Williams Specialty Company is a small printing and engraving organization. When

Question

Williams Specialty Company is a small printing and engraving organization. When Pat Williams, the owner, brought computers into the business office 8 years ago, the business was very small and very simple. Pat was able to utilize an inexpensive PC-based accounting system to handle the basic information processing needs of the firm. As time has gone on, however, the business has grown and the work being performed has become significantly more complex.

The simple accounting software still in use is no longer adequate to keep track of many of the company’s sophisticated deals and arrangements with its customers. Pat has a staff of four people in the business office who are familiar with the intricacies of the company’s record-keeping requirements. Pat recently met with her staff to discuss her plan to hire an IS consulting firm to evaluate their information system needs and recommend a strategy for upgrading their computer system.

The staff are excited about the prospect of a new system since the current system causes them much aggravation. No one on the staff has ever done anything like this before, however, and they are a little wary of the consultants who will be conducting the project. Assume that you are a systems analyst on the consulting team assigned to the Williams Specialty Co. engagement. At your first meeting with the Williams staff, you want to be sure that they understand the work that your team will be performing and how they will participate in that work.

a. Explain, in clear, nontechnical terms, the goals of the analysis phase of the project.

b. Explain, in clear, nontechnical terms, how use cases will be used by the project team. Explain what these models are, what they represent in the system, and how they will be used by the team.

Explanation / Answer

Answer: Job of a system analyst is to understand the processes of a business, capture their information needs (tangible and intangible), analyze them, formulate the plan and propose a feasible solution satisfying all necessary requirements.

For the current scenario, the answers to the said questions are given below:

a) Goals of analysis phase: The main objective of analysis phase is to find out what proposed system will do. Following will be the major goals of the analysis:

i) To understand the existing system (if any), processes being used in organisation and bottlenecks arised with time.

ii) To understand the business area/domain of the organisation.

iii) To identify relevant stakeholders (management, emloyees, customers, suppliers, vendors etc. ) and users of the system.

iii) To assess and understand the change in business scenario over time.

iv) To formally define the problem being solved.

v) To formulate the requirements of new system and prevailing business scenarios.

b) During the analysis phase of any proposed information system, most important activity is elaboration of candidate business scenarios and formulation of requirements of new system. Elaborating business scenarios helps formulating the requirements of new system. This elaboration is usually done by following an approach called as "Use Case Modelling". A Use Case model is nothing but the representation of a system's software requirements and functionalities. It provides the external view of proposed system i.e . how system will interact with its surroundings. Use case model of a system comprises of all possible use cases that can be identified with respect to existing state of organisation and changed business scenario.

As a term, an Use Case can be defined as a list of steps or steps that can be carried to fullfil a given task or scenario. It can either be shown in the form of a diagram or as a series of steps in text form.

The job of system analyst and his/her team is to indentify and define all possible use cases, their relationships so that, in composite form, they can represent the overall requirements of the system.

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse W
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.