CHAPTER FIVE

ANALYSIS: Requirement
Determination
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Introduction

 System analysis determine how the

current information system functions
and assess what users would like to
see in new system.
 There are three sub phases in analysis:
 Requirements determination

 Requirements structuring, and

 Alternative generation and choice.

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Introduction

 We will first study the more traditional

requirements determination then
 Discuss modern methods for collecting system
requirement (JAD).

 Structuring system requirement is modeling :

 a system process,

 logic and

 conceptual data that provides a way for analysts to

see how various process action diagrams (data flow,

entity relationship)

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Introduction
 Process modeling show the flow of data
between manual or automated systems.

 Logic modeling show the decision logic of

processing data

 Data modeling depicts the characteristics

and natural structure of data independent
of how it is stored in side the computer.

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 Types of Requirements
 Requirements are partitioned into:
 functional requirements and
 non-functional requirements.

 Functional requirements are associated with specific functions,

tasks or behaviours the system must support.

 Non-functional requirements are constraints on various

attributes of these functions or tasks.

 Functional requirements define what a system is supposed to do whereas

Non-functional requirements define how a system is supposed to be

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 Functional Requirements
 Functional requirement specifies what the system should do or
supposed to do, specify specific behavior or functions, for
example:
 "Display the heart rate, blood pressure and temperature
of a patient connected to the patient monitor.”

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 Functional Requirements

 Typical functional requirements are:

 Business Rules
 Transaction corrections, adjustments ( redo, undo etc),
cancellations
 Administrative functions
 Authentication
 Authorization –functions user is delegated to perform

 Reporting Requirements ( periodic, exceptional, adhoc …)

 Legal or Regulatory Requirements

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 Nonfunctional Requirements

 Non-functional requirements are requirements that specify criteria

that can be used to judge the operation of a system, rather than
specific behaviors.

 Non-functional requirements are often called qualities of a system.

 for example:

 "Display of the patient's vital signs ( blood pressure, hearth

beat…) must respond to a change in the patient's status
within 2 seconds.“

 “The customer must be able to access their account 24 hours a

day, seven days a week.”

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Nonfunctional Requirements
 Typical non-functional requirements are:
 Performance - Response Time, Throughput
 Scalability
 Capacity
 Availability (24/7)
 Reliability
 Recoverability
 Maintainability
 Serviceability
 Manageability
 Usability
 Interoperability

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 Performing Requirements Determination

 The three sub phases to systems analysis are separate

steps,

 However, you should consider these steps as somewhat

parallel and iterative.

Sources of information???
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The process of determining requirements

 Once management has granted permission to pursue

development of a new system and a project is initiated and
planned you begin determining what the new system should
do.

 Gather information on what the system should do from

many sources:

 Users
 Reports
 Forms
 Procedures

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 The process of determining requirements

 Characteristics for gathering requirements

 Impertinence ( there are no obvious things )
 Question everything
 Impartiality
 Find the best organizational solution
 Relaxation of constraints
 Traditions are different from rules and policies, Assume anything is
possible.
 Attention to detail
 Every fact must fit with every other fact.
 Reframing
 View the organization in new ways

Deliverables????? 12
 Deliverables and Outcomes

 The primary deliverables from requirements

determination are:
1. Various forms of information gathered during
the determination process:
 Transcripts of interviews;
 Notes from observation and analysis of documents;
 Analyzed responses from questionnaires;
 Sets of forms, reports, job descriptions, and
 Other documents
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 Deliverables and Outcomes
2. Understanding of organizational components

 Business objective
 Information needs

 Rules of data processing

 Key events affecting data values

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Deliverables and Outcomes

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Traditional Methods for Determining Requirements

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 Interview

 Interviewing is one of the primary ways of gathering

information.
 Interview people about
 their work,
 the information they use to do it, and
 the types of information processing around their job.
 Other stakeholders are interviewed to understand
 organizational direction,
 policies expectations managers have on the units they supervise,
and
 other non routine aspects of organizational operations.

