Short Answer

Question 1

What is one way to avoid selection of an inappropriate software process model?

Answer 1

Selection of a software process models depends greatly on stakeholder requirements.

Determining whether the project must be delivered quickly or not, for example, can help a project team avoid an inappropriate model.

Question 2

How does a Control Flow Diagram differ from a Control Flow Graph?

Answer 2

A Control Flow Diagram is typically used to model higher-level business logic needed in the system. A Control Flow Graph is primarily used by the testing team to examine conditional statements in the source code.

Question 3

What problem does duck typing solve?

Answer 3

Duck typing allows for polymorphic behavior without an explicit inheritance hierarchy.

Question 4

When would building a State Machine Diagram would be useful?

Answer 4

State machine diagrams are useful when examining critical objects or components of the system to ensure that they will not cause the program to hang, crash, or fail unexpectedly throughout their lifecycle

Question 5

How is project scope defined?

Answer 5

Project scope is defined by the statement of work, and it explicitly identifies which specific problems the system is expected to solve.

Question 6

Provide a strategy for effectively dealing with a known risk.

Answer 6

Identifying and quantifying risk using the risk exposure equation (R = P( f ) x L) allows analysts to prioritize and mitigate critical risks to the project’s success.

Question 7

What are the steps of the requirements engineering process?

Answer 7

1. Requirements Identification
2. Requirements Analysis
3. Requirements Specification

Question 8

What are the elements of an Entity Relationship Diagram?

Answer 8

1. Entity
2. Attribute
3. Relationship

Question 9

Why is a feasibility assessment part of the planning process?

Answer 9

The outcome of a feasibility assessment is a definitive answer to the question of whether or not the project can be successful given identified risks and constraints.

It is part of the planning process because determining whether to proceed before going to the expense of requirements engineering is a sound business practice.

Question 10

Why is the software acquisition decision an important part of the software planning process?

Answer 10

The various options for software acquisition have important strategic differences for later steps in the SDLC.

For example, if you choose to purchase an existing software project, then you can spend far less (and have far fewer customization) in the remaining phases of the SDLC than if you were to develop the solution in house.

Question 11

Spring 16 -

Identify and explain one pitfall to avoid when conducting a requirements gathering interview.

Answer 11

Leading questions can bias an interviewee into providing answers that describe assumed, rather than real, problems. (Other pitfalls include judgmental questions, impatiences, and doublebarreled
questions.)

Question 12

Describe one advantage and one disadvantage of the Prototyping SDLC model

Answer 12

Prototyping allows stakeholders the opportunity to directly evaluate a potential software solution, but many non-technical stakeholders end up pressuring the development team to simply deploy the prototype rather than building a from-scratch solution based on the prototype

Question 13

Define Systems Analysis and Design.

Answer 13

The study of business situations for the purpose of:

• identifying problems and opportunities
• specifying requirements to address these problems and opportunities
• and designing software that implements these requirements.

Question 14

What is the most important thing to consider when deciding how to model some element of a software system?

Answer 14

The reasoning needed to address the problem at hand is the primary consideration when determining how to model something.

Question 15

Provide an example of a business differentiator and explain why it serves as an exemplar.

Answer 15

If your business is to provide custom cake designs, then a web-based solution that allowed customers to design their cakes online is a business differentiator because it provides a unique advantage to your business over your competitors.

Question 16

What is triangulation and when is it applied in systems analysis?

Answer 16

Triangulation is an attempt to identify the same piece of information from multiple angles.

It is used in requirements elicitation and analysis to ensure that a requirement is stated correctly, necessary, and prioritized appropriately.

Question 17

Describe one information gathering technique that would be used during the requirements phase.

Answer 17

Requirements elicitation interviews involve meeting with stakeholders to ask them questions about what their current process is and how they would like to see it improved through the design and deployment of a new system.

Question 18

Summarize the distinctions between the requirements phase and the design phase of the SDLC.

Answer 18

Requirements are when you determine what the system must do; design is when you determine how the system will do those things.

Question 19

What circumstances favor the use of outsourcing for systems acquisition?

Answer 19

When the organization cannot find a pre-package software solution and also believes in-house development poses too much risk of failure, the organization should consider outsourcing.

Question 20

Define declarative programming.

Answer 20

Declarative programming is when you define the logic of what is to be done rather than how to do it.

Question 21

When and why would someone create a Use Case Diagram?

Answer 21

To model the behavior of a system and help to capture the requirements of the system. Would create it before the implementation phase.

Question 22

Describe the three dimensions of feasibility analysis.

Answer 22

Technical feasibility looks at the capability of the organization to successfully develop the proposed system. Included in this assessment are the project size, the types of technologies to be used in the project, and the amount of prior experience with that technology and the business application.

Economic feasibility addresses the economic justification of the project. Here, we attempt to determine if the value of the project’s benefits justifies investing in the project’s estimated costs.

Organizational feasibility evaluates whether the system is likely to be accepted and used by the organization. Included in this assessment will be the strength of the sponsor’s and management’s support for the project and the enthusiasm or resistance of the users for the project.

Question 23

Provide one question best answered by examining a project’s Entity Relationship Diagrams. Explain why an ERD provides the best answer to this question.

Answer 23

One question best answered by examining an entity relationship diagram is “What kind of information is created, stored, and used by a business system. And how are they related?”

The ERD provides the best answer to this question because an analyst can read an ERD to discover the individual pieces of information in a system and how they are organized and related to each other

Question 24

Is the primary purpose of requirements determination to discover facts or to discover opinions? Explain your answer.

Answer 24

Both are valuable. An opinion is a statement about an issue or situation that may or may not be supported by fact. If it is stated “Most of our collections are on-time,” this is an opinion that can be confirmed or denied by doing an actual measurement of on-time collections. This information is factual, and may provide the basis for the opinion expressed. Alternatively, the opinion may be a misstatement of actual fact, and may suggest an area where there is misunderstanding of the true situation.