Chapter 5

• Stakeholders

  People who ultimately benefit from project
• Users

  People who will interact with the system regularly
• Systems analysts

  Professional who specialises in anaylsing and designing business systems
• Programmer

  Responsible for modifying or developing programs to satisfy user requirements
• Individual system developer 


  Person who performs all of the systems development project in which business managers and users assume the primary effort
• Information system planning

  Translating strategic and organisational goals into systems development initiatives
• Mission-critical systems


  Play pivotal role in organisation's continued operations and goal attainment
• Crititcal success factors (CSFs)

  Factors essential to success of a functional area of an organisation
• Peformance objectives for Systems Development

  • Output quality or usefulness
  • Output accuracy
  • Speed at which output is generated
  • Flexilibity of the system
  • Ease of use of the application
  • Scalibility of resulting system
  • Risk of the system
• Cost Objectives:

  • Development costs
  • Costs related to the uniqueness of the system application
  • Fixed investments in hardware and related equipment (Capex)
  • Ongoing operating costs (Opex)
• System Development Life Cycle

  A complex project management model that encompasses system or software creation from its intial idea to finalised deployment
• Traditional SDLC
• Systems investigation

  Identifies problems and opportunities and considers them in light of business goals
• Systems implementation

  Creates or acquires various system componenets detailed in systems design, assemble them and places new or modifies system into operation
• Systems maintenance aand review

  Ensures the system operates as intended

  Modifies the system so that it continues to meet changing business needs
• Advantages of Traditional SDLC

  Formal review at the end of each phase allows maximum management control
• 2. Advantages of Traditional SDLC

  This approach creates considerable system documentation
• 3. Advantages of Traditional SDLC

  Formal documentation ensures that system requirements can be traced back to stated business needs
• 4. Advantages of Traditional SDLC

  It produces many intermediate products that can be reviewed to see whether they meet the users' needs and conform to standards
• 1. Disadvantages of SDLC

  Users get a system that meets the needs as understood by the developers; this might not be what the users really needed
• 2. Disadvantages of Traditional SDLC

  Documentation is expensive and time-consuming to create. It is also difficult to keep current
• 3. Disadvantages of Traditional SDLC


  Often, user needs go unstated or are misunderstood
• 4. Disadvantages of Traditional SDLC

  Users cannot easily review intermediate products and evaluate whether a particular (e.g. flow diagram) meets their business requirements
• Rapid Appilication Development (RAD)

  • Employs tools, techniques and methodologies designed to speed application development
  • To make system development projects more flexible and agile to be able to rapidly change with changing conditions and environments
  • Utilises rapod prototyping
• Other approaches to rapid development

  Agile development

  Extreme programming (XP)
• Reasons for using outsourcing and on-demand computing approaches:

  • To reduce costs
  • To obtain state-of-the-art technology
  • To eliminate staffing and personnel problems
  • To increase technological flexibility
• Successful system development

  Delivers a system that meets user and organisational needs on time and within budget
• Continuous improvement projects have a high degree of sucess
• Reengineering projects tend to have a high degree of risk but also a high potential for benefits
• Managing change

  It is essential to recognise and deal with existing or potential problem
• Project schedule (Project Management Tools)

  Detailed description of what is to be done
• Project milestone (Project Management Tools)

  Critical date for completion of a major part of the project
• Project deadlines (Project Management Tools)

  Date that the entire project is to be completed and operational
• Critical path (Project Management Tools)

  Activitiess that, if delayed would delay the entire project
• Program Evaluation and Review Techniques (PERT)

  Creates three estimates for an activity:

  • Shortest possible time
  • Most likely time
  • Longest possible time
• Gantt chart

  Graphical tool used for planning, monitoring and coordinating projects
• Feasibilty Analysis

  • Technical
  • Economic
  • Legal
  • Operational
  • Schedule
• Technical feasibility

  Assessment of whether the hardware, software and other system components can be acquired or developed to solve the problem
• Economic feasibility


  determine whether the project makes financial sense and whether predicted benefits offset the cost and time needed to obtain them
• Legal feasibility 


  determine whether laws or requirements may prevent or limit the project