INFORMATION GATHERING

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IMS9001 - Systems Analysis and Design

• Topic 2
• INFORMATION GATHERING
• FOR INFORMATION
• SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT

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Systems analysis

• Systems analysis
• to determine what information and processing
  services are required to support selected
  objectives and functions of an information system
• Systems analysis involves
• Requirements determination/acquisition/capture
• Requirements modelling/structuring/specification
• Deliverable is the requirements specification

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Data gathering in systems development systems
analysis

• Data gathering is a major task of systems
  analysis.Systems analysis involves
• Understanding and describing how the current
  system functions
• Determining what users would like their new
  system to do (requirements)
• Need to collect information
• current and future situations, problems,
  opportunities, constraints

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Data gathering

• What data?
• Sources of data?
• What data gathering methods?
• What strategy for gathering data is needed?
• How will the data gathered be analysed?

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What data to gather?

• The business or organisation
• The business environment
• The systems environment
• The users of the system
• The system current and future
• Constraints e.g. cost, technical,

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What data to gather?

• The business or organisation
• The nature of the business and its market and
  business environment
• Business goals and objectives that drive what and
  how work is done
• Organisational structure major functions,
  departments etc
• Major business subsystems and how they interact
• Business policies and guidelines

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What data to gather?

• Users of the system
• Roles and responsibilities
• Reporting structures
• Job specifications and actual tasks performed
• Information needed to do their jobs
• Formal and informal communication and workflow
  channels

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What data to gather?

• The existing system
• Tasks and workflow functions, processes,
  sequence of processes, methods and procedures,
  inputs, outputs
• The data (definition, volumes, size etc.)
• Interactions with other systems
• Work volumes and processing cycles
• Performance standards and criteria
• Control mechanisms e.g security, accuracy
• Problems e.g. efficiency, information

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What data to gather?

• The new system
• System requirement a need or desire to be met by
  a proposed system
• Both functional requirements (processes and
  functionality) and
• non-functional requirements (security,
  performance, service etc.)
• Constraints e.g. existing technology
• Interactions with other systems
• Relationship to existing system

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Sources of data

• Users and other stakeholders
• Documents about the system
• Documents about the organisation
• Documents and data used within the existing
  system
• Transactions within existing system
• External sources

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Sources of data

• Users
• System sponsor/owner overall project objectives
• Managers high level, broad view of existing
  system and requirements
• End-users detailed, operational level view of
  existing system and requirements
• Technical staff technology capaabilities,
  limitations etc.
• External stakeholders e.g. customers

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Sources of data

• Documents about the system and organisation
• Organisation charts
• Policy manuals
• Business reports financial, annual etc.
• Jobs, procedure, operations manuals
• Training manuals
• Existing system documentation
• Internal reports relating to the system

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Sources of data

• Documents and data used within the existing
  system
• Files, databases, programs, forms, reports
• Informal Memos, bulletin boards, files
• External sources
• Other organisations systems
• Hardware software vendors
• Business industry publications

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What data gathering methods?

• Interviews
• Questionnaires
• Observation
• Sampling documents and transactions
• Research and site visits

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Interviews

• Generally the most important and widely-used
  method for data gathering
• May be formal/structured (specific questions) or
  informal/unstructured (general goal or purpose)
• Need an interview strategy for the entire
  interviewing process
• Need an interview plan or guide for each interview

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The interview strategy

• Identify the users to interview
• Do this after you have an initial understanding
  of the organisation and system
• Establish general objectives and guidelines for
  the entire interviewing process
• e.g. information to be obtained, sources,
  formats, documenting, analysis
• Ensure all key people are included

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The interview strategy

• Determine the sequence of interviews
• E.g. management first
• broad overview of system operations
• gain support and co-operation
• help to identify who to interview next
• Then system users
• obtain information about detailed operations
• Co-ordinate the interviewing process
• Compare results, select follow ups etc.

