AIS102P

INFORMATION SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND DESIGN

MODULE 1 LECTURE 1
LEARNING OBJECTIVE

Explain the role of the systems Describe the Systems Development Explain how organizations identify
analyst in information systems Life Cycle and its different phases there is developmental needs
development
WHAT IS INFORMATION
SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND
DESIGN?
• It is a method used by companies to create and
maintain information systems that perform basic
business functions such as keeping track of
customer names and addresses, processing
orders, and paying employees.
• The goal is to improve organizational systems, by
applying software that can help employees
accomplish key business tasks more easily and
efficiently.
• As a systems analyst, you will be at the center of
developing this software.
• The analysis and design of Information Systems are based on:
1. Understanding of the organization's objectives , the structure and the processes
2. Knowledge of how to use information technology

• From data to information, the IS constitutes of the following:

1. The hardware and systems software
2. Documentation and training materials
3. The specific job roles associated with the system
4. Controls
ACCOUNTING INFORMATION SYSTEMS

• AIS stands at the crossroads of 2 disciplines: "Accounting" and "Information Systems".

• This is also known as the study of computerized accounting systems.
• To define AIS, it is a collection of data and processing procedures that creates needed information for its
users
THE SYSTEMS ANALYST AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
DEVELOPMENT

• The systems development life cycle (SDLC) is the process of determining how an information system (IS)
can support business needs, designing the system, building it, and delivering it to users.
• Primary goal of a systems analyst is to create value for the organization
• In systems development, one of the important roles in the team is the systems analyst:
• They analyze the business situation,
• Identify the opportunities for improvement
• Design an information system to implement the improvements
 The systems analyst plays a key role in IS development
projects.

The systems analyst works closely with all project team

THE SYSTEM members so that the team develops the right system in an
effective way.

ANALYST
Systems analysts must understand how to apply technology
to solve business problems.

Systems analysts may serve as change agents who identify

the organizational improvements needed, design systems to
implement those changes, and train and motivate others to
use the systems.
 ROLES OF THE SYSTEMS ANALYST
• The analyst must be able to work with people of all descriptions and be experienced in working with
computers
• Three primary roles:
• Consultant
• Supporting Expert
• Agent of change
SYSTEMS ANALYST SKILLS

• Six Major categories

1. Technical
2. Business
3. Analytical
4. Interpersonal
5. Management
6. and Ethical
SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE
1. PLANNING
• The planning phase is the fundamental process of understanding why an IS should be built and determining how the project team
will go about building it. It has two steps:
• During project initiation, the system’s business value to the organization is identified—how will it contribute to the organization’s
future success? Most ideas for new systems come from outside the IS area and are recorded on a system request. A system request
presents a brief summary of a business need and explains how a system that addresses the need will create business value. The IS
department works together with the person or department generating the request (called the project sponsor) to conduct a
feasibility analysis. The feasibility analysis examines key aspects of the proposed project:
• The technical feasibility (Can we build it?)
• The economic feasibility (Will it provide business value?)
• The organizational feasibility (If we build it, will it be used?)
• The system request and feasibility analysis are presented to an IS approval committee (sometimes called a steering committee),
which decides whether the project should be undertaken.
• Once the project is approved, it enters project management. During project management, the project manager creates a
workplan, staffs the project, and puts techniques in place to help control and direct the project through the entire SDLC. The
deliverable for project management is a project plan that describes how the project team will go about developing the system.
 REFERENCES
DENNIS, ALAN, ET AL. SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND DESIGN. AVAILABLE FROM:
VITALSOURCE BOOKSHELF, (7TH EDITION). WILEY GLOBAL EDUCATION US,
2018.
 AIS102P
INFORMATION SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND DESIGN
MODULE 1 LECTURE 2
LEARNING OBJECTIVE

