BAD 2014

ANALYSIS AND DESIGN

OF E-COMMERCE SYSTEMS

Lesson – 3

PREPARATION FOR SYSTEM DESIGN

PREPARATION FOR SYSTEM
DESIGN
System Development life cycle

Managing an Information system Project

Using CASE tools for automation of

System Design
System Development life cycle
Systems Development Life Cycle
• Organization use a standard set of steps, called
system development methodology, to develop
and support their information systems.

• Like many process, the development of

information system often follows a life cycle.
created – tested – introduced to the market. Its
sales increase, peak, and decline.

• Finally, the product is removed from the market

and replaced by something else.
SDLC marks the phases or steps of information system
development as show in a figure below. The specific steps
and their sequences are meant to be adapted as required
for a project.
SDLC used in an Organization is an orderly set of
activities conducted for each development project

In SDLC each phase has specific outcomes and

deliverables that feed important information to other
phases. At the end of each phase, a system
development project reaches a mile stone.
 Phases of the Systems
Development Life Cycle
• Systems Planning and Selection
– Two Main Activities
• Identification of need
• Investigation and determination of scope
• Systems Analysis
– Study of current procedures and information
systems
• Determine requirements
• Generate alternative designs
• Compare alternatives
• Recommend best alternative
 Systems Development Life Cycle
• System Design
– Logical Design
• Not tied to any specific hardware /sys.sw platform
• Concentrates on business aspects of the system

– Physical Design
• Technical specifications
• Decides which programming languages to be used
• Decides which HW platform, which OS to be used
• The final product of the design phase is presented in a
form such as diagram or written report ready to turned
over to programmers and other system builders for
construction.
Implementation and Operation
– Implementation
• Hardware and software installation
• Programming
• testing
• User Training
• Documentation

– Operation
• System changed to reflect changing conditions
• System obsolescence
• Detailed Notes on SDLC
• System planning and selection Phase:

• This phase has two important activities.

– The first activity involves in identifying the need for a new
or enhanced system. Information needs of the organization
are examined and system to meet these needs are
identified. Then the Analyst evaluates priorities and brings
out the needs into a written plan.
•
– During this phase, based on the feasibility study, the
management determines whether to take up the systems
development.

• Once decided to take up, a specific plan will be

produced for the proposed project. The plan
specifies the time and resources needed for its
execution of the project.
System Analysis Phase:

• In this phase, the systems analyst understands the

organizations existing procedures and then
suggest an information system as solution. This
Analysis phase has several sub phases,

– Involves determining the requirements of the system.

System analyst work with the users to determine what the
users want from the proposed system.
– Study the requirements and structure them.
– Generate alternative information system based solutions
– Compare these alternatives to determine which is best in
satisfying the requirement – considering the cost, labour
and technical levels the organization is willing to commit.
– Select a solution.
System Design Phase:
• During design phase the recommended solution is converted into
logical and then physical system specifications. The designing team
will design all aspects of the system such as input & output screens,
reports, databases and computer processes.

• Logical design is not tied to any specific hardware and systems

software platform. Conceptually, the system design could be
implemented on any hardware and system software. Logical design
concentrates on the business aspects of the system, that is how the
system will impact the functional units with in the organization.

• As the next stage, the logical design will be converted into physical
design. The team will design the various parts of the system to
perform physical operations necessary to facilitate data capture,
processing and information output. Then during this part, the analyst
decides on the programming languages and database system,
hardware platforms, and network environment. The final product of
the design phase is the physical system specification, presented in a
form such as diagram or written report, ready to be turned over to
programmers for construction.
Implementation Phase:

• Implementation and operation Phase, is the final phase and it

involves, implementation and operation.

• During this phase system specifications are turned out to a

working system, tested and put into use.

• Implementation includes coding, testing and installation.

– During coding, programmers write the programs that make up the
system.
– During testing, programmers and analysts test individual
programs and the entire system in order to find and correct errors.
– During installation, the new system becomes a part of the daily
activities of the organization. System implementation activities
also include initial user support such as the finalization of
documentation, training programs and ongoing user assistance.

•
Implementation Phase:

• Once the system has been installed, the analyst team establishes a
support plan. This is second part of the fourth phase of the SDLC is
operation.

– After installation, users sometime find problems with systems and often
request for improvements.

– During operation, programmers make changes that users ask for and
modify the system to reflect changing business conditions. These changes
are necessary to keep the system running and useful. The amount of time
and effort devoted to system enhancements during operation depends a
great deal on the performance of the previous phases of the life cycle.

• After few years, when the business environment changes, the system
is no longer performing as desired, and the costs of keeping a system
running become prohibitive, the systems will need a total change
over. These problems indicate that it is time to begin designing the
system’s requirement, there by completing the loop and starting the
life cycle over again.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x
Approaches to Development
 Approaches to Development

Spiral approach of system development.

• The circular nature of the life cycle diagram

illustrates how the end of the useful life of
one system leads to the beginning of another
project that will replace the existing system
altogether.
• This concept is clearly brought out with the
diagram shown next. Each of these phase
has specific outcomes and deliverables that
feed important information to other phases.
At the end of each phase, the systems
development reaches a mile stone.
 Approaches to Development

Prototyping
– Building a scaled-down working version but
working version of a desired system
– Advantages:
• Users are involved in design
• Captures requirements in concrete form
 Approaches to Development
• Rapid Application Development (RAD)
– Utilizes prototyping to delay producing system
design until after user requirements are clear

• Joint Application Design (JAD)

– Users, Managers and Analysts work
together for several days
– System requirements are reviewed
– Structured meetings
Managing an Information system Project
Reasons for Information systems projects
In this topic we will try to understand systems project and discuss
reasons that will initiate a systems project.

