System Fundamentals Flashcards
When developing a new system what does an organisation do first?
The context of new system planning is defined
What is done in the “context of new system planning” stage?
- Understanding of organisational needs
- Market research and trends
- Feasilibility study
How are the organisational needs understood?
- By defining the business goals/objectives(which could be to increase efficiency, improve service or expand market reach)
- Current system analysis: Examining the limitations and capabilities of exisiting systems and to identify areas of improvement/change
- User requirements: Gather input from users to understand their needs, challenges and expectations from the new system
How is market research done and how are trends identified?
- Benchmarking: Anylsis of similar systems in other organisations(with best practices and innovations)
- Technological trends:Staying updated with the new technology to see if tools or platforms could benefit with the new system
What types of feasibility are assesed?
- Technical feasibility(whether the existing infrastructure can support the new system)
- Economic feasibility(whether the new system is cost effective and a consideration of development operation and maintainence costs)
- Legal and compliance feasibility(whether the system complies with relevant laws regulations and standards)
What are the technical capabilities and constraints when developing a new system?
- Scalability
- Interoperability
- User experience
What is done during a cost-benefit analysis?
- Direct and indirect costs are considered(development, training and maintainence costs)
- Benefits are highlighted(increased efficiency, improved data accuracy, customer satisfaction and competitive advantage)
What are some organisational issues in the new system installation?
- User role implementation: End-users, admins, IT staff, decesion makers
- Underlying technologies: Selection of technologies, data management
- Installation challenges: Customising needs, training and support
- Security and data protection: Risk analysis, data encryption and backup
- Ethical and social considerations: Data privacy, employee well being
What are the parts of the “Change management” phase in developing a new system?
- Identifying the need for change management
- Factors for successful change
- Social and ethical effects of change management
How is the need for change management identified?
- Understanding drivers of change: Technological advancement, market dynamics, regulatory compliance, internal organisational strategy
- Goals for change management: Efficiency, agility, innovation
What are some of the factors that make change successful?
- Key Elements of Strategic Planning: Vision and goals, resource allocation
- Effective Communication: Engagement strategy (all levels),Message consistency
- Training and Empowerment: Capacity building (skills), Empowerment
- Methodical Implementation: Risk management, Monitoring and adjustment
What are some of the possible social and ethical impacts of change?
- Impacts on employers: Strategic challenges(change vs need), cultural shift
- Impacts on employees: psychological impact, change fatigue
- Managing expectations and perceptions: Fairness and transparency, active participation
- Promoting responsible decision making: Stakeholder analysis, ethical frameworks
- Addressing global and cultural differences: Respecting diversity, cross-cultural peace
What are some of the difficulties in changing software systems?
- Users don’t like change
- Omitted features
- Old systems may be faster
- Incompatibility
- Data loss
- High cost
What are the two types of compatibilities?
Software and hardware compatibility
What are some of the software compatibility issues?
- Integration of new and old Systems
- Software updates and versions
What are the solutions to the software compatibility issues?
- Middleware
- Version management
What are some of the hardware compatibility issues?
- Peripheral integration
- System performance
What are the solutions to the hardware compatibility issues?
- Standardisation
- Regular hardware review and upgrade
What is a legacy system?
An outdated system, programming language or application software which is used instead of upgraded versions
Why are legacy systems still used?
- Data can not be changed into newer or standard formats
- Application programs can not be upgraded
What are some of the legacy system compatibility issues?
- Integration issues
- Security vulnerability
- High maintenance cost
What are some of the legacy system compatibility solutions?
- Performing system audits: evaluate perfomance and risk
- Strategic replacement: Phased approach to replace legacy system
- Bridge solution: Using middleware to communicate between old and new systems
What are some of the business merger compatibility issues?
- Data compatibility
- Integration issues
- Transformation of data
- Different use of application software
- Different change management policies
Compare hosting locally to remotely.
Local(Saap):
* Need to buy and maintain servers and software
* Employees to support hardware and software
* Space to house servers
* Electricity cost
On cloud(Saas)
* No need to buy and maintain servers and software
* Fewer employees needed
* Pay for resources used
* Easy to deploy
* Incressed efficiency through use of virtual resources
* 24/7 support
* Remote access
What are the advantages of locally hosted servers?
- Pay once
- Can control the data yourself in a secure data centre hence less rik of data loss
- Installments required
- New version leads to new purchase
- Best for large and complex systems
What are the disadvantages of locally hosted servers?
- Higher initial cost than remote
- Harder to predict total cost
- Maintain it yourself
What are the advantages of hosting remotely?
- Lower initial costs
- Overall costs can be predicted
- No need to maintain
- Data secure in data centre
What are the disadvantages of hosting remotely?
- Risk of data loss if provider shuts down
- Lower performance
- Internet connectio
What are the four ways to change?
- Direct(old stopped, new started)
- Parallel(old and new run concurrently)
- Piltot(new system tested with a small part of the organisation, bugs fixed then expanded)
- Phased(introduced in phases, old system passed out)
What are the advantages and disadvantages of direct changeover?
New system available immediately but no backup in case of failure
What are the advantages and disadvantages of parallel changeover?
Advantages: Backup options and results of both systems can be compared from to ensure they work correctly. Disadvantages: Expensive
What are the advantages and disadvantages of pilot changeover?
Advantages: All features tested before the whole organisation by staff hence if failure, only small part suffers. Disadvantages: No backup for the pilot group in case of failure.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of phased conversion?
Advantages: allows people to get used to the new system and the training can be done in stages. Disadvantages: No backup.
What is static testing?
- Checking defects without execution during early stages of dev
- Part of code is run
- Cheap, requires less time
- Used to discover problems
- Verification
What is dynamic testing?
- Analyses dynamic behaviour in late stages of dev
- Whole code is run post deployment
- Expensive, time consuming
- Discovers problems based on test cases
- Validation
What is alpha testing?
- Tests user journey and confirm that it works as intended by an internal team
- Rigourously structured to fix bugs and UI issues
What is beta testing?
- Real world perfomance tested by end users
- Unstrcutured
- Users provide feedback
What is black box testing?
- Functional testing
- User does not know anything about the system
What is white box testing?
- Structured
- Software developers test for requirementd
What is unit testing?
- Testing smallest pieces of code which can be logically isolated
- Allows developers to identify errors
What is integration testing?
- Testing interaction between units
- Top down: top modules to lower modules
- Bottom up: testing from lower to top
What is system testing?
- Tests complete application against requirements
- Black box testing
What is acceptance testing?
- Validates whether the software meets requirements
- User acceptance testing: by users
- Operational acceptance: Checks non functional requirements
What is regression testing?
- A type of software testing that ensures that recently developed or updated code does not adversely affect existing features
- Automated tools are used
What is stress testing?
Behaviour under extreme conditions
What are strategies to manage releases and updates?
- Deployment strategies
- Rolling updates: incremental changes
- Blue/green deployment: Alternate between two production environments ensuring one is always live3
- Patch management
- Automated deploy tools
