Preliminary Investigation

1. What is the starting point of the project ?

 
System Request.
 
2. What are the main reasons/proponents for a system request ?
 
 Improved services to the customers (AVA and Nestle Water delivery system example)
 Better performance (A faster automated postal system will perform much better than the
existing manual postal system)
 More information (Police identification system that identified the individual based on the
finger prints, will now have to incorporate the DNA signature as well.)
 Stronger control (A new virus/worm/trojan horse requires newer and stronger security
controls.)
 Reduced cost. (An old Alpha-Dec processor based Mainframe may be very expensive to
maintain, whereas the newer Pentium-4, is cheaper and perfoms equally good)

 
3. What are the factors that affect a System Project ?
 
 User Requests

After all its the end-user who will have to use the system. So his/her likings should be
given top priority

 Top Management Directives

Top management is usually the one's who will evaluate every phase of the project. So
they are the ones who will have a marked effect on how the system must proceed

 Existing System

The quality (good or bad) of the existing system will affect the development of the new
system.

 Information Technology Department

The IT department acts as contact between the system developer(System analyst or

his/her company) and the System Requester(the requesting company). department
usually has a good understanding of the technical complexities of the existing system and
the proposed system. They will usually have the final say in approving/disapproving the
 reports/documents that you, as a system analyst, will make.

 The Economy

Company's economical situation is useful in determining the scalability and load

handling capabilities of the proposed system. A company which is predicting a 100%
growth will want a system that can handle a load increase of this huge magnitude.

 Technology

The current technological trends reflect heavily on the implementation and development
of the system. Consider the Shopping Mall example that we discussed during the first
two lectures. A Large Shopping Mall like HKB, or TessMart will want a system that will
input data both manually and from a bar-code reader. Similarly as Retina scanners
become cheaper, we may have to develop systems that: rather than asking for user's
login-password, will take in the users Retina scan to validate the user. Such technological
developments dictate how the System is developed.

 Government

Government's policies have a marked effect on a System. A government may require the
payroll department of a company to submit print-outs of all the salary slips, or they may
require the salary-slips to be submitted to them in form of an Excel sheet. Based on these
requirements you will have to change your system accordingly.

 Software and Hardware Vendors

Software and Hardware go hand-in-hand. A Change in one may necessitate the change in
the other. A Software developed for Windows-2000 will have to be run on a powerful
Pentium-2 or better machine. Being a system analyst it is your job to ensure the
compatibility of both SW and HW

 Competitors

A System must take inspirations/lessons from the competitors. Making a new system that
does not match what the competition is offering to their customer will result in a disaster.
It is the Systems Analyst's job to make sure that the new system must be at least equally
capable, if not better than the competitors system. If we were to make Habib Bank's
CreditCard system, we will have to thoroughly study the Citibank's CreditCard System,
and ensure that our system is at a minimum equally capable to the Citibank's system.

 Customer

We need to incorporate the customers perceptions and demands into our new system. If
the customer is used to pressing F1 for help, then we must obey his/her wishes and map
 F1 to the help in our software as well. (Shouldn't it be great if both Internet Explorer and
Netscape had mapped F5 to Page Refresh. Netscape's Ctrl-R is a real nuisance :))

 Suppliers

If we are to make a system for a company that is a supplier to another company, e.g. a
company that supplies transistors to Intel, then we must incorporate desires of the
company to whom we supply things. We must analyze what are the requirements of
Intel, and accomodate them in our system. Intel may require that each transistor shipment
be accompanied by a detailed test result. Our system should handle the test results.
 
4. What is the difference between system user and System customer ?
 
User is the person(s) who uses the System, and customer is the person(s) who is served by the
system. Customer is external to the system, while the user is internal to the system.
 
5. What is the pre-cursor/initiator to preliminary investigation ?
 
System Request Form (SRF)
 
6. What are the desired attributes/characteristics of a SRF?
 
 Easy to understand
 Includes Clear instructions
 Should have all the supporting documents
 Spacious- enough space to enter the data
 Make it available on-line (if possible and feasible)

 
7. Is there any case when the SRF may be submitted after the system has been
developed(rather than before)?. If yes then what will be the significance of SRF ?
 
Yes, in case when the system implementation/development is extremely urgent - we may
develop/install the system and the necessary paper work, i.e. the SRF may be submitted
afterwards. The significance of SRF will be for purely documentation purposes, which may be
used by accounting and other departments. It may also be used as a reference for future.
 
8. What should be the format of a SRF ?
 
Various organization have their own templates for SRF. Usually the SRF will have:

 Originator's Name, Designation, ID, Department, location, e-mail, phone, request date
  Type of request (e.g. New system required, up gradation of existing system, correction in
existing system etc.)
 Suggested priority (high, medium, low)
 Description of the request (may attach any supporting documents if necessary)

Based on the above information, the committee makes a decision whether to approve or reject
the request. Refer to the text book page 2-4 to see an example of a SRF.
 
9. What is System Review Committee (SRC)?. What is another name for it ?
 
Another name for SRC is "Computer Resources Committee". SRC decides on whether to
approve the System Request Form or not. Its main purpose is to EVALUATE (decide which
SRF's are to be approved and which should not be) the SRF and to assign priorities to the
accepted requests. During evaluation the SRC will do a detailed FEASILIBILITY of the SRF, to
reach their decision.
 
10. What should be the composition of SRC?
 

SRC = IT director (Team lead) + representatives (mangers) from ALL other departments

 
11. What is System Request Feasibility ?
 
SR Feasibility is done by SRC. It has three types:

Operational Feasibility: This feasibility addresses questions like : Does the proposed system
align with the company's goals ? What will be the impact of the System on the employees? Is
there enough support/enthusiasm in the company for the proposed System ?

