Discussion Question 1
System Requirements Determination
For requirements determination, the traditional sources of information about a system include interviews, questionnaires, observation, and procedures, forms, and other useful documents. Describe one such tool that you would use, including its purpose, advantages and disadvantages. Justify why such tool would be ideal for your requirements determination. Provide justifications and citations for your responses.
Assignment 1:
Requirements Determination Presentation
Post your PowerPoint - Project planning in Waypoint.
Refer to the business information system that you proposed in week 1 PowerPoint presentation. In this week's presentation, describe the approaches you would take to determine requirements of the proposed information system for the business organization.
The format of your PowerPoint presentation should be:
Slide 1: Title of PowerPoint, Course, Instructor, Date Submitted, Student Name
Slides 2-4: Describe what specific approaches you would take to determine requirements of the proposed information system for the business organization. Your responses should include some specific strategies for extracting the required information, such as the individuals and documents that would provide the information you need.
Slides 5-7: In addition to interviews and observations, what are the alternate approaches for requirement determination? Describe each. Would any alternative approaches be appropriate for requirements determination for the proposed business system? Defend your decisions using examples and citations.
Slides 8-9: Briefly describe how prototyping can be used in the proposed business information system to enhance data and requirements gathering process. Again, please include some specific examples.
Slide 10: Reference List
Requirements Determination Presentation
Must have a minimum of 8 slides inclusive of speaker notes on each slide (not including title and references page slide) and formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.
Must include a separate title page with the following:
Title of Power Point
Student's name
Course name and number
Instructor's name
Date submitted
Must use at least three scholarly sources in addition to the course text.
The Scholarly, Peer Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources table offers additional guidance on appropriate source types. If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, please contact your instructor. Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source for a particular assignment.
Must document all sources in APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.
Must include a separate references slide that is formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.
Carefully review the Grading Rubric for the criteria that will be used to evaluate your assignment.
Assignment 2
Written Assignment: Requirements Determination
Consider your current organization that you are working for or the one you have worked for in the past. Suppose you are charged with a systems analysis project within your department and you decide to use the traditional methods of requirements gathering, in a 900 word (three page) APA paper (excluding title and reference pages), discuss:
What steps would you follow for requirements gathering?
Generally some of the problems with information systems analysis and design that arise later can be traced back to inadequate work during requirements determination phase. What steps would you take to avoid such issues?
Discuss how a joint application design (JAD) can be used to help determine system requirements? Is using JAD for this process beneficial? Discuss briefly.
In addition to the requirements above, your paper:
Must be 900 words (3 pages) double-spaced and use 12 point font.
Must be formatted according to APA style.
Must reference one scholarly resource in addition to the textbook.
Must include a list of references written in APA format.
Discussion Question 2
Project Selection Criteria
Describe some of the important criteria that you would use in selecting a project for analysis and design. In your view, what are the three most important criteria? Provide justifications as to why those are important and include appropriate citations for your responses.
Assignment 3
Project Planning
Post your PowerPoint - Project planning in Waypoint.
Refer to the business information system proposed in week 1 power point presentation. Based on the requirements determined in the previous week, develop a project plan for the proposed business system along with an economic feasibility analysis for the proposed system. Please use Figure 4-12 in the text book to format your project plan. Additionally, develop a project scope statement, as described in Figure 4-13 of the text. Note: You don't have to create these separately, include each section of the business plan and scope statement within your presentation.
The format of your PowerPoint presentation should be:
Slide 1: Title of PowerPoint, Course, Instructor, Date Submitted, Student Name
Slides 2-4: Consider the requirements you determined in the previous week, list and describe first two sections of the project plan for the proposed business information system (Use Fig. 4-12 in the text as a guide): Introduction (Project overview and recommendation) and System Description (alternatives and System Description).
Slides 5-7: Describe first two sections of the project plan for the proposed business information system (Use Fig. 4-12 in the text as a guide): Feasibility Assessment and Management Issues. Describe the feasibility of the proposed business information system in terms of schedule and perform a cost-benefit analysis. What type of cost-benefit analysis method you selected and why? Additionally, address any other feasibility concerns that you may have.
Slides 8-9: Create a project scope statement for the proposed business information system, see Chapter 4 (Fig. 4-13) for example. Discuss the proposed schedule for this business information system project and what will be the deliverables of the project.
Slide 10: Reference List
Project Planning PowerPoint
Must have a minimum of 8 slides inclusive of speaker notes on each slide (not including title and references page slide) and formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.
Must include a separate title page with the following:
Title of Power Point
Student's name
Course name and number
Instructor's name
Date submitted
Must use at least three scholarly sources in addition to the course text.
The Scholarly, Peer Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources table offers additional guidance on appropriate source types. If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, please contact your instructor. Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source for a particular assignment.
Must document all sources in APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.
Must include a separate references slide that is formatted according to APA style.
