I do think that all computing and IT courses should have a brief module in systems analysis as it gives the students a better understanding into ways in which computer systems affect companies.  I never really took the time to investigate this area before now and never reasiled that companies are becoming more and more dependant on computer systems to do their work for them.  This is also work that would have been done by a person a few years ago.

I do think that courses in business and management should have a module in systems analysis because as the times move on it is very obvious that people from a diverse range of careers are depending on computer systems.  It is especially important for managers to have knowledge in this section as they will be using computer systems each day, whether this is for ordering stock or for paying employees.

I found the topic on SDLC most useful because at A-Level i was left a bit bewildered and did not fully understand some aspects of the subject.  But from further research for this module, i have taken the time to understand the processes.  If i had not done this module i feel that i would not have gained this knowledge and would still be confused by the whole process.

I found the subject of prototyping the least useful as i had already known most of the information.  This is not to say it wouldn’t have been useful for other students.  From my A-Level in product design i have researched this area alot and because of this i did not find it highly useful.

I can not think of any topics that were not covered.  I think the module had alot of useful notes that will be helpful to revise from for the exam.

It is very difficult for the end user or designers to fully comprehend a complex system through the written word; this is why we use modelling.  Modelling helps the development team visualise, specify and construct the arrangement and behaviour of system architecture.  Some problems that can be caused by using written word are:

 -       Improper use of language – The quality of language used in the document could be of a poor standard which would make it very hard for the end user or designer to read and fully understand.  This can lead to serious errors or misunderstandings which could change the design of the end product.

-       The information given may be confusing or too complex for someone to read.  The text may be accurate and clear to the person who wrote the document or someone who understands what is being said, but it may not express much true understanding to the reader.

-       A lot of words in the English language have more than one meaning. This is a problem area if the words are used within a tangle of bad grammar.  The writer can add inflections into their words consciously or subconsciously.  We can often not notice these and therefore get a different picture to what is actually being painted by the writer.

Task 2

There is a wide selection of graphical diagrams that can be used instead of written word to better communicate a system to an end user.  Some examples of these include the Dots and Lines approach, Unified Modelling Language (UML), Business Process Modeling Notation and the Waterfall model.  Sometimes using diagrams is a better way of communicating, especially with complex diagrams

 The link below shows an example of a UML diagram.    

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Uml_diagram2.png

The link below shows an example of a Waterfall Model diagram.

http://www.peopleware.be/methodology/350pxWaterfall_model.png

UML diagrams are designed in a way that they can be used for strong communication between different people working on a project. In addition to better communication between the actual development team, diagrams that are designed using UML will more efficient for the end user.  Once the system has went through the development process, the developers will be able to look at the UML model for any changes that may be needed to improve it.  This creates a more efficient system and the development time can be reduced if all errors are fixed as the developers go along.

The Waterfall diagram is easy to explain to the user or developer which is a large positive point.  In the original model the stages consisted of requirements specification, design, implementation, integration, testing and debugging, installation and maintenance.  The stages and activities are well defined and verification at the end of each stage ensures that all errors or misunderstandings are detected along the way and can be fixed.  “It has been shown that a bug found in the early stages (such as requirements specification or design) is cheaper in terms of money, effort and time, to fix than the same bug found later on in the process. [McConnell 1996]” ^[1].  Time spent on making sure that requirements and design are correct early on will save much time and effort later. 

“UML combines the best techniques from data modeling (entity relationship diagrams), business modeling (work flows), object modeling, and component modeling” ^[2].  This means that it contains all the features that are seen as positive in several other diagrams and combines them to make one superior diagram.  It would be quite hard to draw a UML diagram.  It requires a lot of patience and thinking to create an accurate design for a project.  However, when they have been created they are very useful and hold a lot of useful information that clearly shows the communication between each component.

 The Waterfall diagram seems very easy to understand.  In order to use it, the user simply has to follow it from one phase to the other in a sequenced manner (like a waterfall).  For example, when the first stage is finished, the user should follow to the next stage in the ‘waterfall, then, after this stage is complete, the user should go to the following stage, and so on.  I think that this would be a good diagram for end users who are not that involved in computing.  However, there are some criticisms with this model.  One criticism is that no one phase can be totally perfected before going on to the next phase.  There have also been revised models of this diagram, one being called the Sashimi model.  This type features overlapping phases.  This means that problems can be acted upon during phases that would typically, in the original waterfall model, precede others.       

