Investigating System Requirements

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Investigating System Requirements
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Overview

• Analysis phase of SDLC skills needed
• Fact-finding for investigation of system
  requirements
• Analyst should learn details of business
  processes and daily operations
• Analyst should become as knowledgeable as
  business domain users to build credibility
• Analyst brings fresh perspective to problem
• Modeling of business processes based on system
  requirements

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The Analysis Phase in More Detail

• Gather information
• Define system requirements
• Logical model and physical model
• Prioritize requirements
• Prototype for feasibility and discovery
• Generate and evaluate alternatives
• Review recommendations with management

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The Activities of the Analysis Phase
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Activities of the Analysis Phase and Their Key
Questions
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What is a Requirement?

• A requirement is simply a statement of what the
  system must do or what characteristic it must
  have.
• Requirements are written from the perspective of
  the businessperson and they focus on the what
  of the system.
• Sometime they are called business requirements or
  user requirements.

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What is a Requirement?

• The requirements will change over time as the
  project moves.
• Requirements evolve from detailed statements of
  the business capabilities that a system should
  have to detailed statements of the technical way
  in which the capabilities will be implemented in
  the new system.

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System Requirements

• New system capabilities and constraints
• Functional requirements are
• Activities system must perform
• Based on procedures and business functions
• Documented in analysis models
• Nonfunctional requirements include
• Operating environment or performance objectives
• Usability, reliability, and security requirements

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Functional Requirements- Examples

• The system must have ability to
• check for valid customer order
• search for available inventory
• report actual and budgeted expenses
• issue purchase order automatically
• purchase order must be authorized by the head of
  department

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Nonfunctional Requirements- Examples

• The system must have ability to
• access the system using any Web browser
• integrate with the existing inventory system
• be available for use 24 hours per day, 365 days
  per year
• allow customers see their order history during
  business hours
• distinguish between United States and European
  currency.

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Non-Functional Classifications
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Requirement Definition and Specification

• Requirement definition is a straightforward text
  report that simply lists the functional and non
  functional requirements.
• Requirement specification is a detailed
  descriptions of the system services.

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Definitions and Specifications
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Business Process Reengineering and Analysis

• Fundamental strategic approach to organizing
  company
• Streamlines internal processes to be as efficient
  and effective as possible
• Questions basic assumptions for doing business
  and seeks to find a better way
• Uses IT as BPR enabler
• Systems analyst may discover opportunities for
  process improvement
• Any project may include components of BPR

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Stakeholders The Source of System Requirements

• People with interest in successful system
  implementation
• Three primary groups of stakeholders
• Users (use system)
• Clients (pay for and own system)
• Technical staff (ensure system operation)
• Every type of stakeholder is identified by analyst

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Stakeholders Interested in New System Development
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Users as Stakeholders

• Horizontal user roles - information flow across
  departments
• Vertical user roles - information needs of
  clerical staff, middle management, and senior
  executives
• Business users perform day-to-day operations
• Information users need current information
• Management users need summary information
• Executive users need strategic information
• External users may have access to system

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Requirements Analysis Techniques

• Business Process Automation (BPA) involves
  automating some aspect of the business process
  through the application of information
  technology.
• Business Process Improvement (BPI) involves
  employees looking for ways to improve the process
  incrementally.
• Business Process Transformation (BPT) examines
  how the business operates and then looks for ways
  to fundamentally and radically change those
  operations.

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Business Processes

• A process perspective encourages managers to
• See every aspect of the business as customer
  driven.
• Make employees responsible for the whole process,
  rather than for just one task in it.
• Focus on how work is done, rather than just on
  what is done.

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Business Process Automation

• Business process automation is where a process is
  replaced by one that is supported by an
  information system.
• Most efforts to automate business processes also
  result in process improvements.
• Order entry system replaced a manual inventory
  count.

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Business Process Improvement

• Business process improvement means making
  moderate changes to the way in which the
  organization operates to take advantage of new
  opportunities offered by technology or to copy
  what competitors are doing.
• BPI can improve efficiency, effectiveness.
• BPI projects spend time under standing the as-is
  system less time than BPA project.
• During analysis, a detailed examination of the
  amount of time it takes to perform each process
  in the current as-is system.

