GHANA COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY UNIVERSITY

END-OF-FIRST SEMESTER EXAMINATIONS, APRIL 2021

FACULTY OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS & TECHNOLOGIES

CIIS 251: SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND DESIGN

NAME : ZOIKU ANITA

INDEX NUMBER : 040919064

Lecturer: Dominic K. Louis

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Question 1 [40 Marks]
1A.
(10 marks)

1B. Produce an Entity Relationship diagram of the Grand Villa Hotels system described
above.

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(20 mark)

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 1C. Draw a Use Case diagram for the Grand Villa Hotels system.
(Hint – correct use of the <<include>> or <<extend>> relationships will attract
additional marks)
(10 marks)

Print Reservation
Receipt

Make a reservation

Add a customer Front desk

System officer
Administrator
Cancel a reservation

Change floor
smoking status

Change room
pricing

Customer
Change customer
information

Check room
availability

Profit reports

Add/ Change
Preferences

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Question 2 [20 Marks]
2A.
(10 marks)
 System development methods refers to the frameworks that is used to structure, plan, and
control the process of developing an information system.

These are;

Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

 A software development method that is still in wide use today and called waterfall
methodology . This method is very structured since each phase has an end deliverable
requiring approval to next phase and each phase must be completed before the next phase can
start.

Phases.
Preliminary Analysis – This is where are formal and informal requests are reviewed
Deliverable – During this stage , a feasibility analysis document is designed.
Systems Analysis – During this stage if the project is approved, determining the system
requirements for new system is done.
Deliverable – systems requirement document
Systems Design – In here we convert our system analysis requirements into system design
document deliverable
Programming – At this point designing the program or coding commences using design
documents
Testing – ensures that the code functions according to requirements
Implementation – converting from old system to new system
- Training, documenting functions, and data conversion
Maintenance – support for reporting prioritizing, and fixing bugs

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Rapid Application Development
Focuses on quickly building a working model and getting feedback from users to update the
working model for smaller projects and giving users the ability to provide feedback during
the process
Phases:

STRENGTHS
1. The operational version of an application is available much earlier than with Waterfall,
Incremental, or Spiral frameworks.
2. Because RAD produces systems more quickly and to a business focus, this approach tends
to produce systems at a lower cost.
3. Engenders a greater level of commitment from stakeholders, both business and technical,
than Waterfall, Incremental, or Spiral frameworks. Users are seen as gaining more of a sense
of ownership of a system, while developers are seen as gaining more satisfaction from
producing successful systems quickly.
4. Concentrates on essential system elements from user viewpoint.
5. Provides the ability to rapidly change system design as demanded by users.
6. Produces a tighter fit between user requirements and system specifications.
7. Generally produces a dramatic savings in time, money, and human effort.

Rapid Application Development Situations where most appropriate:

1. Project is of small-to-medium scale and of short duration (no more than 6 man-years of
development effort).

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2. Project scope is focused, such that the business objectives are well defined and narrow.

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Lean Methodology

The lean methodology

In this methodology, the focus is on taking an initial idea and developing a minimum viable
product (MVP). The MVP is a working software application with just enough functionality to
demonstrate the idea behind the project. Once the MVP is developed, it is given to potential

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users for review. Feedback on the MVP is generated in two forms: (1) direct observation and
discussion with the users, and (2) usage statistics gathered from the software itself. Using
these two forms of feedback, the team determines whether they should continue in the same
direction or rethink the core idea behind the project, change the functions, and create a new
MVP. This change in strategy is called a pivot. Several iterations of the MVP are developed,
with new functions added each time based on the feedback, until a final product is completed.
The biggest difference between the lean methodology and the other methodologies is that the
full set of requirements for the system are not known when the project is launched. As each
iteration of the project is released, the statistics and feedback gathered are used to determine
the requirements. The lean methodology works best in an entrepreneurial environment where
a company is interested in determining if their idea for a software application is worth
developing.