^[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model]

^[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Modeling_Language

Programmers:

Based on a 6 hour day, excluding breaks, programmers would have to fit the following tasks into their day:

 Organisational activities:

Face to face meetings

Phone calls

E-mail and mailing-lists

Bug triaging and code reviews

Work-related blogs, websites, and IMs

Developmental activities:

Researching technologies or libraries

Devising designs

Proposing and discussing design details

Implementing code

Testing and debugging running code

Implementing tests and documentation

The organisational activities are centred on communication with other humans and are tasks that would be typically carried out everyday.  This should take up approximately 2 hours per day (25%)

The developmental activities are more productive.  These tasks should take up most of the day -around 4 hours (75%) 

Systems Analysts:

Based on a 6 hour day, excluding breaks, systems analysts would have to fit the following tasks into their day:

Organisational activities:

Face to face meetings

Phone calls

E-mail and mailing-lists

Bug triaging and code reviews

Work-related blogs, websites, and IMs

 Developmental activities:

Creating plans, recommendations and determining the current and future IT requirements of clients.

Researching clients companies and current systems

Proposing and discussing design details

The organisational activities are centered on communication with colleagues and clients.  This is important as a systems analyst requires a lot of information from clients in order to analyse the company successfully. Approx. 2 ½ – 3 hours a day (50%)

 Regarding the developmental activities, the system analyst can be working on more than one background project a day. Approx 3 – 3 ½ hours a day (50%)

Task 2

• The purpose of a Post Implementation Review meeting.

 The post-implementation review meeting is an important phase of the implementation.  At this point the project manager can to assess how well the project has met the specified customer needs.  The opportunity can be taken to highlight what worked well within the system, learn from mistakes that have been made during the project, find ways to improve upon the processes that have been performed throughout the project, and exchange the results that have been found with the use of the system.  The meeting also provides a good way of getting feedback to the project manager.  After the meeting the project manager can then prepare a post implementation report.  This will include topics such as the effectiveness of the team, the best ways to go about projects in the future and recommendations for improvement, which will then allow the organisation to have a better understanding of their practice.   

• What happens before, during and after a Structured Walkthrough

A structured walkthrough is a review process where a program’s design is checked to ensure it meets all requirements and has no errors or problems and that the model is correct.  There are three stages to a structured walkthrough preparation, execution and a follow-up: 

Preparation:  The work that is being reviewed is prepared.  Participants are addressed and provided with copies of the work/program that is being reviewed.  The analyst schedules a time, date and place for the walkthrough and the participants are notified.

Execution: The material is presented in a point by point format.  The participants are then looking for inconsistencies or inaccuracies and point them out to the analyst.  Some suggestions on how to fix the problems can be outlined during the walkthrough but this is not usually the case, the solutions are usually found after the walkthrough. 

Follow-up: The follow-up is the final stage in the walkthrough.  This consists of making the corrections.  Sometimes if a lot of or major problems are found during the walkthrough it is necessary for additional meeting to be arranged.  Once all the corrections are made, the project can then continue to the next stage.

• The roles of ‘chicken’ and ‘pig’ in a Scrum meeting

 Each day during a sprint, a project status meeting occurs, this is called a scrum.  There are several roles defined in a scrum but these can be divided into two categories, pigs and chickens.  The pig roles are set to the people committed to the project.  They are said to be the ones with “their bacon on the line.”  The chicken roles are not actually part of the Scrum process. 

‘Pig’ roles include:

The Project Owner: Ensures that the team works with the right things from a business perspective.

Scrum Master: Removes obstacles so that the team can deliver the sprint goal.  The Scrum Master is the enforcer of the rules and makes sure it is used correctly.         

Team: The team are the ones who hold the responsibility to deliver the product. 

‘Chicken roles’ include:

Users: The people who use the product in the end.

Stakeholders: Will benefit from the end product.  They are only directly involved with the project at sprint reviews.

Managers: Managers are the people who will set up the surroundings for the product development organisations. 

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=wXAjHC2C1A3nPRcVssvsXA_3d_3d

The questions in this survey were used in order to gain a better understanding of people’s diets and whether or not they would generally be interested in a vegetarian café.  Some of the questions in this survey relate to people who do eat meat as well as vegetarians, I specifically done this in order to find out whether meat-eaters would be interested in visiting a vegetarian restaurant.  I also added a question regarding price in order to find out how much money the public would expect to pay for meals.  This is important because if the meals are overpriced, customers would be less inclined to visit the café regularly. 

The first question in the survey asks the recipient what their diet is and also gives them the option of stating what their diet is more specifically.  This is an important question as the results will give an overall view of how many people follow each of the diets in the area and if 99 out of 100 people in the area were carnivores, there would be very little point in opening a vegetarian café.  Following questions ask if there are vegetarian cafes in the area.  This is important as it will give an idea of any competition.  Questions at the beginning of the survey require an answer, this is because they are the most general questions and apply to everyone, no matter what their diet is.  The questions then go into a more vegetarian based scheme (asking how much they would be prepared to pay for a vegetarian meal and is there enough vegetarian cafes on the market) but finishes off with a general question asking how often the participant would visit a vegetarian café if there was one available to them.  The final question can be used as a kind of evidence for the predicted custom in the café.

