itself in a year. Other findings were an
constantly changing conditions. While traditional project average 30% increase in on-time projects, a 12% reduction
management techniques focus on getting individual in budget variance, and a 30% reduction in the amount of
projects done, Sabre needs to be able to rapidly change time IT spent on project reporting.
the entire set of projects it’s working on as market
conditions shift. Sources: Tucci, Linda, “Project portfolio management takes
flight at Sabre,“ SearchCIO.com, November 28, 2007.
Project portfolio management software collects and
manages information about all projects—those that are Tucci, Linda, “PPM strategy a CIO’s must-have in hard times,”
SearchCIO.com, March 5, 2008.
(See Figure 2-1 for different ways of classifying projects.) A good project portfolio
will have the most appropriate mix of projects for the organization’s needs. The
committee acts as a portfolio manager, with the goal of maximizing benefits versus
costs and bal¬ancing other important factors of the portfolio. For example, an
organization may want to keep high-risk projects to a level less than 20% of its total
project portfolio.
The approval committee must be selective about where to allocate resources,
because the organization has limited funds. This involves trade-offs in which the
organization must give up something in return for something else in order to keep
its portfolio well balanced. If there are three potentially high-payoff projects, yet all
have very high risk, then maybe only one of the projects will be selected. Also, there
are times when a system at the project level makes good business sense, but it
does not at the organization level. Thus, a project may show a very strong economic
feasibility and support important business needs for a part of the company;
how¬ever, it is not selected. This could happen for many reasons—because there is
no money in the budget for another system, the organization is about to go through
some kind of change (e.g., a merger, an implementation of a company-wide system
It seems hard to believe that an have worked for or know about. Describe a scenario in approval
committee would not select a project that meets which a project may be very attractive at the project real business
needs, has a high potential ROI, and has a level, but not at the organization level.
positive feasibility analysis. Think of a company that you
In April 1999, one of Capital Blue processing claims, for instance, the program would pull
Cross’ health-care insurance plans had been in the field for out up-to-the-minute data at a given point in time for users
three years, but hadn’t performed as well as expected. The to analyze.
ratio of premiums to claims payments wasn’t meeting The third alternative was to develop a decision-
historic norms. In order to revamp the product features or support system to allow users to make relational queries
pricing to boost performance, the company needed to from a data mart containing a replication of the relevant
understand why it was underperforming. The stakehold- claims and customer data.
ers came to the discussion already knowing they needed Each of these alternatives was evaluated on cost,
better extraction and analysis of usage data in order to benefits, risks, and intangibles.
understand product shortcomings and recommend
improvements. QUESTION:
After listening to input from the user teams, the stake- 1. What are three costs, benefits, risks, and intangibles
holders proposed three options. One was to persevere associated with each project?
with the current manual method of pulling data from flat 2. Based on your answer to question 1, which project
files via ad hoc reports and retyping it into spreadsheets. would you choose?
The second option was to write a program to
dynamically mine the needed data from Capital’s customer Source: “Capital Blue Cross,” CIO Magazine, February 15,
2000, by Richard Pastore.
information control system (CICS). While the system was
the costs, expected benefits, risks, and strategic alignment of all three projects.
Cur¬rently, top management is anxious to bring the digital music download
capability to market in order to satisfy the demands of its existing customers and
potentially expand its customer base. The Digital Music Download project is best
aligned with that goal. Therefore, the committee decided to fund the Digital Music
Download project
the costs, expected benefits, risks, and strategic alignment of all three projects.
Cur¬rently, top management is anxious to bring the digital music download
capability to market in order to satisfy the demands of its existing customers and
potentially expand its customer base. The Digital Music Download project is best
aligned with that goal. Therefore, the committee decided to fund the Digital Music
Download project
At Marriott, we don’t have IT projects— Therefore, business projects are proposed, and IT
we have business initiatives and strategies that are is one component of them. These projects are then evaluated
enabled by IT. As a result the only time a traditional “IT the same as any other business proposal, such as a new
project” occurs is when we have an infrastructure resort—by examining the return on investment and other
upgrade that will lower costs or leverage better function- financial measures.
ing technology. In this case, IT has to make a business At the organizational level, I think of projects as must-
case for the upgrade and prove its value to the company. do’s, should-do’s, and nice-to-do’s. The “must-do’s” are
The way IT is involved in business projects in the required to achieve core business strategy, such as guest
organization is twofold. First, senior IT positions are filled preference. The “should-do’s” help grow the business and
by people with good business understanding. Second, enhance the functionality of the enterprise. These can be
these people are placed on key business committees and somewhat untested, but good drivers of growth. The “nice-
forums where the real business happens, such as finding to-do’s” are more experimental and look further out into
ways to satisfy guests. Because IT has a seat at the table, the future.
we are able to spot opportunities to support business The organization’s project portfolio should have a
strategy. We look for ways in which IT can enable or bet- mix of all three kinds of projects, with a much greater pro-
ter support business initiatives as they arise. portion devoted to the “must-do’s.” Carl W ilson
Hygeia Travel Health is a Toronto- would allow Hygeia to recommend the less expensive
based health insurance company whose clients are the hospital to its customer. That would save the customer
insurers of foreign tourists to the United States and Canada. money and help differentiate Hygeia from its competitors.