• Systems development typically starts with a systems request,

which is the formal way of asking for IT support.
• A systems request may be requesting for enhancement for an
existing systems, or may be to a solve a problem or to bring
out a totally new information systems.
– That is the primary initiatives for systems requests may be –
improved services to customers, better performance, more
information, efficient controls and reduced cost.

• Thus focus of the project management is to assure that

system development projects meet the request generated and
are delivered with in budget and time constraints.

• In the next few slides we will learn, what is a project, who will
be managing the project and, tools available to manage the
project.
Managing the Information Systems
Project
• Focus of project management
– To ensure that information system projects
• meet customer expectations
• Delivered in a timely manner
• Meet constraints and requirements

Project
Planned undertaking of related
activities to reach an objective
that has a beginning and an end
 Managing the Information Systems
Project
• Project Manager
– Systems Analyst responsible for
• Project initiation
• Planning
• Execution
• Closing down
– Requires diverse set of skills
• Management
• Leadership
• Technical
• Conflict management
• Customer relations
 Project Management Process
• Four Phases
– Initiation
– Planning
– Execution
– Closing down
 Initiating the Project

1. Establish project initiation team

2. Establish relationship with customer
3. Establish project initiation plan
4. Establish management procedures
5. Establish project management
environment and workbook
 Planning the Project

1. Describe project scope, alternatives

and feasibility
– Scope and Feasibility
• Understand the project
• What problem is addressed
• What results are to be achieved
• Measures of success
• Completion criteria
1. Divide the project into manageable tasks
• Work breakdown structure
• Gantt chart
2. Estimate resources and create a resource plan
3. Develop a preliminary schedule
• Utilize Gantt Charts and Network Diagrams
1. Develop a communication plan
– Outline communication processes among
customers, team members and management
– Types of reports
– Frequency of reports
1. Determine project standards and procedures
– Specify how deliverables are tested and
produced
2. Identify and assess risk
– Identify sources of risk
– Estimate consequences of risk
3. Create a preliminary budget
4. Develop a statement of work
– Describe what the project will deliver
5. Set a baseline project plan
– Estimate of project’s tasks and resources
 Executing the Project

1. Execute baseline project plan

– Acquire and assign resources
– Train new team members
– Keep project on schedule
2. Monitor project progress
– Adjust resources, budget and/or activities
1. Manage changes to baseline project
plan
– Slipped completion dates
– Changes in personnel
– New activities
2. Maintain project workbook
3. Communicate project status
 Closing Down the Project

1. Termination
– Types of termination
• Natural
– Requirements have been met
• Unnatural
– Project stopped
– Documentation
– Personnel Appraisal
 Closing Down the Project

1. Conduct post-project reviews

– Determine strengths and weaknesses of:
• Project deliverables
• Project management process
• Development process
2. Close customer contract
 Representing and Scheduling
Project Plans

• Gantt Charts
– Useful for depicting simple projects or parts
of large projects
– Show start and completion dates for
individual tasks
• Network Diagrams
– Show order of activities
Comparison of Gantt Charts and
Network Diagrams
• Gantt Charts • Network Diagrams
– Visually shows – Visually shows
duration of tasks dependencies
– Visually shows time between tasks
overlap between – Visually shows which
tasks tasks can be done in
– Visually shows slack parallel
time – Shows slack time by
data in rectangles
Using CASE tools for automation of
System Design
• CASE – computer-aided software engineering evolved as
automated tool to support the information system
development process.

• It helps to enact a single design philosophy within an

organization with many projects, systems and people.

• CASE can support most of the system development

activities and helps to provide an engineering-type
discipline to software development and to the automation
of the entire software life cycle process.

• In general CASE assists the system builders in managing

the complexities of information system projects and helps
assure that high-quality systems are constructed on time
and within budget.
• CASE can be defined as software tools that provide automated
support for some portion of the systems development process.

• Upper CASE tools are designed to support the information

planning and the project identification and selection, project
initiation and planning, analysis, and design phases of the
systems development life cycle.

• Lower CASE tools support the implementation and

maintenance phases of the systems development life cycle.

• Cross life-cycle CASE tools are designed to support activities

that occur across multiple phases of the systems development
life cycle.

• I-CASE refers to an automated systems development

environment that provides numerous tools to create diagrams,
forms, and reports; provides analysis, reporting, and code
generation facilities; and seamlessly shares and integrates
data across and between tools.
The general types of CASE tools are
Diagramming tools
Computer display and report generators
Visual Development Tool Visual development tools are a relatively
new and extremely powerful way to rapidly develop systems.
“breathing new life” into existing systems

Categories of such CASE products referred to as

Reverse Engineering refers to the process of creating

design specifications for a system or program
module from program code and data definitions.

Reengineering tools are similar to reverse

engineering tools but include analysis features that
can automatically, or interactively with System
Analyst, alter an existing system in an effort to
improve its quality or performance