The survey follows a steady sequence of multiple answer questions; this type of question has been used as it is a quick way for participants to submit their answer and will therefore not take up a lot of their time.  The first question asked is a general question that applies to each participant, from there, the survey falls into more café related questions, which is the basis of this project.  Finding out information on the current situation regarding vegetarian restaurants is important as it will highlight competition and how much of the competition is in the area.  The next set of questions focus on asking the participant about whether or not they would actually visit a vegetarian restaurant.  It is important to find out this information early as it shows if people are actually interested in going to vegetarian cafes and whether or not it is a good idea to set up one in the area.  One of the next questions asks the participant how much they would pay for a vegetarian meal, this will make sure that Emma does not price the meals over the amount that the customer is prepared to pay.  The final question asks on a scale of 1-5 how often would the participant visit a vegetarian café, this shows how many people would actually think about visiting the café and therefore, how much business the café would actually gain.

Task 2:

A way of observing what people actually buy and eat as opposed to what they say they do is by asking them to complete a food diary.  The food diary should consist of what the participant buys and what they eat.  Participants could write what they buy when they go shopping for food in the diary or alternatively, receipts could be inserted into the diary.  Participants could also write in the diary what they eat throughout the day.  This includes breakfast, lunch, dinner and any snacks in between.  Any meals purchased from cafes or fast-food outlets should also be recorded in the food diary.

The food diary observation method could be held for 1 month.  This would be a long enough period to gather what kind of food and how much food the participant eats on average.  The participant should update the diary as soon as possible after they eat in order for the diary to be accurate and to insure that no meals are left out. 

The idea of a food diary is quite similar to that of a dream diary, where the participant enters the dreams that they have had upon waking up and from the information gathered, an assessment can be made.  There could be two parts to the food diary: food bought and food eaten.  These two sections combined will clearly show what kind of diet the participant has.  The information from different participant’s diets can then be compared.  For example the food diary of a vegetarian can then be combined with the food diaries of other vegetarians.  From the results there may be a similarity in some of the things that they eat, for example, types of meals, ingredients and snacks.  This information would be helpful for a person thinking about opening a café that suited a certain diet as popular meals can be established from the diaries results and put on the menu in the café.  This is a good way of finding what the customer wants.

A potential problem with this is that people may not be totally honest with their entries.  This would create false data which would give inaccurate results.  A way in which to make this exercise more accurate is to have more participants; however with more participants comes a longer time to analyse and compare the data from the food diaries.

Overall, this type of observation would be effective in finding common foods, ingredients and what dishes are popular for people with different types of diet.

There are a number of areas that I will be investigating within this project concerning economic feasibility. By looking at the following points I will be able to gain a better understanding of the company and what they require.   The areas that I will look at include: cost estimates and benefit estimates.  It is helpful to divide costs and benefits into 2 types of classification: tangible and intangible.  This shows that I will therefore be looking for tangible costs, intangible costs, tangible benefits and intangible benefits.

I will be looking at the previously mentioned concerns for the following reasons:

Estimated tangible costs – This will involve looking at the costs for things such as specialist machinery for making certain batch sizes and estimating the costs for this as well as employing new members of staff who are better trained in handling small and irregular orders.  This will give a better approximation as to how much this will cost the company per month which will determine whether the company can actually afford the changes which will also determine whether we should look for a more appropriate alternative, for example, it may be more inexpensive to just train the current staff to cope with the difference in workload.

Estimated intangible costs – This will involve looking at looking at the costs that are due to the increased flexibility of the system.  For example, the company has been creating large batches for years and they are now being asked to create smaller ones.  This means that they may be changing the size of their orders, which could cost more as buying in large quantities is often a lot more inexpensive than buying smaller ones.  Other areas that will be investigated in this area will be the cost of maintaining staff morale and other various opportunity costs.

Tangible benefits – This will involve looking at areas such as having fewer members of staff if there are a lot that are not actually required and the overall efficiency of the use of staff and equipment.  This will show how many trained members of staff the company actually needs and how many they can afford not to have.  A main question in this section would be “How many members of staff does the company require to be the most economical”.  Revising this should improve the cash flow and credit control of the company.  Other areas that will be investigated in this section will be less overtime (as there are smaller and more irregular orders) and reduced staff costs.

Intangible benefits – If we acquire efficient solutions for the previous sections, employees will feel better all around because they will be coping better with the workload.  This will give them a “feel good” factor and will therefore improve their moods and way of working along with an improved level of customer service.  Better customer service may encourage customers to return and buy the products again, so improving the mood of staff is a good way to increase custom and therefore increase profit and business.    