Discussion Question 3
Data Flow and Process Modeling
What is the purpose of using data flow diagramming in analysis phase? How would you analyze and depict the workings of a process? List at least three advantages of using data flow diagramming in the analysis phase. Are there any disadvantages? Provide some examples from your work and/or personal life in your responses.
Assignment 4
Project Analysis
Refer to the business information system proposed in week 1 power point presentation. In this presentation, starting with the context diagram, draw additional data flow diagrams (DFDs) that are necessary to represent all of the details of the proposed system.
The format of your PowerPoint presentation should be:
Slide 1: Title of PowerPoint, Course, Instructor, Date Submitted, Student Name
Slides 2-4: Refer to the business information system proposed in week 1 power point presentation. Starting with the context diagram, draw additional data flow diagrams (DFDs) that are necessary to represent all of the details of the proposed system (draw a level-0 and at least one level-1 diagram). These would be logical DFDs, those should be independent of technology that can be used to support the proposed system. Please see Figures 6-5, 6-6 and 6-8 that describe a set of diagrams for a restaurant.
Slides 5-7: Identify some of the entities in the proposed system scenario. For each entity, identify its set of associated attributes. Specify identifiers for each entity. Based on your assumptions regarding the proposed system, prepare an entity-relationship diagram. Be sure to specify the cardinalities for each relationship. See Figures 7-5, 7-6 and 7-8 in the text for an illustration of such diagramming.
Slides 8-9: It is recommended to consider alternatives for the initial choices, for example, is it necessary to use a database to store all data, or can another technology be used. Briefly describe how you would generate alternate design strategies for your proposed system. Additionally, please include some specific examples. Please see pp. 214-219 in the text.
Slide 10: Reference List
Project Analysis PowerPoint
Must have a minimum of 8 slides inclusive of speaker notes on each slide (not including title and references page slide) and formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.
Must include a separate title page with the following:
Title of Power Point
Student's name
Course name and number
Instructor's name
Date submitted
Must use at least three scholarly sources in addition to the course text.
The Scholarly, Peer Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources table offers additional guidance on appropriate source types. If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, please contact your instructor. Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source for a particular assignment.
Must document all sources in APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.
Must include a separate references slide that is formatted according to APA style.
Discussion Question 4
System Maintenance
What are the different types of business information system maintenance and what is the purpose of such maintenance? What strategies would you use to ensure that the planned system meets customer requirements while controlling the costs? Provide justifications and citations for your responses.
Assignment 5
Project Documentation
Refer to the business information system proposed in week 1 power point presentation. In this presentation, you would include sample data-entry screens for the proposed system using the data-entry guidelines provided in the text, process for creating user documentation and guidelines how to ensure that the proposed business information meets the requirements.
The format of your PowerPoint presentation should be:
Slide 1: Title of PowerPoint, Course, Instructor, Date Submitted, Student Name
Slides 2-4: Refer to the business information system proposed in week 1 power point presentation. Design any two sample data-entry screens for the proposed system using the data-entry guidelines provided in the text. Support your design with arguments for each of the design choices you made. See Figures 8-2, 8-3 and 8-4 for examples to use in the design.
Slides 5-7: For the proposed business information system, you have the task of organizing the user documentation, and you would probably not be able to create all of the content by yourself. Describe resources you can partner with to organize and document the user documentation.
Slides 8-9: Briefly describe the measures you would take to ensure that the business solution meets the stakeholders' requirements, who would perform and who would be involved in review of your proposed system. Please include some specific examples.
Slide 10: Reference List
Project Documentation PowerPoint
Must have a minimum of 8 slides inclusive of speaker notes on each slide (not including title and references page slide) and formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.
Must include a separate title page with the following:
Title of Power Point
Student's name
Course name and number
Instructor's name
Date submitted
Must use at least three scholarly sources in addition to the course text.
The Scholarly, Peer Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources table offers additional guidance on appropriate source types. If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, please contact your instructor. Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source for a particular assignment.
Must document all sources in APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.
Must include a separate references slide that is formatted according to APA style.
Final Assignment
System Analysis and Design
You have to select a topic to perform research, plan and design a business information system during the first week of this course. Please refer to Week One of this Course Guide for some suggested example of this topic.
Focus of the Final Paper
Construct a system analysis paper based on your weekly presentations. Please note this is an individual paper. The paper should represent the research and recommendations you have performed for the proposed business information system over the previous four weeks in a cohesive format. Your paper should demonstrate critical thought. The paper should be 2400 to 3000 words, excluding the title, diagrams, and reference pages. The structure of the paper should be as follows:
Cover Page
Title of paper
Student's name
Course name and number
Instructor's name
Date submitted
Introduction
The introduction should familiarize the reader with the proposed business information system and outline the major points that you will cover in the paper. It should include your thesis statement. If you need assistance with writing a thesis statement, visit the Ashford Writing Center's website for help.
