System Investigations

Question 1

What is a stakeholder?

Answer 1

Those people who are affected eitheri directly or indirectly by a specific change.

Question 2

What are the investigative techniques an SA should be aware of/use?

Answer 2

Workshops, prototyping, interviewing, questionnaires, and scenario analysis.

Question 3

What is a workshop?

Answer 3

A team-based informating gathering and decision making technique designed to accelerate business planning and development.

Question 4

Why are workshops useful?

Answer 4

They allow for exchange of information and to come up with a decision that is mutually acceptable.

Question 5

What are the benefits of workshops?

Answer 5

Speed: by having everyone together people can agree reqr. Much faster. Ownership: involved people are more likely to be commited to the decisions taken. Productivity: people build on the ideas presented. Consensus: discussion aimed at reaching a consensus. Quality of decision making: because the involved participate the output is likely to be of high quality.

Question 6

What are some constraints of using workshops?

Answer 6

they are hard to schedule, hard to get everyone in the same room.

Question 7

How to use workshops?

Answer 7

They enable requirement to be captured. They must have the right group size. They are useful at different project stages. Group must be empowered to make decisions.

Question 8

Workshop - who is the sponsor?

Answer 8

Owns the workshop and ultimate decision maker. Works with the facilitator to create the workshop TOR.

Question 9

Workshops - who is the facilitator?

Answer 9

Key player. Ensures the group meets the agreed objectives. Maintains the focus. He needs to be objective, professional, positive, patitent, actively listening, questions and gives feedback, can keep group participation, able to handle group conflicts.

Question 10

Workshop - who are the participants?

Answer 10

The people invited, must work towards for group success. Participants should be empowered to speak.

Question 11

Workshop - who is the scribe?

Answer 11

Work with the facilitator. Captures the data but does not take part in the workshop.

Question 12

What is a prototype?

Answer 12

Shows the user how a system might work. It can be anything from a drawing to a working piece of software.

Question 13

What are the advantages of using prototypes?

Answer 13

Helps the user really determine the requirements, validate the requirements, reduces the risk of getting it wrong.

Question 14

What are the disadvantages of using prototypes?

Answer 14

Can run out of control, can raise unrealistic expectations, can lead to users to overestimate progress.

Question 15

What is interviewing?

Answer 15

A structured discussion used to elicit facts and information. Enables to create a working relationship.

Question 16

What are advantages of interviewing?

Answer 16

Enables to create a working relationship, allows to elicit requirements.

Question 17

What are the different steps in interviews?

Answer 17

Planning (what to ask, who, how, what, where) - Conducting (listening, use open questions, how to record) - Following Up (write notes, prepare a formal record).

Question 18

What are questionnaires?

Answer 18

Useful way of eliciting limited amounts of information from a large group of people.

Question 19

What are the advantages of questionnaires?

Answer 19

Can reach large audiences, can uncover commons problems, can determine attidues.

Question 20

What are the disadvantages of questionnaires?

Answer 20

People don’t like them, they must be kept small and focused, it takes skill to formulate them.

Question 21

What is scenario analysis?

Answer 21

Telling the story of a task or transaction.

Question 22

What are the advantages of scenario analysis?

Answer 22

If we take the user through every step it is less likely that any elements get taken for granted.

Question 23

What are the disadvantages of scenario analysis?

Answer 23

Time consuming and may produce complex scenarios.

Question 24

What are requirements?

Answer 24

A feature that the business users need the new system to provide.

Question 25

What is a functional requirement?

Answer 25

An FR is astatement of WHAT an IT system must do in order to support business processes.

Question 26

What is anon functional requirement?

Answer 26

NFR specify criteria that can be used to judge the operation of a system, rathen than specific behaviour. HOW well the system does something.

Question 27

Why are requirements poorly defined?

Answer 27

Users often find it diffuclt to visualise what they need and so are unable to describe a system requirement. Tacit knowledge may be a problem

Question 28

What is an example of a functional requirement?

Answer 28

The system will capture a customers detail, update a customers detail, delete a customer, produce a report of all current customers.

Question 29

What is an example of a non functional requirement?

Answer 29

Performance, security, access, backup & recovery, archiving & retention, robustness, availability, usability, capacity.

Question 30

What are the requirement hierarchies?

Answer 30

Requirements must be logically arranged, an FR may have an NFR and an NFR may elicit an FR.

Question 31

What is solution language?

Answer 31

Solution language should be avoided in a requirement statement.

Question 32

What is documentation sytle?

Answer 32

Ways of documenting requirements (requirement catalogue, business requirements document, functional specification).

Question 33

What is use case?

Answer 33

A structured requirement that desribes a piece of a system functionality.

Question 34

What is the focus of use cases?

Answer 34

The scope is a single business transaction that a user undertakes within the IT system in order to achieve a relevant business goal.

Question 35

What are actors and system boundaries in use cases?

Answer 35

Actors represent named user roles that interface with the system (human, non-human).

Question 36

What is a use case diagram notation?

Answer 36

There are three main notations, the actor, use case, and the association.

Question 37

What is a use case diagram?

Answer 37

Created to capture at high level the scope of the required functionality of an IT system.

Question 38

How do we work through the requirements specification?

Answer 38

1. Deice the required functionality. 2. Decide what non-functional constraints are applicable to this functionality. 3. Work out if any additional functionality dervies from the NFRs.

Question 39

What is a use case template?

Answer 39

Used when more detail is added. A table with the actor, system, and alternatives.

Question 40

What is a user story?

Answer 40

User stories are the preferred way to identify what the system has to do (as a user, I want to, so that I can see)

Question 41

What are user story charateristics?

Answer 41

Brief & informal, written by business stakeholder, basis of a feature to be developed, close contact between customer and dev, little documentation, used in XP and other agile methodoligies.

Question 42

What are the human aspects of system investigation?

Answer 42

Communication is it formal vs informal, spoken or verbal, non verbal, written, visualisation.

Question 43

What are barriers to communication?

Answer 43

Language, too much info, poorly defined objectives, distortion, wrong medium, anxiety.

Question 44

What are the humans aspects of introducing change?

Answer 44

People will react to change when they will be affected. They might react in different ways.

Question 45

What is the performance change curve?

Answer 45

A change curve showing how people react to change. Initally the change is launched, there is a dip in confidence, before a turning point, that increased producitvity, and allows the benefits to kick in.

Question 46

How do we deal with change resistance?

Answer 46

We educate and communicate, we allow people to participate and be involved, we faciliatate and support.