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The interview strategy

• Need individual interview plans
• Initial interviews to meet users
• Fact gathering interviews
• Follow up interviews
• Interview plans
• Decide on interview structure
• Determine content of questions
• Decide on question types

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Interviews

• Need to consider
• Who has the information you need?
• Where to conduct the interview?
• When is the best time to interview?
• How should the interview progress?

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The individual interview

• Before the interview
• Arrange time and place, necessary materials,
  inform interviewee of interview purpose
• Conduct the interview
• After the interview
• Write an interview report
• Review this with the interviewee at a follow up
  interview

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The interview structure

• Preliminaries
• Introduction, purpose, environment and procedures
  e.g. permission to tape
• Body
• Define what you already believe to be true and
  confirm this, explore points issues further,
  new areas (questions)
• Conclusion
• Summarise and confirm your findings
• Schedule a follow up interview

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Interviews types of questions

• Closed how many transactions per day?
• Limits available responses
• Open tell me about ..
• Leaves options open for interviewee
• Probe tell me more about the problem with the
  .
• To clarify and expand
• Mirror From what you said, I understand that.
• To confirm what was said etc.

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Interviews types of questions

• Avoid long, complex, or double-barrelled
  questions
• what decisions are made during this process and
  how do you make them?
• Avoid leading questions
• you dont need the customer number on this
  report, do you?
• Avoid loaded questions
• when did you first discover the mistake?
• i.e. how long have you known and done nothing?

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Interviews advantages

• obtain extensive, complex detailed information
• get insights and opinions
• discover informal procedures
• flexible e.g. explore issues further or new
  issues
• establish rapport with interviewee and understand
  their attitudes
• reveal the politics of the system environment
• information is revealed both by the spoken word
  and by the interviewees body language
• guaranteed response

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Interviews Disadvantages

• Time-consuming
• Costly
• Danger of bias
• More difficult to tabulate and analyse results
  e.g. to obtain an overall picture
• Success in interviewing depends on the
  inter-personal skills of the interviewer

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Questionnaires

• A structured method of data gathering in which
  written questions/comments are provided for the
  participants to respond to in written form
• The questionnaire can take many forms - write
  comments/ select from a list of possible
  responses/ mark on a scale
• May permit either quantitative or qualitative
  data (mark out of 10/grade from good to bad)
• Usually involves no direct contact between data
  gatherer and respondents

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Questionnaires

• Useful when small amounts of data are required
  from a large number of people
• For geographically dispersed respondents
• Types of questions
• Open-ended (free format)
• Fill-in-the-blank
• Multiple choice
• Rating
• Ranking

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Designing questionnaires

• What facts and opinions to be collected
• Who to sample and sample size
• Types of questions and wording (precise,
  accurate, unambiguous)
• How to administer e.g. paper, online, mail out
  etc.
• Format and layout (grouping, crosschecks etc.)
• Test on small sample of respondents
• How completed questionnaires will be returned and
  collated
• How analysis of the data will be carried out

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Questionnaires

• Useful for
• Obtaining simple opinions, facts
• Quantifying what was found in interviews
• Identifying issues before interviewing
• Determining extent of problems
• Not useful for detailed or complex information or
  exploring issues in depth
• Can supplement other methods

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Questionnaires advantages

• most economical method for gathering data from
  large numbers of people
• quick and easy to administer
• results can be tabulated rapidly and analysed
  readily
• allow respondents to be anonymous
• gives respondents time to reflect on answers
• respondents complete in their own time

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Questionnaires disadvantages

• difficult to construct effective questionnaires
• specific and limited amounts of information
• possible low return rates
• possible bias and misinterpretation
• cannot probe issues further (inflexible)
• cannot clarify vague or incomplete answers
• lack non-verbal communication

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Observation

• observing the actual processes of a system
• need to prepare beforehand, and report on data
  collected
• gain first hand knowledge of current systems
  operations
• clarify other information collected
• understand complex procedures
• inexpensive
• behaviour distortions may affect reliability
• unrepresentative samples affect reliability

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Sampling of documents and transactions

• Sampling collecting a representative sample of
  documents, forms, transactions
• Useful for specific information e.g. transaction
  volumes and types, file sizes
• Useful where large volumes exist
• Information about existing system operations
• Representative samples must be selected
• determine sample size, appropriate range, avoid
  bias

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Research and site visits

• Most problems not unique learn from experiences
  of other organisations
• Professional societies can provide contacts for
  site visits
• Computer trade journals and magazines and the
  internet can be sources for research into the
  problem/s e.g. do appropriate software packages
  exist?