Once the estimated costs and benefits have been established for ABC bakeries the values can be used to estimate the impact of the proposed project.  This means, we will know whether or not the proposed project will make a difference to the company economically and upon this, further action can be taken.  The cost can also be compared with other proposed projects which will allow us to look at what areas we have not addressed properly and amend them.  This step will also be a huge benefit to us as we will be able to produce the best possible outcome for the bakery company.

However, it may be difficult to estimate the effects of future development on costs and benefits.  Changes in the level of custom may require more machinery to be purchased and more staff to be hired.  This would change the whole system.  If expansion of the stores is a possibility this must be taken into account in the report.  It may be a good idea to think about setting up an online bakery service.  This would allow the bakery to be available nationwide or maybe even further in time.  This may, however, require larger premises to bake the products for high demand.  A way to possibly get around this is to share out the orders throughout all the stores.  For example Store A could be responsible for Internet orders of bread, Store B could be responsible for Internet orders of sweet pastries and Store C could be responsible for Internet orders of cupcakes.  This could be an efficient way of managing an Internet store but would need to be investigated further.

TASK 2

The team have been asked to analyse, design and implement the ABC bakeries website.  This opportunity will increase user awareness and the availability of the product.  They will therefore need certain types of staff to fulfil each position to create a successful website. 

Firstly they will need a member of staff to analyse the system. This person will be required to look at the company and decide what the system will actually need.  This system analyst can do this by creating data flow diagrams, analyse structured decisions and prepare and present the system proposal.

Secondly they will require a system designer.  This person will be involved with designing the whole website including the human-computer interface, backup procedures, and procedures for data entry.

The member of staff implementing the system will have various tasks to carry out such as training users on how to work and read orders from the system successfully.  This may take some members of staff a while to comprehend as it is a brand new system and they have not used such things in the company before.  The system should also be reviewed and evaluated.  Questionnaires could be distributed to staff and customers to find out how they are finding the system to gain a better understanding and find out if the whole process has been worthwhile.

Overall the system worked well.  Each “page” of the computer system was very clearly set-out and easy to understand.  It was easy to see where the system required you to input information and this made it easy not to miss out anything.  There were a lot of computers available so there was always a computer available for anyone coming in.  This was because of the way the whole process ran.  There were 2 other places to go before the computer enrolment.  These places had quite large queues at them which kept the flow of students steady, but the large queues were a downfall.   

•  How easy was it for you to go through?

I found the whole process a lot easier than I expected it to be.  I successfully completed the registration in a matter of minutes.  It was easy to read the question and then enter the relevant information that was correct for you.  Drop down menus are a good way to make sure people put in the answers that are required, these were used within the system a lot and this was a time efficient way of completing the enrolment. 

•  Would it have been harder for someone coming from a non IT back ground? If you entered the course from a non IT background, do you think that made the system harder to use?

I don’t think it would have made the system a lot harder to complete.  It was very clearly set out and did not have anything included that a person from a non IT background wouldn’t understand.  A person from a non IT background would have found it simple to use as it was a matter of entering the information that related to them and then clicking the next button.  There were people walking around the room in which the enrolment was taking place in order to help people if they had any problems with the system.

•  How well or badly did the manual and the computer based parts of the system fit together?

There was a finance section on the computer system which required you to put in the details of how you were paying the tuition fees.  This was one of the final parts of the computer system.  After completing the computer system you were then required to go to the assembly hall where you had to queue up for various other checks for finance.  If you put in your student finance reference number in the system it would save the need to go and get your forms checked.  Or a member of staff could check them at the computer.  Before going to the computer based enrolment, there was a queue to get your picture taken for the University’s records.  If there were webcams installed on each of the computers in the LRC, where the computer enrolment was taking place, students could have taken their own picture during this period and avoided the lengthily queue.    

•  Is the user interface well designed?

The user interface was very effective and saved a lot of time compared to methods that would have been used before the computer system was created.  I found it effective in involving me with my enrolment and I was also able to make sure that all the information that was being put into the system was correct as I was the person entering it.  It was simple to use and followed the same design the whole way through which kept it consistent and succinct.  This meant that after the first few “pages” of the system I knew how to work it and what I should be doing in order to complete the system to the way it should be completed.

•   What could be improved?

Although I found the system very efficient, I feel that having webcams connected to each of the computers would allow the student to take their own picture for the university’s records.  This would allow the student to have a picture that they like and would eliminate the need for a member of staff to have to take them.  The member of staff could then be used in another part of the enrolment process.  For example, in the first part of the process there were 2 members of staff who looked at each of the students GCSE qualifications.  The queue for this was the longest out of all the stages so another member of staff would be very helpful in shortening the length of this.