5. Investigating the Business Situation Flashcards
Advantage: It provides an opportunity to build a relationship with the individual stakeholders
Interview
Advantage: It can yield important information
Interview
Advantage: it helps analyst to understand different viewpoints and attitudes across user group
Interview
Advantage: they enable the analyst to identify and collect examples of documents, forms and reports used by the clients
Interview
Advantage: They allow appreciation of political factors that may affect how the business performs it work
Interview
Advantage: They provide an opportunity to study the environment in which the business staff carry out their work
Interview
Disadvantage: It can require significant investment of time and budget
Interview
D: The information provided is often based upon opinion and is likely to derive from the interviewee’s perspective on the situation. Therefore, quantitative data may be required to confirm the information
Interview
D: Different interviewees often hold different views and the BA needs to analyze the information gathered in order to identify conflicts.
Interview
A: Collect factual information, a much better understanding of the problems and difficulties faced by the business users is obtained, which is taken-for granted knowledge.
Observation
A: Seeing a task performed helps to identify relevant questions for a follow-up interview with the person responsible for that task
Observation
A: The depth of understanding gained from observation helps in identifying workable solutions that are more likely to be acceptable to the business
Observation
D: Can be unnerving so people tend to behave as they feel is expected rather dan how they would under normal work conditions. You change what you observe, needs to be factored into the approach taken and the findings obtained.
Observation
D: The analyst just sees what happens on that particular occasion. The routine activities are likely to be performed but there may be other aspects of the process that are carried out infrequently.
Observation
A: Gain a broad view of the area under investigation
Workshops
A: Increase speed and productivity
Workshops
A: Obtain buy-in and acceptance for the project
Workshops
A: Gain a consensus view or group agreement
Workshops
D: Extensive preparation time
Workshops
D: Undue influence of dominant personalities
Workshops
D: Authority limitations
Workshops
A: They require the member of staff to identify each step required to carry out a transaction, and the transitions between the steps; this reduces, or even removes, the opportunity for omissions
Scenarios
A: The step-by-step development approach helps to ensure that there are no taken for-granted elements and the problem of tacit knowledge is addressed.
Scenarios
A: They are developed using a ‘top-down’ approach, starting with an overview scenario and then refining this with further detail. This helps the member of staff to visualise all possible situations and removes uncertainty.
Scenarios
A: A workshop group with responsibility for refining a scenario should identify those paths that do not suit the corporate culture or are not congruent with any community of practice involved.
Scenarios
A: They provide a basis for developing prototypes
Scenarios
A: They provide a painstaking basis for preparing test scripts.
Scenarios
D: Time-consuming to develop
Scenarios
D: Some scenarios can become very complex (particularly when there are several alternative paths)
Scenarios
A: They clarify any uncertainty on the part of the analysts and confirm to business staff that their requirements have been understood
Prototyping
A: They help the business staff to identify new requirements as they gain an understanding of how the system will operate and what the system will do to support their work
Prototyping
A: They demonstrate the look and feel of the proposed system and elicit usability and accessibility requirements.
Prototyping
A: They enable business staff to validate the requirements and identify any errors.
Prototyping
A: They provide a means of assessing the navigation paths and system performance.
Prototyping
D: The prototyping cycle can spin out of control with endless iterations taking place
Prototyping
D: If the purpose of the exercise has not been explained clearly, business staff may make false assumptions about the progress of the work and believe that the solution is almost ready for delivery on the basis of an agreed prototype
Protoyping
D: Expectations can be raised unnecessarily by failing to match the final appearance of the system, or its performance.
Prototyping
A: a means of identifying where stakeholders have common interests or requirements;
User role analysis
A: a more efficient approach to eliciting and analysing requirements;
User role analysis
A: a strong basis for analysing scenarios, stakeholder perspectives, use cases and user stories
User role Analysis
D: Generic user role names cover a very wide stakeholder group, which makes it difficult to envisage how and why individuals might want to use a particular system.
User role Analysis
