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Chapter 6 Determining System

Requirements

Modern Systems Analysisand Design

Fourth Edition

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Learning Objectives

Describe interviewing options and develop interview plan.

Explain advantages and pitfalls of worker observation and document analysis.

Explain how computing can support requirements determination.

Participate in and help plan Joint Application Design sessions.

Use prototyping during requirements determination.

Describe contemporary approaches to requirements determination.

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System Requirements Determination

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Characteristics for Successful Requirements Determination

• Impertinence

• Impartiality

• Relaxing constraints

• Attention to details

• Reframing

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Deliverables of Requirements Determination

• From interviews and observations– Interview transcripts, 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– JAD session results, CASE repositories,

system prototype displays and reports

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Traditional Requirements Determination Methods

• Interviewing individuals

• Interviewing groups

• Observing workers

• Studying business documents

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What is Interviewing?

• Dialogue with user or manager to obtain their requirements

• Two forms:– Open-ended: conversational, questions

with no specific answers in mind– Closed-ended: structured, questions

with limited range of possible answers

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Guidelines for Effective Interviewing

• Plan the interview.– Prepare interviewee: appointment, priming

questions.– Prepare agenda, checklist, questions.

• Listen carefully and take notes (tape record if permitted).

• Review notes within 48 hours.• Be neutral.• Seek diverse views.

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An Interview Guide is a document for developing, planning and conducting an interview.

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Issue with Individual Interviews

• Advantages– Easier to schedule than group

interviews

• Disadvantages– Contradictions and inconsistencies

between interviewees– Follow-up discussions are time

consuming– Only one at a time

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Group Interviews

• Interview several key people together• Advantages

– More effective use of time– Can hear agreements and disagreements at

once– Opportunity for synergies

• Disadvantages– More difficult to schedule than individual

interviews

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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 blackboard.– Group discusses the ideas.– Ideas are prioritized, combined, selected,

reduced.

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Other Approaches

• What is Direct Observation?– Watching users do their jobs– Can provide more accurate information

than self-reporting (like questionnaires and interviews)

• What is Document Analysis?– Review of existing business documents– Can give a historical and “formal” view

of system requirements

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Analyzing Procedures and Other Documents

• Types of information to be discovered:– What problems exist with the existing system– Are there opportunities to meet new needs– What’s the organizational direction?– Who are the “key stakeholders– What are the values of the organization– Are there any special information processing

circumstances– What’s the history of the current system design– Are there rules for processing data

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Analyzing Procedures and Other Documents (cont.)

• Four types of useful documents– Written work procedures

• Describes how a job is performed• Includes data and information used and created in

the process of performing the job or task

– Business forms• Explicitly indicate data flow in or out of a system

– Reports• Enables the analyst to work backwards from the

report to the data that generated it

– Descriptions of current information system

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Written work procedure is a business document that formally describes work processes, provides useful information regarding system functionality and logic.

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Potential Problems with Procedure Documents

• They may involve a duplication of effort

• They may be missing procedures

• They may be out of date

• They may contradict information obtained through other sources

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Formal vs. Informal Systems

• Formal– The official way a system works as described in

organization’s documentation– Procedure documents describe formal system

• Informal– The way a system actually works in practice– Interviews and observation reveal informal

system

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Business form is a document that contains useful information regarding data organizations and possible screen layouts.

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Contemporary 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

• Group Support Systems– Facilitate sharing of ideas and voicing of

opinions about system requirements

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Contemporary Methods for Determining Requirements (cont.)

• CASE tools– Used to analyze existing systems– Help discover requirements to meet

changing business conditions

• System prototypes– Iterative development process– Rudimentary working version of system is

built– Refine understanding of system

requirements in concrete terms

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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

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Prototyping• Quickly converts requirements to working version

of system• Once the user sees requirements converted to

system, he 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

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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

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Business Process Reengineering (BPR)

• Goals (cont.)– Combine steps– Become more responsive to future change

• 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• Same techniques are used as were used for

requirements determination

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Business Process Reengineering (cont.)

• Identify specific activities that can be improved through BPR

• Disruptive technologies– Technologies that enable the breaking

of long-held business rules that inhibit organizations from making radical business changes

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Overcoming Resistance to Change

• Resistance to change is inevitable:– Expect it

• Resistance doesn’t always show its face:– Find it

• Resistance has many motivations:– Understand it

• Deal with people’s concerns not their arguments: – Confront it

• Only one way to deal with resistance: – Manage it

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“The Fad That Forgot People”Thomas H. Davenport

• “. . no one wants to ‘be reengineered.’ No one wants to hear dictums like, ‘Carry the wounded but shoot the stragglers’”

• “No one wants to see 25-year-old MBAs in their first year of consulting making $80,000 per year with $30,000 signing bonuses, being billed out at six times their salaries, putting the company’s veteran’s through their paces like they’re just another group of idiots who ‘can’t think out of the box’.”

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Top Ten Ways To Fail At BPR Don’t reengineer but say that you are

Make sure you know what BPR is and do it, not something else.

Don’t focus on processesOnly processes can be reengineered, first you

must identify them. Spend a lot of time analyzing the current situation

Understanding your processes is essential, but you must limit the time spent on unproductive analysis.

Proceed without strong executive leadershipWeak leadership will doom you to failure.

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Top Ten Ways To Fail At BPRBe timid in redesign

Leaders must stretch people to think outside the box; rewards for creative ideas is a must.

Go directly from conceptual design to implementation Create a ‘lab’ setting to test your changes.

Reengineer slowly To maintain momentum you must produce results

quickly.Place some aspects of the business off-

limits BPR in isolation won’t work. Everything must be on

the table.

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Top Ten Ways To Fail At BPRAdopt a conventional implementation

style BPR requires its own fast, improvisational, iterative

style.

Ignore the concerns of your people You must take into account the personal needs and

feelings of the people who will be so directly affected by your changes.

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Summary

• In this chapter you learned how to:Describe interviewing options and develop

interview plan.Explain advantages and pitfalls of worker

observation and document analysis.Explain how computing can support

requirements determination.Participate in and help plan Joint

Application Design sessions.Use prototyping during requirements

determination.Describe contemporary approaches to

requirements determination.