Technical Feasibility: Does the company have enough technical resources both

HUMAN/NON-HUMAN to run the proposed system. If not then can the company acquire
them ?

Economic Feasibility: Will the proposed system increase revenues either directly or indirectly ?

All the above feasibilitiy must be done before the System Request can be approved/rejected.

Example : A Software engineer working at a Software Development House, comes up with the
following System Request:

"Buy 10 water filters/purifiers costing 3500 Rs. each, and start delivering pure water to homes".

Looking at this system request, it is evident that this project will have an upfront cost of 35,000
Rs. -- hence economically feasible
Filtering water and then delivering it to homes is a straight forward task, and any one can do it
-- hence technically feasible 
So Should the Software company go ahead and do this project ??? -- NO, because this does not
align with the Company's goals, and there will be no support for it from the employees.
Therefore the request should be denied based on its Operational Unfeasibility.
 
12. What is TCO (Total cost of ownership) ?
 
During the Economic feasibility study, the SRC must incorporate ALL the costs and benefits.
TCO includes:

 Ongoing support cost

 Maintenance cost
 System development/ acquisition cost

The above three types of costs may be attributed to the following three factors: ·

 People (training, re-training, consultants)

 H/W cost (purchase, up grade of equip.)
 S/W cost (purchase, up grade of Software)

These costs should be compared against the tangible and non-tangible benefits And a decision
must be made based on this study. Usually if

Benefits - TCO > 0 ,

then the System request man be considered as economically feasible to the company.
 
13. What are the steps involved in Preliminary Investigation ?
 
a) Understand the problems: Analyze the problem statement, Identify affected groups,
understand the current system and its interaction with other systems, develop the business profile
of the company

b) Project Scope and constraints Identify System Boundaries, and constraints. Identify what is
a part of our system and what is to be excluded.

c) Fact-Finding: In this phase we will perform the activities discussed in (Question 15)

d) Determine Feasibility: The three types of feasibility (as given in Question 11) must be done.
The difference between the feasibility study done in Question 11 and the one that will be done
now, is that; the former is done by the SRC, and the later by the System Analyst

e) Estimate time and cost to continue development: This activity involves a complete Project
cost and time estimate. Here the analyst will use SW Engineering techniques like FPA, line of
code based estimation techniques and others, to give a precise estimate. You may wish to
visit http://www.martinig.ch/mt/DMT0200.pdf for a discussion on how the Project estimation is
done.

f) Present Results and recommendations to Management: This will be in form of a formal

document called Preliminary Investigation Report. It will have the following sections:

 Introduction
 System Request Summary: This section will include SRF, and a brief discussion on the
reasons for a system request (see question 2)
 Findings : This will include the outcome of the fact finding phase.
 Recommendations: This will include System Analyst's recommendations. Each
recommendation should be followed by its justification.
 Time and Cost estimates: This will include a detailed calculation of the Time and Project
size estimates, and the methodologies used for estimates.
 Expected benefits to the company: This section is the most important section. A non-
technical manager may only read this section. In this section the System Analyst must be
very convincing. This Manager of the company will probably decided the system's fate
based on this section.
 Appendix: Appendix will contain all the supporting documents (e.g. questionnaire, forms
etc. ), and definition of all the related terms.

 
14. What is the difference between Symptoms of a problem and the cause of a problem ?
 
Problem Symptom reveals that there is something wrong, but the Problem Cause reveals as to
what is the reason for the problem, and what is the nature of the problem.
 
15. What are different types of constraints ?, and how should we prioritize them
 
 Present/Future
 Internal/External
 Mandatory/Desirable

Present/External/Mandatory should have the highest priority. While future/Internal/Desirable

have the lowest priority. All others (e.g. Internal/Present or External/Mandatory) will have
priorities between these two extremes.
16. What are the activities performed in the Fact-Finding phase? And why?
 
Analyze organizational Charts To get an idea of the affected group, and to select the
interviewees.
Conduct Interviews To get an idea of what people think and what is their understanding of the
system.

Review Current Documents To understand the current processes, and to compare the current
practices with what the people said in the interview

Observe Operation To get a good idea as to how the day-to-day operation is performed, and to
identify the problems and good practices

Carry out a user survey: Make a questionnaire and let the representatives as chosen in
"Analyze Organizational Chart" answer it. This is more time-efficient than interviews.
 
17. What is the difference between interview and survey
 
Interview is done in details, it is a one-on-one kind of situation. It has usually open-ended
questions. We gather personalized information, through interviews. Interviews must be planned
with mutual agreement, and the possible questions must be told to the interviewee in advance; so
as to give him/her ample time to prepare for the answer. Interviews take more time. The
interviewer must note down the important points right after the interview, before he/she forgets
about them. Although the interviewer may take notes during the interview but an excessive note-
taking may be viewed as inappropriate by the interviewee. Recording the interview session
wither on audio or video tape is not suggested, since this may over-pressurize the interviewee.

Survey is done through questionnaires. The questionnaire may be given either as a written form
or as an on-line form. It usually has closed-ended questions. This saves time but will result in
less information. A System Analyst must ensure that the questionnaire is self-explanatory and
easy to understand. If the questionnaire is ambiguous, then people being surveyed will keep
coming to the System Analyst for explanation - and the survey will effectively become an
Interview.
 
18. Give an example of a close-ended question, an open-ended question, a leading question
and a Range of response question.
 
1. Do you like the current system ? (Close-ended question)
2. Give me your impression of the current system ? (open-ended question)
3. What are the advantages of the current system ? (leading question; since you are
suggesting to the interviewee that he/she must agree that the system is advantageous.
Rephrasing the question as "Do you see any advantages of the current system" ? will
make it non-leading)
4. Select the difficulty Level of the game (1)-Expert (2)-Novice (3)-Newbee (4)-first time
user