Its project selection process is relatively straightforward. The benefits team used the same three-meeting
The project evaluation committee, consisting of six senior process to discuss all the possible benefits of implement-
executives, splits into two groups. One group includes the ing the claims database. Members of the team talked to
CIO, along with the heads of operations and research and customers and made a projection by using Hygeia’s past
development, and it analyzes the costs of every project. experience and expectations about future business
The other group consists of the two chief marketing officers trends. The verdict: The benefits team projected a rev-
and the head of business development, and they analyze enue increase of $210,000. Client retention would rise by
the expected benefits. The groups are permanent, and to 2%, and overall, profits would increase by 0.25%.
stay objective, they don’t discuss a project until both sides The costs team, meanwhile, came up with large
have evaluated it. The results are then shared, both on a estimates: $250,000 annually to purchase the database
spreadsheet and in conversation. Projects are then and an additional $71,000 worth of internal time to make
approved, passed over, or tabled for future consideration. the information usable. Put it all together and it was a
Last year, the marketing department proposed pur- financial loss of $111,000 in the first year.
chasing a claims database filled with detailed information The project still could have been good for marketing—
on the costs of treating different conditions at different facil- maybe even good enough to make the loss acceptable.
ities. Hygeia was to use this information to estimate how But some of Hygeia’s clients were also in the claims infor-
much money insurance providers were likely to owe on a mation business and, therefore, potential competitors. This,
combined with the financial loss, was enough to make the
given claim if a patient was treated at a certain hospital as
company reject the project.
opposed to any other. For example, a 45-year-old man suf-
fering a heart attack may accrue $5000 in treatment costs Source: “Two Teams Are Better Than One,” CIO Magazine, July
at hospital A, but only $4000 at hospital B. This information 15, 2001, by Ben Worthen.
Planning
Analysis
Design
Implementation
to the approval committee and project sponsor for approval as the project moves
The V-model is simple and straightforward and improves the overall quality of systems through its
emphasis on early development of test plans. Testing focus and expertise is involved in the project
earlier rather than later; plus, the testers gain knowledge of the project early. It still suffers from the
rigidity of the waterfall development process, however, and is not always appropriate for the
dynamic nature of the business environment.
Design
Analysis
Implementation
Analysis
Design
System
version 1
Implementation
Analysis
Design
System
version 2
Implementation
System
version 3
FIGURE 2.5
Iterative Development
FIGURE 2.6
System Prototyping
Analysis
Design
Analysis
Design
Design prototype Implementation
Implementation
System
FIGURE 2.7
Throwaway Prototyping
Throwaway prototyping6 includes the development of prototypes, but uses the prototypes
primarily to explore design alternatives rather than as the actual new system (as in system
prototyping). As shown in Figure 2-7, throwaway prototyping has a fairly thorough analysis phase
that is used to gather requirements and to develop ideas for the system concept. Many of the
features suggested by the users may not be well understood, however, and there may be
challenging technical issues to be solved. Each of these issues is examined by analyzing, designing,
and building a design prototype. A design prototype is not intended to be a working system. It
con¬tains only enough detail to enable users to understand the issues under consideration. For
example, suppose that users are not completely clear on how an order entry system should work.
The analyst team might build a series of HTML pages to be viewed on a Web browser to help the
users visualize such a system. In this case, a series of mock-up screens appear to be a system, but
they really do nothing. Or, suppose that the project team needs to develop a sophisticated graphics
program in Java. The team could write a portion of the program with artificial data to ensure
that they could create a full-blown program successfully.
A system that is developed by this type of methodology probably requires sev¬eral design
prototypes during the analysis and design phases. Each of the prototypes is used to minimize the
risk associated with the system by confirming that important issues are understood before the real
system is built. Once the issues are resolved, the project moves into design and implementation. At
this point, the design proto¬types are thrown away, which is an important difference between this
approach and system prototyping, in which the prototypes evolve into the final system.
References :
1) System Analysis and Design, Fifth Edition by Alan Dennis, Barbara Haley Wixom and Roberta M. Roth
2) Systems Analysis and Design: An Object-Oriented Approach with UML
by Alan Dennis & Barbara Haley Wixom & David Tegarden
3) Systems Analysis and Design in a Changing World by John W. Satzinger & Robert B. Jackson
& Stephen D. Burd
Sugested Readings :
1) https://www.projectmanager.com/blog/project-selection-for-better-strategic-results
2) https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/software-engineering-functional-point-fp-analysis/
3) https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/gantt-chart.asp
4) https://www.villanovau.com/resources/project-management/controlling-process-project-management/
Module 2
A. Compare and contrast structured design methodologies in general with Rapid Application
Development (RAD) methodologies in general.
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