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Business Process Improvement

• The analysts have to do
• Determining the total amount of time each process
  takes, on average, to perform a set of business
  processes for a typical input
• Totaling the time to complete the basic steps
• Comparing the total time to the total time for
  the overall process.
• Total time 10-100 times longer than the sum of
  the parts- indicates that this part of the
  process is badly in need of a major overhaul

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Business Process Improvement-Home Mortgage System

• Approve a mortgage-gt 30 days
• data entry, credit check, title search,
  appraisal, etc.
• different people must perform different
  activities on a small parts of the input,
  sequential activities
• Find that the total amount of time actually spent
  on each mortgage is 8 hours.
• Process for approving a mortgage needs
  integration or parallelization.

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Business Process Transformation

• Business Process Transformation (BPT) is used
  today to define reengineering.
• Re-engineering is the fundamental rethinking and
  redesign of business processes to achieve
  dramatic improvements in critical measures of
  performance. (Hammer and Champy 1990)
• Strategic change projects.
• Breakthrough innovation focused on the customer.
• 3 approaches
• Outcome analysis
• Technology analysis
• Activity elimination

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BPT- Outcome Analysis

• Focuses on understanding the fundamental outcomes
  that provide value to customers.
• Insurance company
• What is the fundamental outcome from the
  customers perspective?
• Customer wants to receive the payment quickly for
  repairing the car.
• The company might extending their view of the
  business process to include not paying for
  repairs, but performing the repairs or
  contracting with an authorized body shop to do
  them.

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BPT-Technology Analysis

• Develop a list of important and interesting
  technologies.
• Identify how each technology could be applied to
  the business process.
• Identify how the business would benefit
• Car manufacturer- Saturn
• Developed an Extranet application for its
  suppliers.
• Rather than ordering parts for its cars, Saturn
  makes its production schedule available
  electronically to it suppliers-Just in time.

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BPT-Activity Elimination

• Identify how the organization could eliminate
  each and every activity in the business process.
• How the function could operate with out it.
• What the effects are likely to occur.
• Mortgage company
• Eliminate data entry
• Make someone else do the data entry (customer
  over a Web)
• Eliminate credit check
• If all or almost all applicants have good credit
  and are seldom turned down by a credit check,
  then the cost of the credit check may not be
  worth the cost of the few bad loans it prevents.
• Eliminating it may actually result in lower costs
  even with the cost of bad loans.

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Selecting the Appropriate Technique
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Techniques for Information Gathering

• Analysis phase done to understand business
  functions and develop system requirements
• Original structured approach
• Create model of existing system
• Derive requirements from existing system model
• Current approach
• Identify logical requirements for new system
• Balance the review of current business functions
  with new system requirements

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Information Gathering and Model Building
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Themes for Information-Gathering Questions
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Fact Finding Methods

• Review existing reports, forms, and procedure
  descriptions
• Interview and discussion processes with users
• Observe and document business processes
• Build prototypes
• Distribute and collect questionnaires
• Conduct joint application design (JAD) sessions
• Research vendor solutions

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Review Existing Reports, Forms, and Procedure
Descriptions

• Source External industry wide professional
  organizations and trade publications
• Source Existing business documents and procedure
  descriptions within organization
• Identify business rules, discrepancies, and
  redundancies
• Be cautious of outdated material
• Obtain preliminary understanding of processes
• Use as guidelines / visual cues to guide
  interviews

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Review Existing Reports, Forms, and Procedure
Descriptions

• Documents represent the formal system that the
  organization uses.
• Informal system differs from the formal one.
• These differences give strong indications of what
  needs to be changed.
• Forms or reports that are never used likely
  should be eliminated.
• Boxes or questions on forms that are never filled
  in (or are used for other purpose) should be
  rethought
• It is useful to review both blank and completed
  forms to identify these deviation.

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Sample Order Form for RMO
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Document Analysis
The customer made a mistake. This should be
labeled Owners Name to prevent confusion
The staff had to add additional information about
the type of animal and the animals date of
birth. This information should be added to the
new form in to be system.
The customer did not include area code in the
phone number. This should be made more clear
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Conduct Interviews and Discussions with Users

• Effective way to understand business functions
  and rules
• Time-consuming and resource-expensive
• May require multiple sessions to
• Meet all users
• Understand all processing requirements
• Can meet with individuals or groups of users
• List of detailed questions prepared

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Sample Checklist to Prepare for User Interviews
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Establish the Objectives for the Interview

• What do you want to accomplish with this
  interview?