Explain the role of the systems Describe the Systems Development Explain how organizations identify
analyst in information systems Life Cycle and its different phases there is developmental needs
development
SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE
 • Understand "WHY" and information system should be built and
determine how the project team will build it
• Question guides on doing the feasibility:
PLANNING PHASE • Can we build it?
• Will it provide business value?
• If we build it, will it be used?
 • Answers to the question of "WHO" will use the system,
• "WHAT" the system will do and
• "WHERE" and "WHEN" it will be used
ANALYSIS PHASE • During this phase, the project team:
1. Investigates if there is a current system
2. Identifies improvement opportunities and
3. Develops a concept for the new system
 • This phase decides "HOW" the system will operate
• in terms of hardware,software and network infrastructure that will
be used,
• the GUI or user interface,
DESIGN PHASE • forms and reports that will be used,
• the specific programs,databases and files that will be needed
• The steps in the design phase determine how the system will
operate
 • This is the final phase during which the system is actually
IMPLEMENTATION built/purchased/installed
• This is the longest and most expensive single part of the
PHASE development process
 1. PLANNING -
• A project is identified when someone in the organization
PROJECT identifies a business need to build a system
• A business need also comes up when the organization identifies
IDENTIFICATION unique and competitive ways of using IT
AND INITIATION
 • Is a methodology used by organizations to continuously improve
end-to-end business processes.
BUSINESS • Studying Business process advantages:
PROCESS 1. Enhanced process agility
2. Improved process alignment with industry "best practices" and
MANAGEMENT 3. Increased process efficiencies as costs are identified and
eliminated from process workflows
ROLE OF A BUSINESS ANALYST IN BPM

1 2 3 4
Defining and Creating ways to Finding ways to Creating or adjusting
mapping the steps in improve on steps in eliminate or electronic workflows
a business process the process that consolidate steps in to match the
adds value the process that do improved process
not add value maps
 BUSINESS • Is the foundation of many information technology systems
• Technology components are used to implement or substitute for
PROCESS manual information management processes with the intent of
AUTOMATION gaining cost efficiencies
 BUSINESS • This results from studying the business processes, creating new,
PROCESS redesigned processses to improve the process workflows, and/or
utilizing new technologies enabling new process structures
IMPROVEMENT
 BUSINESS • Is the foundation of many information technology systems
• Technology components are used to implement or substitute for
PROCESS manual information management processes with the intent of
AUTOMATION gaining cost efficiencies
 BUSINESS • Results from studying the business processes, creating new
PROCESS redesigned processes to improve the process workflows, and /or
utilizing new technologies enabling new process structures
IMPROVEMENT
BUSINESS
PROCESS
REENGINEERING

• Means changing the fundamental

way in which the organization
operates - "obliterating" the
current way of doing business and
making major changes to take
advantage of new ideas and new
technology
 • Develops or views the initial version of the new system. The
project sponsor works throughout the SDLC to make sure that
PROJECT SPONSOR the group/rpoject is moving in the right direction from the
perspective of the business and serves as the primary point of
contact for the project team
 • Describe the reasons for developing the system and outline the
capabilities it will provide the organization
• These requirements need to be explained at a high level so that
BUSINESS the approval committee and, ultimately the project team
understand what the business expects from the final product
REQUIREMENTS • Summarize the features the IS (information system) must
include, such as the ability to collect customer orders online or
the ability for suppliers to receive inventory status information as
sales occur
 • What will be gained from the proposed system
1. Tangible value – can be quantified and measured easily (e.g. 2%
reduction in operating costs)
BUSINESS VALUE 2. Intangible value – eresults from an intuitive belief that the
system provides important but hard-to-measure benefit to the
organization (e.g. improved customer services)
 SYSTEM REQUEST
• Is a document that provides or describes the business reasons for building a system and the value that the system is
expected to provide
• The project sponsor usually completes this form as part of a formal system project selection process within the
organization. Most system requests include five elements: project sponsor, business need, business requirements,
business value, and special issues
• The sponsor describes the person who will serve as the primary contact for the project, and the business need
presents the reasons prompting the project.
• The business requirements of the project refer to the business capabilities that the system must have, and the
business value describes the benefits that the organization should expect from the system.
• Special issues are included on the document as a catchall category for other information that should be considered in
assessing the project. For example, the project may need to be completed by a specific deadline. Any special
circumstances that could affect the outcome of the project must be clearly identified.
ELEMENTS OF THE SYSTEM REQUEST FORM
1. PLANNING
• The planning phase is the fundamental process of understanding why an IS should be built and determining how the project team
will go about building it. It has two steps:
• During project initiation, the system’s business value to the organization is identified—how will it contribute to the organization’s
future success? Most ideas for new systems come from outside the IS area and are recorded on a system request. A system request
presents a brief summary of a business need and explains how a system that addresses the need will create business value. The IS
department works together with the person or department generating the request (called the project sponsor) to conduct a
feasibility analysis. The feasibility analysis examines key aspects of the proposed project:
• The technical feasibility (Can we build it?)
• The economic feasibility (Will it provide business value?)
• The organizational feasibility (If we build it, will it be used?)
• The system request and feasibility analysis are presented to an IS approval committee (sometimes called a steering committee),
which decides whether the project should be undertaken.
• Once the project is approved, it enters project management. During project management, the project manager creates a
workplan, staffs the project, and puts techniques in place to help control and direct the project through the entire SDLC. The
deliverable for project management is a project plan that describes how the project team will go about developing the system.
 AIS102P
INFORMATION SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND DESIGN
MODULE 1 LECTURE 3
LEARNING OBJECTIVE

