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ITM 309

Systems Development

Dr. Frederick Rodammer Michigan State University

Eli Broad College of BusinessRodammer@bus.msu.edu

November 24, 2008

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Today’s Learning Objectives

• Identify the business benefits and business challenges associated with systems development

• Describe the seven phases of the systems development life cycle

• Discuss and Understand the H-P Case

• Understand Use of Prototyping

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OPENING CASE Hewlett Packard

• Which of the seven phases of the systems development life cycle is most important to HP?

• Explain what might happen if HP used the waterfall methodology to develop its ERP system

• Identify the primary reasons for software project failure and explain which ones HP

experienced on its ERP build

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DEPLOYING SOFTWARE

• Software that is built correctly can transform as the organization and its business transforms

• Software that effectively meets employee needs will help an organization become more productive and enhance decision making

• Software that does not meet employee needs may have a damaging effect on productivity and can even cause a business to fail

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SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT

• As organizations’ reliance on software grows, so do the business-related consequences of software successes and failures including:– Increase or decrease revenue– Repair or damage to brand reputation– Prevent or incur liabilities– Increase or decrease productivity

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SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE (SDLC)

• Systems development life cycle (SDLC) – the overall process for developing information systems from planning and analysis through implementation and maintenance

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SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE (SDLC)

1. Planning phase – involves establishing a high-level plan of the intended project and determining project goals

2. Analysis phase – involves analyzing end-user business requirements and refining project goals into defined functions and operations of the intended system

• Business requirement – detailed set of business requests that the system must meet in order to be successful

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SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE (SDLC)

3. Design phase – involves describing the desired features and operations of the system including screen layouts, business rules, process diagrams, pseudo code, and other documentation

4. Development phase – involves taking all of the detailed design documents from the design phase and transforming them into the actual system

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SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE (SDLC)

5. Testing phase – involves bringing all the project pieces together into a special testing environment to test for errors, bugs, and interoperability and verify that the system meets all of the business requirements defined in the analysis phase

6. Implementation phase – involves placing the system into production so users can begin to perform actual business operations with the system

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SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE (SDLC)

7. Maintenance phase – involves performing changes, corrections, additions, and upgrades to ensure the system continues to meet the business goals

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Waterfall Methodology

• Waterfall methodology – a sequential, activity-based process in which each phase in the SDLC is performed sequentially from planning through implementation and maintenance

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Systems Development Challenges

• Systems development is difficult and risky.

• Many projects are never finished.

• Some projects finish 200 or 300 percent over budget.

• Some projects finish on schedule and within budget but do not meet their goals.

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SOFTWARE PROBLEMS ARE BUSINESS PROBLEMS

• Primary reasons for project failure include

– Unclear or missing business requirements– Skipping SDLC phases– Failure to manage project scope

• Scope creep – occurs when the scope increases

• Feature creep – occurs when extra features are added

– Failure to manage project plan– Changing technology

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SOFTWARE PROBLEMS ARE BUSINESS PROBLEMS

• Find errors early: the later in the SDLC an error is found - the more expensive it is to fix

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Problems with the SDLC

• Systems development seldom works so smooth.

• There is sometimes a need to crawl back up the waterfall.

• Difficulty of documenting requirements in a usable way.

• Scheduling and budgeting is difficult especially for large projects with large SDLC phases.

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Rapid Application Development Methodology (RAD)

• Rapid application development methodology (RAD) – emphasizes extensive user involvement in the rapid and evolutionary construction of working prototypes of a system to accelerate the systems development process

• The prototype is an essential part of the analysis phase when using a RAD methodology

– Prototype – a smaller-scale representation or working model of the users’ requirements or a proposed design for an information system

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Prototyping

• The rapid development and testing of working models of new applications in an interactive, iterative process.

• Sometimes called rapid application design (RAD).

• Simplifies and accelerates systems design.

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The Prototyping Process

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ITM 309 Homework

• Keep Up: Baltzan Readings and Slides