 Interviewing and Listening

 Gather facts, opinions and speculations
 Observe body language and emotions
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 Interview
 Guidelines for effective interview
 Plan
 Prepare the interview (Appointment)
 agenda and questions
 Be neutral
 Listen carefully and take note
 Seek a diverse view
 Review notes with in 48 hrs.

 Choosing Interview Questions:

 You need to decide what mix and sequence of open-ended and
closed-ended questions you will use.

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Interview
 Open-ended questions
 are usually used to probe for information for which you cannot
anticipate all possible responses or for which you do not know the
precise question to ask.

 The person being interviewed is encouraged to talk about

whatever interests him or her within the general bounds of the
question.

 Closed-ended questions provide a range of answers from

which the interviewee may choose.
 Effective way to communicate with people
 Very expensive and time consuming

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Interview

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Administering Questionnaires
 Questionnaires are:
 More cost-effective than interviews
 Limited number of questions

 Passive and often less in-depth or

understanding
 Possible to gather information from many

people and less biased in interpretation.

 It is important to specific purposes rather than

for more general information.

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Administering Questionnaires
 Choosing respondents
 Should be representative of all users
 Types of samples
 Convenient
 Random sample
 Purposeful sample
 Any other method
 Designing questionnaires
 Mostly closed-ended questions
 Can be administered over the phone, in person or over
the Internet

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Choosing between Interviews and Questioners

 Interviews Vs. Questioners

 Interviews are good for collecting rich, detailed
information.
 Interviews are time-intensive and expensive.
 Questionnaires are more cost-effective
 With questionnaires specific information can be
gathered from many peoples.

 Which method to use and what strategy to employee

will vary with:
 the system being studied (well structuredor complex?) and
its organizational context (e.g. where the orgn located? )
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Choosing between Interviews and
Questioners

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Observation
 Directly Observing Users
 People are not reliable informant
 They don’t have accurate appreciation of what they do.
 Generally, people can’t always be trusted to reliably interpret and
report their own action
 Serves as a good method to supplement interviews
 Provides firsthand and objective measures of employees
interaction with information system.
 It is more accurate reflection of reality than what employees
themselves believe.

Often difficult to obtain unbiased data
 People often work differently when being observed

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Analyzing Procedures and Other Documents

 Types of information to be discovered:

 Problems with existing system
 Opportunity
 Organizational direction
 Names of key individuals
 Values of organization
 Rules for processing data
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Analyzing Procedures and Other Documents

 One type of useful document is a

written work procedure.
 Procedures are not trouble-free
sources of information.
 It will reveal a duplication of effort in two or
more jobs.
 A procedure is missing.
 Procedure is out of date
 Formal procedures may contradict information
you collected from interviews, questionnaires,
and observation

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 Analyzing Procedures and Other Documents

 All of these problems illustrate the difference between

formal systems and informal systems.
 Formal systems are systems recognized by the official
documentation of the organization
 informal systems are the way in which the organization
actually works.
 A second type of document useful to systems analysts
is business form.

A third type of useful document is a report
generated by current systems. 30
Analyzing Procedures and Other Documents

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 Workflow Analysis Modeling
 Workflow analysis modeling help to facilitate standard
analysis methodologies.
 A workflow is a depiction of a sequence of operations,
declared as work of a person, work of a simple or complex
mechanism, work of a group of persons, work of an
organization of staff, or machines.
 A workflow diagram is a graphic representation of all the
major steps of a process. It can help you:
 Understand the complete process.
 Identify the critical stages of a process.
 Locate problem areas.
 Show relationships between different steps in a process.
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 Workflow Analysis Modeling
 With the help of such diagram it is possible to see
the path of the task in a workflow, the person who
is responsible for its execution on each stage.

 Workflow diagram is a sort of flowcharts that

consist of 6 types of blocks.