Body
Make the suggested changes to the PowerPoint assignments for Weeks One through Four based on the constructive feedback provided by your instructor. Do not simply copy and paste your previous assignments into your final paper. Read your writing and improve upon what you have already written to connect everything learned in this class. Be sure that your paper addresses the following points.
System Overview
Provide a brief overview of the proposed business information system and describe
What it would accomplish for the business organization
Who are the stakeholders in the proposed business information system
What are the business information system requirements
How the requirements are elicited, analyzed, documented, reviewed and confirmed
How would the business analyst ensure the business information system or solution satisfied all stakeholder requirements.
Explain which of the potential approaches to system development (computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tools, joint application design (JAD), rapid application development (RAD), participatory design (PD), or the use of Agile Methodologies should be considered for the proposed business information system design. Support your explanation with examples from your own experiences and/or from any scholarly journal citations.
Briefly discuss what each stage of the Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) approach would accomplish in your proposed business information system.
Requirements Determination
Discuss the types of documents that would be useful to analyze for requirements gathering purposes and why they would be important. Additionally, discuss which documents would be possible to obtain as well as which ones would be difficult to obtain (think about the records and knowledge keeping within the organization, some information resides in specific documents while some is scattered throughout the organization).
Create a questionnaire that includes at least ten well-written questions that you can use for information gathering.
Explain your rationale for the style in which you wrote the questions.
Identify which modern requirements determination methods (Joint Application Design and/or Prototyping) would be appropriate for this business information system and explain why you think they would be suitable.
Using your proposed business information system scenario, discuss at least one example of each of the nine system characteristics:
What are the Components and Interrelated Components in the proposed business information system,
What would be the Boundary of the proposed business information system,
What is the Purpose of the proposed business information system,
What is the Environment of the proposed business information system,
What are the Interfaces of the proposed business information system,
What are the Constraints of the proposed business information system, and
What are the Inputs and Outputs to the proposed business information system
Scope and Feasibility
Explain the proposed business information system's scope. Please refer to Table 4-3 in the text
Develop a business information system plan. Please refer to Table 4-4 in the text.
Assess the business information system's feasibility from the system analyst's perspective by using the six categories of feasibility factors (economic, operational, technical, schedule, legal and contractual, and political feasibility) outlined in the text (pp. 90-98)
Develop a Project Scope Statement for the proposed business information system, refer to Figure 4-12 in the text. Include the following categories in the statement:
General Project Information,
Problem/Opportunity Statement,
Project Objectives,
Project Description,
Business Benefits,
Project Deliverables, and
Estimated Project Duration.
Diagrams
Develop a context-level data-flow diagram for the proposed system (use Fig. 6-5 in the text as a guide). You can use Microsoft PowerPoint to develop the data flow diagrams.
Develop a level-0 diagram for the proposed system (use Fig. 6-6 in the text as a guide).
Using the level-0 diagram that you previously constructed, select one of the level-0 processes and prepare a level-1 diagram (use Fig. 6-8 in the text as a guide).
Data Modeling
For the proposed business information system and the data flow diagrams developed previously, consider potential customer transactions. Provide a list of all the entities (like supplier, customer, etc.) for which system will need to store information.
Identify a set of attributes for each entity listed above (like customer name, supplier phone). See pp. 197-199 in the text.
Specify an identifier (like employee ID, supplier phone, etc.) for each entity and explain the rules you applied when you selected the identifier. See pp. 199-201 in the text.
Develop an entity-relationship diagram for entity relationships. Be sure to specify the cardinalities for each relationship (use Fig. 7-10 in the text as a guide). Remember, cardinality of a relationship is the number of instances of an entity that can be associated with each instance of another entity.
User Training and Maintenance
For a business analyst, it is also important to plan for training of all users of the system and develop a maintenance plan for the life of the system (use Table 10-5, and 10-6 in the text as a guide). Provide a brief suggested plan for user training.
For the proposed business information system, provide a brief plan for maintenance of the system (use Table 10-7 in the text as a guide).
To ensure readability, supply headings for each section of the body.
Conclusion
In your conclusion, restate your thesis statement. Review your conclusions. Include any ideas you have about the business information system that you did not already discuss.
References
Provide an APA-formatted reference list. In addition to the text, cite at least four additional scholarly references from the Ashford library to support your discussion.
The Final Paper
Must be 2400 to 3000 words (8 to 10 double-spaced pages) in length (not including title, diagrams, and references pages). Format the paper according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.
Must include a separate title page with the following:
Title of paper
Student's name
Course name and number
Instructor's name
Date submitted
Must use at least three scholarly sources in addition to the course text.
The Scholarly, Peer Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources table offers additional guidance on appropriate source types. If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, please contact your instructor. Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source for a particular assignment.
Must document all sources in APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.
Must include a separate references page that is formatted according to APA style.
Text Book:
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