Modelling and Systems Development Lecture 5 · • system request – Analysis ... activity based...
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Requirements Determination Creating a requirements definition and performing requirements analysis Modelling and Systems Development Lecture 5
Modelling and Systems Development Lecture 5 · • system request – Analysis ... activity based costing model a process as a ... his employment of his former job in order對 to
Note that the items mentioned under Analysis refer to the chapters of the book (5 – 8), which together make up the analysis phase. They do not refer to the steps in the analysis process, but to techniques which are used to produce the various models that together form the system proposal.
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The system proposal
• End product of analysis phase• Refinement of system request• Contains:
System proposal is presented to the approval committee, which decides if the project is to continue (earlier decisions were based on the system request and on the feasibility study). This usually happens at a system walkthrough. If approved, the design phase starts, and the elements of the system proposal are used as input to design activities that further refine them.
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What is a requirement?
• A statement of– what the system must do; or– what characteristic the system must have
• In analysis phase: predominantly business requirements
• In design phase: also system requirements– more technical, derived from decisions as
to how the system will be implemented
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Business requirements: from the perspective of the business and/or future users. System requirements: from the developer’s perspective; these tend to surface later, in the design phase. Example (taken from the book): online CD-shop. Business requirements are e.g. that the system supports - selecting CDs based on different criteria (artist, album, genre, …); - ordering selected CDs; - management and sales reports. A system requirement is e.g. that management and sales reports are only available to authorized users. Another system requirement could more precisely define the contents of the reports.
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Functional and nonfunctional
• Functional requirements: describe a process the system has to perform or information it needs to contain– Can be directly translated to functional,
structural, or behavioral models• Nonfunctional requirements: behavioral
properties– E.g. performance, usability– Influence decisions about architecture and
user interface
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Determining requirements• If done only by IT analysts,
may not address true business needs
• If done only by business experts, may not take advantage of new technology– Leads to automating existing
inefficiencies• Requirements analysis
techniques help users find out what they truly want– Critical analysis of the as-is
system– Develop a concept for the
to-be system
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Voorbeeld: denk aan een systeem waarbij de input bestaat uit schriftelijke evaluaties die handmatig worden verwerkt in een systeem waarna er o.m. verschillende soorten rapportages kunnen worden geproduceerd. Vanuit de IT kan dan worden gesuggereerd om de input-kant te automatiseren. Vanuit de business-kant kan echter het gevoel zijn dat er maar heel weinig gebeurt met de evaluaties in de huidige vorm. Het is dan beter om eerst het doel van de evaluaties onder de loep te nemen, vervolgens de evaluaties zodanig op te stellen dat ze zo goed mogelijk aan dit doel beantwoorden en pas daarna na te denken over geautomatiseerde ondersteuning.
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Requirements analysis techniques
• Three types:– Business Process Automation (BPA)– Business Process Improvement (BPI)– Business Process Reengineering (BPR)
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Business Process Automation
• BPA = No changes in business processes, but better support for them with the new system
• Activities:– Problem analysis– Root cause analysis
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BPA
• Problem analysis– Ask users/managers to identify problems
and how to solve them• Improves user’s efficiency• No/minor improvement in business value
• Root cause analysis– Prioritizing problems– Tracing symptoms to their root causes
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Voorbeelden BPA: Het eerder genoemde proces van handmatige verwerking van schriftelijke evaluaties vervangen door gebruikmaking van een geautomatiseerde scanner. Het afhandelen van een verzekeringsclaim, waarbij vroeger een handgeschreven claim-formulier werd overgetypt met carbon kopieën en van afdeling naar afdeling ging. �Dit zou je in eerste instantie met stand alone PC’s met tekstverwerkers op soortgelijke manier kunnen doen (dus het overtypen en fysiek bezorgen, maar nu van elektronische files, vroeger bijv. via floppies). �Vervolgens kun je via een netwerk de fysieke bezorging automatiseren. �Mogelijk kun je het proces nog verder versnellen door de file niet van afdeling naar afdeling te laten gaan, maar de behandeling deels parallel te laten uitvoeren (wie weet kon dat vroeger al door de carbon copies te verspreiden over de afdelingen, voor zover de work flow dit toeliet). Dit laatste zou – afhankelijk van wat vroeger werd gedaan – ook als BPI (zie verder) kunnen worden gekwalificeerd.
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Root Cause AnalysisSymptoms
ROOT CAUSES
Symptoms
• Identify symptoms• Trace each back to
its causes
See for a good book/roman:The Goal byE.M. Goldratt
In the most right branch, think in this case of the function of light: do you need it to see something which otherwise is hard to see, or do you use it as a tail light on a bicycle (to be seen). Then you could probably do with a sort of flashing light. Or maybe you could use a very focused light as with laser.