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Selecting Interviewees

• List all of the people who will be interviewed.
• People at different levels of the organization
  will have different perspectives on the system
• Include both manager and staff who actually
  perform the process.
• When they will be interviewed
• What purpose

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Designing Interview Questions

• Closed-ended
• Enable analyst to control the interview and
  obtain information they need.
• Dont uncover why
• Open-ended
• Leave room for elaboration on the part of the
  interviewee.
• Design to gather rich information
• Give the interviewee more control over the
  information that is revealed during the interview.

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Designing Interview Questions

• Probing question
• Follow up on what has just been discussed in
  order to learn more
• Use when the interviewer is unclear about an
  interviewees answer
• Encourage the interviewee to expand on or to
  confirm information from a previous response
• Is a signal that the interviewer is listening and
  interested in the topic under discussion
• Should not ask questions about information that
  is available from other sources (documents,
  reports, forms)

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3 Types of Questions- Example
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Types of Interview

• Unstructured interview
• Seek a broad and roughly defined set of
  information
• The interviewer has a general sense of the
  information needed
• Few closed-ended questions are asked
• Structured interview
• Specific set of questions are developed prior to
  the interview
• More closed-ended questions

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Types of Interview
High-Level Very general
How can order processing be improved?
How can we reduce the number of times that
customers return items theyve ordered?
Medium-Level Moderately specific
How can we reduce the number of errors in order
processing (e.g., shipping the wrong products?
Low-Level Very specific
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Organizing the Interview Questions

• Top-down interview
• The interviewer starts with broad, general issues
  and gradually work towards more specific ones
• Bottom-up interview
• The interviewer starts with very specific
  questions and move to broad questions

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Organizing the Interview Questions

• Top-down interview
• Accustomed to the topic before providing
  specifics
• Enables the interviewer to understand the issues
  before moving to details because the interviewer
  may not have sufficient information at the start
  of the interview to ask very specific questions
• Enable the interviewee to raise a set of big
  picture issues before becoming enmeshed in
  details, so the interviewer is less likely to
  miss important issues

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Organizing the Interview Questions

• Bottom-up interview
• When analyst already has gathered a lot of
  information about issues, just need to fill in
  some holes with details
• If lower-level staff members feel threatened or
  are unable to answer high-level questions
• How can we improve customer service? (broad
  question)
• How can we speed up customer return? (specific
  question)

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Setting the Time and Location
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Conducting the Interview

• Build rapport with the interviewee, so that
  he/she trusts and willing to tell the whole truth
• Should appear to be professional and an unbiased,
  independent seeker of information
• Should start with an explanation of why you are
  there and why you have chosen to interview the
  person, then move into your planned interview
  question
• Record all the information that the interviewee
  provides- take notes
• Dont afraid to ask the person to slow down or to
  pause while you write, because this is a clear
  indication that the interviewees information is
  important to you

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Conducting the Interview

• Look for exception and error conditions
• Look for opportunities to ask what if question
• What if it doesnt arrive?
• What if the signature is missing?
• What if the balance is incorrect?
• Probe for details
• Tape recording ensures that you do not miss
  important points, but it can be intimidating for
  the interviewee
• Make sure to give the interviewee time to ask
  questions or provide information that he/she
  thinks is important but was not part of your
  interview plan
• Close the interviewee

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Post-Interview

• Prepare an interview report
• Report should be written within 48 hours
• Sent the report to the interviewee

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Interview Report
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Interview Report (cont)
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Follow up

• To explain and verify information
• List new questions based on areas that need
  further elaboration or that are missing
  information
• This list will prepare you for the next interview

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Follow Up Interview- A Sample Open-items List
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Developing Interpersonal Skills

• Dont worry, be happy
• Smiling while interview
• Pay attention
• Summary key points
• Repeat the key points back to the speaker
• Be succinct
• The goal in the interviewing is to learn, not to
  impress
• Be honest
• Watch body language
• Sit or lean forward-gtdisinterested
• Cross arms-gt defensiveness or uncertainty
• Steepling (sitting with hands raised in front of
  the body with finger tips touching)-gt feeling of
  superiority