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Workflow Diagram Symbols

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 Practical work analysis

 The first step in planning a workflow application is to

analyze the business process you want to define.
 The steps involves in purchase order task of the Sales
Supervisor at a fictitious distributor firm are:
1. Receive a request for an estimate
2. Verify the stock balance
3. Issue the estimate
4. Place order
5. Receive materials ordered
6. Checking and Inspection
7. Send material to SOP
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Workflow Diagram

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 Practical work analysis
 It is important to focus on the main job when you
list steps, because if surrounding business factors:
 such as financial considerations or stock management,
also are listed, then the story is blurred.

 workflow includes the communication among the

people involved in the business process.

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 Practical work analysis
 The people involved in the earlier example are:
 Sales supervisors
 Customer
 Stock keeper
 Delivery person
 Each step has a pool of information.
 For example, if you order a product, then information, such as the
product name, quantity, and price, is involved.
 The information pools have a relationship to each other.
 If you draw a picture of how the information goes around
these steps with such relationships considered, you will
understand the relationship in each process more.
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 Practical work analysis
 The information relation of each process.

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 Types of work flow

1. User-level WFD
 Models entities and workflows described by
single user
 Presents a single user’s view point but includes
more than one entity and can model workflows
across functional areas
 Discover formal as well as informal flows of
information.

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Types of work flow
User-level WFD

Invoice C1
Invoice C2
Customer
Sales order
Processing

Sales
Order
Clerk
Picking List

Sales Order Form Dispatch

Sales
Agent

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 Types of work flow

2. Combined user level WFD

Integrated view of all entities and workflows
Identify inconsistencies in user-level WFDs

Reveals redundancies, inefficiencies

Can be used to identify high level business processes

 Each internal entity performs a process to generate flows to
and process flows from external entities.
 Flows between internal entities can also indicate a major
process
Can be used to define system boundaries

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 Types of work flow
Combined user level WFD

Payment
Sales order Sales
Processing Report
Customer

Invoice C1
Management

Sales Order
Clerk
Order
Picking List Invoice C2

Sales Order Form

Delivery
Dispatch
Sales
Agent
Customer

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 Types of work flow

3. Organizational level WFD

 Collapse all internal entities in combined user-
level WFD, into a single internal entity
External entities and the flow of information
between the organization and external entities
Equivalent to Context level DFD

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 Types of work flow
Organizational level WFD

Promotion Accounts
Club Receivable
Member

Member Order Member

Credit
Status
Warehouse

various Inquiry Reponses Revised Packing Order

New Subscription Member New Promotion
Potential
Member Services Subscription Program
Subscription Offer
System

Subscription Renewal various Sales Reports

various
Promotion Reports
Marketing
various Subscription Reports Department

Past Resubscription Offer

Member
various Member
Reports Member
Services

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 Modern Methods for Determining
Requirements
 Joint Application Design (JAD)
 Brings together key users, managers and systems
analysts
 Purpose: collect system requirements simultaneously
from key people
 Conducted off-site
 Prototyping
 Repetitive process
 Rudimentary version of system is built
 Replaces or augments SDLC
 Goal: to develop concrete specifications for ultimate
system
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Joint Application Design (JAD)
 Participants in the JAD
 JAD session leader
 Users
 Managers
 Sponsor
 Systems analysts
 Scribe
 IT staff
 End Result
 Documentation detailing existing system
 Features of proposed system

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 Prototyping
 Quickly converts requirements to working
version of system
 You will still have to interview users and collect
documentation.
 Prototyping however, will allow you to quickly
convert basic requirements into a working
version of the desired information system.
 Once the user sees requirements converted to
system, will ask for modifications or will
generate additional requests

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 Prototyping
 Most useful when:
 User requests are not clear
 Few users are involved in the system
 Designs are complex and require concrete form
 History of communication problems between
analysts and users
 Tools are readily available to build prototype

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Prototyping
 Drawbacks
 Tendency to avoid formal documentation
 Difficult to adapt to more general
user audience
 Sharing data with other systems is often
not considered
 Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
checks are often bypassed

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