IDENTIFY THE PROJECT DEVELOP SYSTEM ANALYZE TECHNICAL ANALYZE ECONOMIC ANALYZE
REQUEST FEASIBILITY FEASIBILITY ORGANIZATIONAL
FEASIBILITY
SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE
FEASIBILITY ANALYSIS
• Guides the organization in determining whether to proceed with the project or
not.
• Identifies the important risks associated with the project that must be
managed once the project is approved
• Three areas that are assessed by the technique
1. Technical Feasibility
2. Economic Feasibility
3. Organizational Feasibility
FEASIBILITY ANALYSIS ASSESSMENT FACTORS.
TECHNICAL FEASIBILITY

• the extent to which the system can be successfully designed, developed, and installed by the IT group.
Technical feasibility analysis is, in essence, a technical risk analysis that strives to answer the question:
“Can we build it?
• Risks involved:
• Users’ and analysts’ familiarity with the application.
• Familiarity with the technology is another important source of technical risk
• Project size is an important consideration, whether measured as the number of people on the development
team, the length of time it will take to complete the project, or the number of distinct features in the system
• Compatibility of the new system with the technology that already exists in the organization
ECONOMIC FEASIBILITY
• Also known as "cost–benefit analysis"
• This attempts to answer the question “Should we build the system?”
• Economic feasibility is determined by identifying costs and benefits associated with the system, assigning
values to them, calculating future cash flows, and measuring the financial worthiness of the project.
• Common measurements used in economic feasibility
• Cash Flow Analysis and Measures
• Return on Investment
• Break-Even Point
• Discounted Cash Flow Technique
• Net Present Value (NPV)
• Identify Costs and Benefits
STEPS TO CONDUCT FEASIBILITY ANALYSIS
EXAMPLE OF COSTS AND
BENEFITS FOR
ECONOMIC FEASIBILITY
COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS-SIMPLE CASH FLOW METHOD
ORGANIZATIONAL FEASIBILITY

• How well the system ultimately will be accepted by its users and incorporated into the ongoing
operations of the organization.
• In essence, an organizational feasibility analysis attempts to answer the question “If we build it, will
they come?”
• One way to assess the organizational feasibility of the project is to understand how well the goals of the
project align with business objectives.
• Strategic alignment is the fit between the project and business strategy—the greater the alignment,
the less risky the project will be, from an organizational feasibility perspective.
IMPORTANT STAKEHOLDERS FOR ORGANIZATIONAL FEASIBILITY
TRY TO ANSWER THIS BY YOURSELF
 AIS102P
INFORMATION SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND DESIGN
MODULE 1 LECTURE 4
 LEARNING OBJECTIVE

EXPLAIN HOW TO SELECT A PROJECT DESCRIBE VARIOUS APPROACHES TO THE DESCRIBE PROJECT STAFFING ISSUES AND
METHODOLOGY BASED ON PROJECT SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE (SDLC) THAT CONCERNS.
CHARACTERISTICS. CAN BE USED TO STRUCTURE A DEVELOPMENT
PROJECT.
TRY TO ANSWER THIS BY YOURSELF
CREATING THE PROJECT PLAN

• Once a system request is submitted to the approving committee of the organization, the project team
will move on to create the project plan. The Project Manager will follow a set of guidelines used in
project management from staffing the team to following the phases of SDLC.
• A methodology will be selected by the Project Manager to develop the information system.
• A methodology is a formalized approach to implementing the SDLC (i.e., it is a list of tasks, steps, and
deliverables).
 1. Clarity of User Requirements -How well do the users and
analysts understand the functions and capabilities needed from
the new system?
PROJECT 2. Familiarity with Technology -How much experience does the
project team have with the technology that will be used?
CHARACTERISTICS 3. System Complexity -How much complexity is anticipated in the
THAT WILL AFFECT new system? Does the new system include a wide array of
features? Will the system have to integrate with many existing
systems? Does it span multiple organizational units, or even
THE PROJECT multiple organizations?