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Business Process Improvement
• BPI = evolutionary changes in business processes, and supporting them with the new system
BPI offers more to business processes than just support from computer systems. It focuses on real improvements in the process itself. Both duration analysis and activity based costing model a process as a network of activities, and try to estimate how much time these activities take resp. how much money they cost (and since time is money, they really are the same :-).
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Duration analysis
• Calculate time needed for each process step
• Calculate time needed for overall process
• Compare the two and develop process integration or parallelization
Would you like to wait?
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Meest bekende voorbeeld is en blijft waarschijnlijk de lopende band zoals geïntroduceerd door Henry Ford. Als grappig voorbeeld: één van de goeroes van BPR heeft zichzelf aangeleerd zich te scheren met twee handen tegelijk. Dus tegelijkertijd de linkerhelft en de rechterhelft van zijn gezicht. Of het organiseren van het proces door het terugbrengen van zoeken naar ‘resources’, zoals pen, papier, aantekeningen. Ander voorbeeld: de overgang van schrijven naar twee-vingerig typen (naar uiteindelijk blind typen): je gebruikt bij de eerste overgang een geautomatiseerde tool; bij de tweede overgang onderzoek je de efficiëntie waarmee het proces (typen) plaatsvindt; de efficiëntie stijgt door een hogere mate van parallellisme (2 vingers vs. 10).
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Example of (in)efficiency
Type of Business Process Flow Time
Theoretical F.T. Efficiency
Life Insurance New policy 72 hr. 7 min. 0,16%Commercial Bank Consumer loan 24 hr. 34 min. 2,36%Hospital Patient billing 10 days 3 hr. 3,75%Auto Manufacture financial closing 11 days 5 hr. 5,68%
Adapted from Blackburn, J.D. 1992
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Flow time is the time spent by so-called flow units (e.g. request for a new policy) within the business process. The theoretical flow time is the time spent by a resource (humans or machines) on a flow unit; in case of a consumer loan, this will consist of filling in some details and checking creditability. Almost always the process is split up over several different employees, or over different divisions or even over different companies. Of course, in the latter case, it’s not so easy to improve upon the actual flow time. The most infamous example of this type of efficiency is probably found in the world of pensions: when someone gets another job, he has the right to ask for the pensions value built up during his employment of his former job in order to transfer this value in his new pension (pensioenoverdracht). However, this can take a couple of years even though by law it should take no longer than 6 months.
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Activity-based costing
• Calculate cost of each process step• Consider both direct and indirect costs• Identify most costly steps and focus
improvement efforts on them
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Simpel voorbeeld is het vervangen van dure menselijke arbeid door goedkope machines (bijv. een telefoniste die je doorverbindt wordt vervangen door een bandje met een keuzemenu).
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Benchmarking
• The study of a competitor's product or business practices in order to improve the performance of one's own company
• Informal benchmarking– play the role of a customer of the competitor
• Formal benchmarking:– Establish formal relationship with other
organizations, usually in different industries
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Vergelijk de (vroegere) Lexus 420 van Toyota met de Mercedes 420: bijna kopie, wel flink wat goedkoper. Voorbeeld van een traditionele winkel vergeleken met een supermarkt: laat de klant zelf z’n boodschappen pakken. Afrekenen is nu een gespecialiseerde activiteit geworden bij kassa’s. En in een later stadium, laat de klant ook zelf de rekening bepalen door zelf te scannen (hoe controleer je of ze de zaak niet flessen, vergelijkbaar met het zelf afwegen op de groenteafdeling?). Of door i.p.v. te scannen te werken met goedkope chips die zelf een signaal uitzenden (RFID) waarmee je in één keer de totaalprijs kunt bepalen. Formal benchmarking: kijk eens naar vervoer (van personen e/o vracht) en naar de verschillen en overeenkomsten tussen de NS en KLM en probeer daaruit lering te trekken.
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Business Process Reengineering
• BPR = fundamental change in the business processes, and supporting them with the new system
Denk bij BPR bv. aan introductie van call centers: gespecialiseerd werk, waarbij het proces is opgesplitst in zgn. front-end (contacten met klanten) en back-end. Of een eerste hulp afdeling in een ziekenhuis.
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Outcome analysis
• What does the customer really want?– As a car lease company, do we offer cars
or mobility?
• Consider what the organization could do for the customer
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Technology analysis
• Analysts and managers list important and interesting technologies
• The group identifies how each might be applied to the business
• Example: a car manufacturer published its production schedule on an Internet-like network linked to its suppliers
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Activity elimination
• Identify what would happen if each organizational activity were eliminated
• Use “force-fit” to test all possibilities• Example: hotel reservation
– step 1: client calls & asks for rooms available– step 2: enter client’s data in the hotel’s pc
• Eliminate steps by using a suitable web site
Presenter
Presentation Notes
See http://www.compinfo-center.com/entsys/bpr.htm for much more info on BPR. And again look at call centers where for instance simple questions can be answered directly, while more complex are answered by a specialist, but take more time.
