Ch. 10 - Developing Business Systems

Last night, we learned about the Systems Development Cycle (SDLC). The SDLC is the most common approach to Systems Analysis and Design (SA & D) and has five phases.

• Phase I. Systems Investigation Stage: must answer two questions - (1) is this system desirable? (2) is it feasible to develop? Feasibility also has five different categories: operational, economic, technical, human factors and legal/political. If the system fulfills each category and both questions, it is possible to move on to:
• Phase II. Systems Analysis: an in-depth study of end user information needs and preferences that produces functional requirements that are used as the basis for the design of a new information system. This phase has three parts: organizational analysis, logical analysis and functional requirements analysis & determination.
• Phase III. Systems Design: modify the logical model until it represents a blueprint for what the new system will do. There are three major deliverables: user interface design, data design, and process design.
• Prototyping is the rapid development and testing of working models used in design phase.

We are going to learn about the last two phases next week. I did not find this section difficult to understand, although I think it will be easier to connect the dots once we finish learning about all of the phases.