Modern Systems Analysis

and Design
Fifth Edition

Chapter 6
Analysis
Determining System
Requirements
6.1
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 Learning Objectives
 Describe options for designing and
conducting interviews and develop a plan
for conducting an interview to determine
system requirements
 Design, distribute, and analyze
questionnaires to determine system
requirements
 Explain advantages and pitfalls of
observing workers and analyzing business
documents to determine requirements
6.2
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 Learning Objectives
 Explain how computing can provide
support for requirements determination
 Learn about Joint Application Design
(JAD)
 Use prototyping during requirements
determination
 Select the appropriate methods to elicit
system requirements

6.3
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Performing Requirements
Determination

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 Performing Requirements
Determination
Gather information on what system
should do from many sources
 Users
 Reports
 Forms
 Procedures

6.5
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 Performing Requirements
Determination
Characteristics for gathering requirements
 Impertinence
 Question everything
 Impartiality
 Find the best organizational solution
 Relaxation of constraints, assume anything is
possible
 Attention to detail, every fact must fit with every
other fact
 Reframing
 View the organization in new ways,
6.6
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 Deliverables and Outcomes
Types of deliverables:
 From interviews and observations - interview transcript observation notes, meeting
minutes
 From existing written documents - mission and strategy statements, business forms,
procedure manuals, job descriptions, training manuals, system documentation,
flowcharts
 From computerized sources – Joint Application Design session results, CASE
repositories, reports from existing systems, displays and reports from system
prototype.

 Information collected from users

 Existing documents and files
 Computer-based information
 Understanding of organizational components
 Business objective
 Information needs
 Rules of data processing
 Key events

6.7
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 Traditional Methods for
Determining Requirements
Interviewing and Listening
 Gather facts, opinions and speculations
 Observe body language and emotions
 Guidelines
 Plan
 Checklist

 Appointment

 Be neutral
 Listen
 Seek a diverse view
6.8
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 Traditional Methods for
Determining Requirements
Interviewing (Continued)
 Interview Questions
 Open-Ended
 No pre-specified answers
 Close-Ended
 Respondent is asked to choose from a set of specified
responses
 Additional Guidelines
 Do not phrase questions in ways that imply a wrong
or right answer
 Listen very carefully to what is being said
 Type up notes within 48 hours
 Do not set expectations about the new system

6.9
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 Traditional Methods for
Determining Requirements
Administering Questionnaires
 More cost-effective than interviews
 Choosing respondents
 Should be representative of all users
 Types of samples
 Convenient, local site.
 Random sample

 Purposeful sample, people who satisfy certain

criteria.
 Stratified sample, random set of people from many

6.10
6.10 hierarchical levels.
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 Traditional Methods for
Determining Requirements
Questionnaires
 Design
 Mostly closed-ended questions
 Can be administered over the phone or in
person
 Vs. Interviews
 Interviews cost more but yield more
information
 Questionnaires are more cost-effective
 See table 7-4 for a complete comparison
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 Traditional Methods for
Determining Requirements
Interviewing Groups
 Advantages
 More effective use of time
 Enables people to hear opinions of others and to agree or disagree
 Disadvantages
 Difficulty in scheduling

Nominal Group Technique (NGT) A facilitated process that supports idea

generation by groups.
 Process
 Members come together as a group, but initially work separately.
 Each person writes ideas.
 Facilitator reads ideas out loud, and they are written on a blackboard or
flipchart.
 Group openly discusses the ideas for clarification.
 Ideas are prioritized, combined, selected, reduced.
6.12
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 Traditional Methods for
Determining Requirements
Directly Observing Users
 Watching users do their jobs
 Obtaining more firsthand and objective
measures of employee interaction with
information systems.
 Can cause people to change their normal
operating behavior.
 Time-consuming and limited time to
observe.
6.13
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 Analyzing Procedures and
Other Documents
Types of information to be discovered when
analyzing a document:
 Problems with existing system
 Opportunity to meet new need
 Organizational direction
 Names of key individuals
 Values of organization
 Special information processing circumstances
 Reasons for current system design
 Rules for processing data
6.14
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 Analyzing Procedures and
Other Documents
Four types of useful documents to SA:
 Written work procedures
 For an individual or work group.
 Describes how a particular job or task is performed.
 Includes data and information used and created in the
process
 Business form
 Explicitly indicate data flow in or out of a system
 Report generated by current systems
 Enables the analyst to work backwards from the report to
the data that generated it
 Description of current information system, how
they were designed and how they work

6.15
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Forma and Informal system
Formal Systems: the official way a
system works as described in
organizational documentation (i.e. work
procedure).
Informal Systems: the way a system
actually works (i.e. interviews,
observations).