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Other data gathering methods

• Other modern methods used
• Discovery prototyping
• JAD (Joint Application Development) sessions
• Focus groups

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Discovery prototyping

• Build a small-scale working model of the users
  requirements to discover or verify them
• Develop the prototype quickly, get feedback from
  the users to add/change requirements
• Useful for poorly understand parts/aspects of the
  system
• Throw away prototypes technology of prototype vs
  target technology platform
• Prototyping is a process of discovery for users
  and developers

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Discovery prototyping

• Advantages
• Improved understanding of new system
• Better requirements definition
• May speed up requirements process
• Disadvantages
• Users may develop unrealistic expectations
• Prototype may inhibit further exploration
• Non-functional requirements often ignored

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JAD sessions

• Often called JRP (Joint Requirements Planning)
  sessions when used for requirements
• Highly structured group meeting held in
  special-purpose rooms involving system users,
  system owners and system developers who meet
  intensively for a period of time to analyse
  problems and define requirements
• An effective JAD session requires extensive
  planning
• selecting location, selecting participants,
  preparing an agenda

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JAD sessions participants

• Project sponsor or champion
• top management with authority
• full support for the project
• encourages active participation
• JAD leader/ facilitator
• good communicator and negotiator
• good business and organisational knowledge
• impartial

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JAD sessions participants

• Business users and managers - clear understanding
  of the business
• IS developers - not active participants,
  primarily there to learn
• Scribe - takes notes, need to be published and
  disseminated quickly

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JAD sessions

• actively involves users
• improved consensus and resolution of
  conflicts/misunderstandings
• reduces overall development time
• is very expensive in
• location costs
• participants time

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Focus groups

• an intensive group meeting held to get further
  information about a particular aspect of the
  business
• sometimes used as a follow-up to other data
  gathering methods e.g. to explore issues in more
  detail
• need a facilitator and appropriate users as
  participants

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A data gathering strategy

• Data gathering must be carefully planned in order
  to make the most of the time and resources
  available
• Information sources
• Data gathering methods
• Recording and documentation methods
• Data analysis methods
• Procedures for reviewing results with management
  and users

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A data gathering strategy

• E.g. a top down approach
• Initial interviews with management to determine
  major system activities and data
• Document and verify this
• Expand major system component descriptions into
  detailed descriptions
• Interview operational users, sampling,
  questionnaires, observation etc
• Document and verify this
• Repeat these last two steps as necessary
• Review findings with management

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A data gathering strategy

• Consider costs allow for time and resources
  required for initial and ongoing information
  gathering
• Use the least expensive methods first
• Plan how to check the validity of data
• Cross checking between groups, methods
• Evaluate data for inconsistencies
• Ask further questions
• Plan documentation of data e.g. records of
  interviews etc. data dictionary, system models

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Data gathering in practice

• Completeness?
• Accuracy?
• Objectivity?
• Biases?
• Stability?
• Representative?
• Finished?

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References

• HOFFER, J.A., GEORGE, J.F. and VALACICH (2005)
  Modern Systems Analysis and Design, (4th
  edition), Pearson Education Inc., Upper Saddle
  River, New Jersey, USA. Chapters 5,6
• WHITTEN, J.L., BENTLEY, L.D. and DITTMAN, K.C.
  (2001) 5th ed., Systems Analysis and Design
  Methods, Irwin/McGraw-HilI, New York, NY.
  Chapter 6
• DWYER, J. (1997) The Business Communication
  Handbook (4th edition) Prentice-Hall, New York,
  N.Y. Chapter 5