System Analysis

Question 1

Technical Feasibility

Answer 1

Could the project be done with the technical resources available?

Question 2

Economic Feasibility

Answer 2

Is there enough money available in the budget to develop the system?

Question 3

Legal Feasibility

Answer 3

Are there any legal responsibilities?

Question 4

Organisational Feasibility

Answer 4

Will the system meet the needs and expectations of the organisation?

Question 5

Schedule

Answer 5

Is it likely to be built in time to realise benefits or meet constraints?

Question 6

Study the existing system documentation

Answer 6

Benefits: Team can see how the current system should be operating, cheap method of gathering lots of information fairly quickly, can identify storage requirements.
Drawbacks: Staff may not be following procedures in the documentation and may be using the system in their own way, documentation may be out of date and not updated to reflect system change.

Question 7

Carry out a questionnaire of staff

Answer 7

Benefits: Relatively cheap to produce for a large number of people, can be distributed worldwide, could be completed online so results can be available very quickly, gather a large number of responses in a short time.
Drawbacks: Have to be designed by experts or information could be unusable, limited responses, people are ‘too busy’ and may not complete or give correct answers.

Question 8

Interview staff / focus groups

Answer 8

Benefits: Can gather large amount of detailed information, can make judgements on validity of information from personal contact or body language, can ask ‘follow up’ or ‘open ended’ questions to gather more detailed information in selected areas
Drawbacks: Time consuming and expensive to carry out, has to be carried out by trained interviewer or closed questions written by experts, difficult to analyse large amount/wide variety of information.

Question 9

Observe the current system in practice

Answer 9

Benefits: Can actually see what is really happening and do not have to rely on what people tell you what they think is happening
Drawbacks: Very time consuming and therefore expensive to carry out, staff may feel like they are being watched and therefore behave differently so do not actually see what goes on every day, cost of sending analysts around the world.

Question 10

Designing algorithms

Answer 10

Algorithms must be well designed as this can effect the speed of a process such as searching and sorting

Question 11

Designing Human Computer Interface

Answer 11

This involves the design of how the computer and human will interact with each other, involving hardware and software.

Question 12

Designing data structures

Answer 12

Files and records must be designed

Question 13

Direct Changeover

Answer 13

Meaning a complete changeover of everything in a single pass. This is appropriate for smaller systems or for organisations whose computers cannot work with the old and new systems simultaneously.

Question 14

Pilot Changeover

Answer 14

In which a small group of users would use the new system before the bulk of the organisation changed over. Using this method, bugs can be resolved with minimal inconvenience.

Question 15

Parallel changeovers

Answer 15

Involve the old and new systems being available simultaneously. If any problems become evident on the new system, the old system still exists throughout the organisation.

Question 16

Phased changeovers

Answer 16

Typically happen one department at a time. Larger organisations undergoing significant change might select this method, as they would be more vulnerable to bugs.

Question 17

Alpha testing

Answer 17

Is conducted by highly skilled developers, typically module by module, subroutine by subroutine.

Question 18

Beta testing

Answer 18

Is conducted by prospective end users, who are regular users of the system as they would use the end product, notifying the developers of any bugs they identify.

Question 19

Acceptance testing

Answer 19

Conducted by the end users/prospective customers, answers the question ‘is this what we wanted?’ rather than ‘does this work?’.

Question 20

Perfective maintenance

Answer 20

Aims to make a functioning system even better, by adding multiple input methods, speeding up a network connection or tweaking an interface.

Question 21

Adaptive maintenance

Answer 21

Changes a system to match changing requirements. A new law might require storage of additional data or the rate of VAT might change.

Question 22

Corrective maintenance

Answer 22

Exists to remove bugs that were not addressed during testing.

Question 23

Generation file backup

Answer 23

This involves storage of three of the most recent versions of master file. Useful if one version is corrupted: the previous version is still available. Data should be stored off site in case of a disaster.

Question 24

Incremental Back up

Answer 24

Only backs up data that has changed since the last backup.
Useful as it saves storage space and is faster than full backup. Only allows the user to restore the most recent backup.

Question 25

Delta Change Back up

Answer 25

Backs up only parts of the file that have changed but only specific data within a file. Focuses on the specific changes made within a file reducing backup size further. More storage efficient than incremental as it only saves the changes within the file and not the entire file

Question 26

User documentation

Answer 26

How software is to be installed and used; how to use any specialist hardware; basic troubleshooting instructions.

Question 27

Maintenance documentation

Answer 27

Annotated Code listings – Code listings that abide by the coding standards set out by the development company. Variable lists – including names, data types, visibility and a description of purpose Data dictionaries – listings of fields within each file, to include names, primary keys, data types and requirements for validation.