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 Modern Methods for
Determining Requirements
Joint Application Design (JAD)
 Brings together key users, managers and systems
analysts
 Purpose: collect system requirements
simultaneously from key people
 Conducted off-site
Prototyping
 Repetitive process
 Basic version of system is built
 Refine understanding of system requirements in
concrete terms.
 Goal: to develop concrete specifications for ultimate
system
6.17
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 Joint Application Design (JAD)
Intensive group-oriented requirements determination
technique.
Team members meet in isolation for an extended
period of time.
Highly focused.
Resource intensive.
Started by IBM in 1970s.

6.18
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JAD

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 JAD
JAD Participants:
 Session Leader: facilitates group process.
 Users: active, speaking participants
 Managers: active, speaking participants
 Sponsor: high-level champion, limited participation.
 Systems Analysts: should mostly listen.
 Scribe: record session activities.
 IS Staff: should mostly listen.
End Result
 Documentation detailing existing system.
 Features of proposed system.

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 Joint Application Design (JAD)
CASE Tools During JAD
 Upper CASE tools are used
 Enables analysts to enter system
models directly into CASE during the
JAD session
 Screen designs and prototyping can be
done during JAD and shown to users

6.21
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 Joint Application Design (JAD)
Supporting JAD with GSS
 Group support systems (GSS) can be used to
enable more participation by group members
in JAD
 Facilitate sharing of ideas and voicing of
opinions about system requirements.
 Members type their answers into the computer
 All members of the group see what other
members have been typing

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 Prototyping
Quickly converts requirements to working
version of system.
Once the user sees requirements converted to
system, will ask for modifications or will
generate additional requests.
Most useful when:
 User requests are not clear
 Few users are involved in the system
 Designs are complex and require concrete form
 History of communication problems between analysts and
users
 Tools are readily available to build prototype

6.23
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 Prototyping
Drawbacks
 Tendency to avoid formal documentation
 Difficult to adapt to more general user
audience
 Sharing data with other systems is often
not considered
 Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
checks are often bypassed

6.24
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 Business Process
Reengineering (BPR)
Search for and implementation of radical change
in business processes to achieve breakthrough
improvements in products and services
Goals
 Reorganize complete flow of data in major sections of an
organization.
 Eliminate unnecessary steps.
 Become more responsive to future change.
 Combine steps

6.25
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 Business Process
Reengineering (BPR)
Identification of processes to Reengineer
 Key business processes

 Set of activities designed to produce specific

output for a particular customer or market
 Focused on customers and outcome
 Key business process includes all activities of
design, build, deliver and support a product.

6.26
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 Business Process Reengineering
(BPR)
Identify specific activities that can be improved
through BPR, once it have been identified,
Information Technology must be applied to radically
improve business process.
Disruptive technologies
 are technologies that enable the breaking of long-held
business rules that inhibit organizations from making
radical business changes. (decision support tools, wireless
data communication, high performance computing can provide
real-time updating)
 See table 6-6. More Examples.

6.27
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 Requirements determining using
Agile Methodologies
Continual user involvement
 Replace traditional SDLC waterfall with iterative analyze – design – code –
test cycle
Agile usage-centered design
 Focuses on user goals, roles, and tasks
 Gather a group of people all stakeholders in one room.
 Give everyone a chance to talk about current and new system.
 Determine user roles and goals
 Determine task needs to be completed to achieve the goal.
 Task cards will be grouped together based on similarity.
 For each task, list steps that are necessary to complete the step.
 Treat each set of tasks to be supported by a single aspect of user interface
(partition task)
 Prototype and refine the prototype
The Planning Game
 Based on eXtreme programming
 Exploration, steering, commitment

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Continual User Involvement

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Agile Usage-Centered Design Steps

Gather group of programmers, analysts, users,

testers, facilitator.
Document complaints of current system.
Determine important user roles.
Determine, prioritize, and describe tasks for each
user role.
Group similar tasks into interaction contexts.
Associate each interaction context with a user
interface for the system, and prototype the interaction
context.
Step through and modify the prototype.

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The Planning Game from
eXtreme Programming

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 Requirements determining using
Agile Methodologies
The planning game from extreme programming:
(phases)
 Exploration, business create story cards, development with
an estimation of how long it would take to implement.
 Commitment, sort the story cards and split them to
essential, not essential, and nice to have.
 Steering, to see how the development process is
progressing.

The planning game is followed by iteration planning

game, played by programmers.

7.32
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