Systems Development Life Cycle [JK]

Question 1

What are the four stages in SDLC?

Answer 1

1) Planning and Investigation
2) Analysis
3) Design
4) Implementation, follow up and maintenance

Question 2

What is planning and investigation used for? and What happens in the Planning and Investigation stage?

(5 steps)

Answer 2

Used for something that isn’t ideally working and want to find out how to improve it so they:

1) Management organises a study team that consists of specialists from interdisciplinary departments.

2) The study team evaluate the current system briefly (i.e. preliminary investigation) having a broad viewpoint of the entire system. It will take a few weeks.

3) The study team is encouraged to think outside the box.

4) The study team writes a preliminary investigation report, containing objectives, the current problems, possible solutions, and the course of action.

5) The steering committee* reviews the preliminary investigation report and decide to either 1) do nothing, 2) perform additional preliminary investigations, or 3) proceed to the next stage of formal systems analysis.

*The steering committee is a governing body of the whole system development process, consisting of top management people who have decision power in the organisation.

Question 3

What happens in the Analysis stage of SDLC?

(4 steps)

Answer 3

The study team will understand the organisational goals through four steps.

Step 1) Get to know general systems, top management and operating management goals.

e.g.
* Generally: Benefit > cost, useful reports, easy to access and use info, flexible to retrieve different organisation info.
* Top mgmt: Short-term and long-range performance of company
* Operationally: department managers want to know daily, weekly and monthly performance of their departments.

Step 2) Carry out a system survey.

Detailed investigation of the current system and find the problem. normally via data gathering.

e.g.
* Reviewing documents
* Ask employees if their part of the system works ok, any problems, the amount of downtime, the morale of employees
* Use questionnaires and surveys
* Check internal control procedures

Step 3) analysis the data from survey and come up with solutions in a final systems analysis report. including flow charts and stats etc.

• Steering committee then reviews the final systems analysis report and make a decision to proceed or not.

Step 4) Feasibility evaluation through five different feasibility tests.

i) Technical feasibility: is the new system technically feasible?

• Can we combine the new system with the old system? Do we have enough hardware and software? Do we have enough people with the technical skills?

ii) Operational feasibility: is the new system fits well in our business process? Or, does it hinder our current operation? Can we fix it?

iii) Schedule feasibility: can the new system be implemented within our target period?

iv) Legal feasibility: does the new system meet all the legal requirements such as data protection and fair competition?

v) Economic feasibility: is the benefit bigger than the cost? Can we get some net benefit from the new system?

Question 4

What happens in the implementation, follow up and maintenance stage of SDLC?

Answer 4

The vendor will now work on developing a new system.

E.g. They will prepare the physical site to work on, assign personnel, train personnel, acquire computer equipment and software, establish internal controls, convert data files to fit the new system, test software and create a new system.

• People’s job description will be changed, some new jobs will be created and some jobs will be lost. So, the resistance from the employees is a big challenge and the management needs to deal with it well.

Two techniques to manage implementation: Gantt charts and PERT which is a diagram showing sequence of implementation.

FOLLOW UP:

• Vendor hands over to IT Staff / stays to observe performance swell.

4 things to check:
* Check if the organisation’s goals are met by talking to end users
* Evaluate the control procedures
* Observe employees’ performance
* Evaluate the system’s performance if it operates efficiently and effectively

Write post-implementation report to steering committee detailing the new systems performance. If no issues, then no work if there is still existing then stay to fix.

Maintenance:

IT staff will operate system from here on and make any necessary modification as it goes on. If there’s something they can’t do then vendor is called back to edit.

Maintenance of system takes constant work and will become an everyday cost for the business to keep it up and running properly!!