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Observation

• Enable the analyst to see the reality of a
  situation
• Check validity of information gathered from
  indirect sources (interview, questionnaire)
• Several managers really do not remember how they
  work and how they allocate their time
• Keep low profile
• Not interrupt or influence those working
• May not be the normal day-to-day routine
• Is often used to supplement interview information

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Observe and Document Business Processes

• Varies from office walkthrough to performing
  actual tasks
• Not necessary to observe all processes at same
  level of detail
• May make users nervous, so use common sense
• May be documented with workflow (activity)
  diagrams

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Activity Diagram Symbols
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Simple Activity Diagramto Demonstrate a Workflow
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Activity Diagram Showing Concurrent Paths
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Build Prototypes

• Preliminary working model of a larger, more
  complex system
• Discovery, design, evolving prototypes
• Operative
• Working model to provide look and feel
• Focused to accomplish single objective
• Quick
• Built and modified rapidly with CASE tools

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Designing Questionnaire

• Limited and specific information from a large
  number of stakeholders
• Preliminary insight into business
• Not well suited for gathering detailed
  information
• Questions must be very clearly written and leave
  little room for misunderstanding
• Closed-ended questions tend to be most commonly
  used

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Good Questionnaire Design

• Begin with nonthreatening and interesting
  questions.
• Group items into logically coherent sections.
• Do not put information items at the very end of
  the questionnaire.
• Do not crowd a page with too many items.
• Avoid abbreviations.
• Avoid biased or suggestive items or terms.
• Number questions to avoid confusion.
• Pretest the questionnaire to identify confusing
  questions.
• Provide anonymity to respondents.

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Administering the Questionnaire

• Techniques to improve response rate
• Clearly explaining why the questionnaire is being
  conducted and why the respondent has been
  selected
• State a date by which the questionnaire is to be
  returned
• Offering an inducement to complete the
  questionnaire (e.g., a free pen)
• Offering to supply a summary of the questionnaire
  responses
• Personally handing out the questionnaire
• personally contacting those who have not returned
  them after a week or two
• Request the respondents supervisors to
  administer the questionnaires in a group meeting.

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Comparison of Interviews and Questionnaires
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Comparison of Observation and Document Analysis
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Conduct Joint Application Design Sessions

• JAD allows the project team users, and management
  to work together to identify requirement for the
  system.
• Expedite investigation of systems requirements
• Seeks to compress fact-finding, modeling, policy
  formation, and verification activities into
  shorter time frame
• Critical factor is to have all important
  stakeholders present

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Joint Application Design Participants

• Session leader trained in group dynamics and JAD
  group facilitation
• Knowledgeable business and system users
• Policy making managers
• Technical staff representatives to handle
• Computer and network configurations
• Operating environments
• Security issues
• Project team members

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Joint Application Design Facilities

• Conducted in special room
• Limit interruptions
• May be off-site
• Resources
• Overhead projector, white board, flip charts,
  work material
• Electronic support (Laptops)
• CASE Tools
• Group support systems (GSS)

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A JAD Facility
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Research Vendor Solutions

• Many problems have been solved by other companies
• Positive contributions of vendor solutions
• Frequently provide new ideas
• May be state of the art
• Cheaper and less risky
• Danger
• May purchase solution before understanding problem

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Useful Techniques in Vendor Research

• Technical specifications from vendor
• Demo or trial system
• References of existing clients
• On-site visits
• Printout of screens and reports

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Validating the Requirements

• Make sure gathered information is correct
• Structured walkthrough
• Effective means of implementing quality control
  early in project
• Verify and validate system requirements
• Review of findings from investigation and of
  models based on findings
• Project manager responsible for system quality
• System analyst, project manager are partners

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Summary

• Analysis Phase Activities
• Gather information
• Define system requirements
• Prioritize requirements
• Prototype for feasibility and discovery
• Generate and evaluate alternatives
• Review recommendations with management
• BPR is becoming widespread and can affect
  analysis phase

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Summary (continued)

• Gathering system requirements
• Functional and Nonfunctional
• Work with various stakeholders (users, clients,
  technical staff)
• What kind of information do I need?
• What are the business processes and operations?
• How are the business processes performed?
• What are the information requirements?

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Summary (continued)

• Primary information gathering techniques
• Review existing reports, forms, and procedure
  descriptions
• Conduct interviews and discussions with users
• Observe and document business processes
• Build prototype working models
• Distribute and collect questionnaires
• Conduct JAD sessions
• Research vendor solutions