METHODOLOGY 4. System Reliability -Will this system need to be highly reliable or

is some downtime tolerable?
SELECTION 5. Short Time Schedules -Is the project time frame tight?
6. Schedule Visibility- Are the project sponsors, users, or
organizational managers anxious to see progress?
WATERFALL
DEVELOPMENT
• The phases are done one step at a time
• Advantages : Requirements are
identified long before programming
begins, and requirement changes are
limited as the project progresses.
• Disadvantages : the design must be
completely specified before
programming begins, a long time
elapses between the completion of the
system proposal in the analysis phase
and the delivery of system, and testing
may be treated almost as an
afterthought in the implementation
phase
RAPID APPLICATION
DEVELOPMENT (RAD)
• is a collection of methodologies that
emerged in response to the
weaknesses of waterfall development
and its variations.
• RAD incorporates special techniques
and computer tools to speed up the
analysis, design, and implementation
phases in order to get some portion
of the system developed quickly and
into the hands of the users for
evaluation and feedback
 • Advantage : gets a preliminary version of the system to the users
quickly so that business value is provided. Since users are
working with the system, important additional requirements
may be identified and incorporated into subsequent versions.
• Disadvantage : users begin to work with a system that is
RAD intentionally incomplete. Users must accept that only the most
critical requirements of the system will be available in the early
versions and must be patient with the repeated introduction of
new system versions.
AGILE
DEVELOPMENT
• is a group of programming-centric
methodologies that focus on
streamlining the SDLC. Much of the
modeling and documentation
overhead is eliminated; instead, face-
to-face communication is preferred.
• Cycles are kept short (1–4 weeks),
and the development team focuses
on adapting to the current business
environment.
 HOW TO SELECT
• The Project Manager will need to select a project methodology
THE APPROPRIATE for the team to use and it is not easy. Most organizations have
their own standards and policies in project development and this
DEVELOPMENT should be the main concern.

METHODOLOGY?
ESTIMATING THE PROJECT TIME FRAME

• Estimation is the process of assigning projected values for time and effort
• There are two basic ways to estimate the time required to build a system. The simplest method uses the
amount of time spent in the planning phase to predict the time required for the entire project. The idea
is that a simple project will require little planning, and a complex project will require more planning; so
using the amount of time spent in the planning phase is a reasonable way to estimate overall project
time requirements.
• See example below
DEVELOPING THE WORK PLAN

• After knowing the initial project size and the approximate schedule for the project, the project manager
together with the team then list all the task that needs to be accomplished
• A work Plan is a dynamic schedule that records and keeps track of all of the tasks that need to be
accomplished over the course of the project.
• The level of detail and amount of information will depend on what kind of project and the needs of the
project itself
• To create a work plan, the project manager identifies the tasks that need to be accomplished and
determines how long each one will take. Then the tasks are organized within a work breakdown
structure.
EXAMPLE OF A TASK
INFORMATION

• The task information is also the list of

tasks that are listed in a Work
Breakdown Schedule (WBS)
WBS EXAMPLE

• A project manager can take the

methodology, select the steps and
deliverables that apply to the current
project, and add them to the work plan.
• If an existing methodology is not
available within the organization,
methodologies can be purchased from
consultants or vendors, or books like
this textbook can serve as guidance.
• Using an existing methodology is the
most popular way to create a work plan,
because most organizations have a
methodology that they use for projects.
PROJECT WORK PLAN
• The project work plan is the mechanism used to manage the tasks that are listed in the work
breakdown structure.
• It is the project manager’s primary tool for managing the project. Using it, the project manager can tell
whether the project is ahead of or behind schedule, how well the project was estimated, and what
changes need to be made to meet the project deadline.
• Basically, the work plan is a table that lists all of the tasks in the work breakdown structure, along with
important task information such as the people who are assigned to perform the tasks, the actual hours
that the tasks took, and the variances between estimated and actual completion times
• Key milestones, or important dates, are also identified on the work plan. Presentations to the approval
committee, the start of end-user training, a company retreat, and the due date of the system prototype
are the types of milestones that may be important to track.
EXAMPLE
 REFERENCES
DENNIS, ALAN, ET AL. SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND DESIGN. AVAILABLE FROM:
VITALSOURCE BOOKSHELF, (7TH EDITION). WILEY GLOBAL EDUCATION US,
2018.