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Comparing BPA, BPI and BPR
BPA BPI BPR
Potential Business Value Low-Moderate Moderate High
Project Cost Low Low-Moderate High
Breadth of Analysis Narrow Narrow-Moderate Very Broad
In order to understand the As-Is system and to develop a concept for the To-Be system the analyst must gather a lot of information. Requirements gathering deals with this problem. Several techniques can be used to obtain that information and are described in the following slides. Note that the req. gathering techniques are usually applied hand-in-hand with the analysis techniques (which could be viewed as more strategic). However, keep in mind that in the literature there is no clear-cut difference between requirements analysis, requirements gathering and even requirements specification or requirements engineering are all considered more or less the same.
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Interviews
• Selecting interviewees
• Designing questions• Conducting the
interview• Follow-up
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Selecting interviewees
• Together with project sponsor:– make a list of people from different levels
in the organization– clearly state the purpose of each interview– make a logical schedule: start with
interviewing a senior manager to obtain strategic info, end with users to obtain the details
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Note that the schedule may be dynamic in the sense that you add more different people to it in order to get answers to questions turning up from earlier interviews.
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Designing questions
Four types of questions– closed-ended, e.g. “How many telephone
orders are received per day?”– open-ended, e.g. “What do you think about
the current system?”– Yes/No, e.g. “Do you ...?” Compare with:
“Why do you ...?”– probing, e.g. “Can you explain that in more
detail?”
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Closed-ended questions have (more or less) one answer, regardless of who is answering.
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Questioning strategy
How can order processing
be improved?
How can we reduce the number of times that customers return
items they have ordered?
How can we reduce the number of wrong product shippings?
High level: very general
Medium level:moderately specific
Low level: very specific
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Top down vs. bottom up: normally the strategy will be top down. However, after posing a very specific question, it may be appropriate to pose a more general question.
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Conducting the interview
• create the right atmosphere• record everything• separate facts from opinions• summarize key points• watch body language
Presenter
Presentation Notes
It may be difficult when you are part of the organization itself to get the right people to interview. Example: interviews at Strukton with a secretary. Problem they had was the magazine where they had an awful lot of paper materials of the projects they did (concerning buildings and the like) and which they were obliged (by law) to keep for at least 10 years. They wanted to have that available electronically.
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Follow-up
• Prepare asap the interview report
• Ask feed-back
INTERVIEW REPORT
Interview notes approved by: ____________
Person interviewed ______________Interviewer _______________Date _______________Primary Purpose:
Summary of Interview:
Open Items:
Detailed Notes:
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Joint Application Design (JAD)
• A structured process for information gathering
• Depending on project size: a group of 5 – 10 or 10 – 20 representing a broad mix of organizational levels in a specially prepared separate room
• A facilitator• A scribe
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JAD Meeting Room
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The JAD session• Preparation:
– of participants, by making the session’s goals clear– of questions, similar to an interview
• Use a formal agenda and ground rules:– respectful, only 1 person talks at once, etc.
• Facilitator:– stick to agenda– help group with jargon/analysis techniques– record input of the group (flip chart, whiteboard or
computer display)
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Refer to a project at the TUD. It turned out to be nearly impossible to explain the study advisors (the most important future users of the system) a class diagram.
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Managing problems in JAD sessions
• Noncontributors & dominant persons• True conflict vs. ‘violent agreement’• Side discussions (especially in larger
groups!)• Agenda merry-go-round
Presenter
Presentation Notes
The last point mentioned on the slide occurs when someone returns on the same issue every couple of minutes.
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Questionnaire
• Selecting participants– Use a representative sample
• Designing the questionnaire– Develop good questions facilitating analysis
afterwards• Administering the questionnaire
– Take care to get good response rate• Follow-up
– Send results to participants
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Good questionnaire designBegin with non-threatening and interesting questions
Group items into logically coherent sections
Do not put important items at the very end of the questionnaire
Do not crowd a page with too many items
Avoid abbreviations
Avoid biased or suggestive items or terms
Number questions to avoid confusion
Pretest the questionnaire to identify confusing questions
Provide anonymity to respondents
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Document analysis
• To understand the As-Is system• Typical documents:
– Process and Data models (probably non-OO!)
– Forms– Reports
• Look for user additions to forms• Look for unused form elements
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Selecting theappropriate techniques
Interviews JAD Question-naires
DocumentAnalysis
Type of info As-Is, To-Be Improv.
As-Is, To-Be Improv.
As-Is Improv. As-Is
Depth of info High High Medium LowBreadth of info Low Medium High HighIntegration of info Low High Low LowUser involvement Medium High Low LowCost Medium Low-Medium Low Low