Summary
Software development is about so much more than programming. Developing new software
applications requires several steps, from the formal SDLC process to more informal
processes such as agile programming or lean methodologies. Programming languages have
evolved from very low-level machine-specific languages to higher-level languages that allow
a programmer to write software for a wide variety of machines. Most programmers work with
software development tools that provide them with integrated components to make the
software development process more efficient. For some organizations, building their own
software applications does not make the most sense; instead, they choose to purchase
software built by a third party to save development costs and speed implementation. In end-
user computing, software development happens outside the information technology
department. When implementing new software applications, there are several different types
of implementation methodologies that must be considered.

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 2B. Discuss why organizations feel the need for the unlikely comparation between agile
and traditional development. What are the likely benefits of both agile and traditional
development as viable solutions to systems development?
(10 marks)
Agile systems development has attracted a lot of attention in recent times. The benefits of
agile methods are increased productivity, faster turnaround, shared learning, and higher
developer satisfaction. These benefits make a compelling case for the adoption of agile
methods. Nevertheless, does this mean that traditional development built around a tradition of
predictability and control has to give way to agile methods that assume an unanalyzable
world fraught with uncertainties? We contend that there is a need to maintain “dual
structures” that accommodate both approaches be-cause they each have their benefits, and
practical considerations may preclude the simple replacement of one by the other.
Organizations engage in a wide variety of systems development projects. The variations in
these projects could be considerable, and the degree of variety is a function of many factors.
The analyses of the “home grounds” of agile and traditional approaches is based on
application characteristics, management characteristics, technical characteristics, and
personnel characteristics. Further, the choice of traditional or agile methods for a given
project is largely contingent on five factors:
 The size of the systems development project and team
 The consequences of failure (i.e., criticality)
 The degree of dynamism or volatility of the environment
 The competence of personnel
 Compatibility with the prevailing culture.

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agility and stability. In this section, we argued for the simultaneous pursuit of traditional and
agile system development approaches. However, the two approaches differ in many respects
and entail conflicting organizational, people, and technical demands that might make the
concurrent practice of these methods problematic. The next section discusses the challenges
that con-front organizations that plan to follow both approaches at the same time.
 

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People Level
Agile systems development places a premium on people and their interactions. The emphasis
is on teams and on the intense dynamics of team interactions. The roles of agile team
members are interchangeable, and developers often choose roles that are not in their area of
specialty. Self-organization is one of the key traits of such systems development teams. The
traditional role of a project managers planner, organizer, and controller disappears, and the
role of a facilitator or coach who effectively manages the collaborative efforts of team
members without stifling their creativity takes its place. Proponents of agile methods argue
that processes should be flexible and dynamic enough to mold around the competencies of
people, and not the other way around . This focus on people is a significant departure from
the traditional systems development’s focus on processes.

Management and Organizational Level

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Question 3 [20 Marks]
3A. Discuss why it is important for Systems Analysts to model the subject-domain of an
information system before any attempt at considering implementation issues?
(10 marks)
:
 System analysis is the process of collecting and interpreting facts, identifying
problems, and decomposition of the system into its components. It is conducted to
study or evaluate a system and its components in order to identify the objects.
 Another definition of System analysis is its evaluation of a particular system to
identify the areas of improvements and make any necessary enhancements, if needed.
Aims
 First of all, It helps to design systems where subsystems may have conflicting
objectives.
 Also, System analysis helps to achieve inter compatibility and unity of the sub
systems
 It helps in understanding of complex structures.
 Above all, System analysis gives an advantage of understanding and comparing the
subsystems functions with complete system.
Significance
 Reduced costs
 Efficiency & Flexibility
 Risks
 Better Management
 Better Quality
 Reduced Costs

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  Furthermore, Proper system analysis makes the clear path for web application
development by minimizing the future IT requirements.
 Another benefit, gathering of a clear set of requirement for any system will give an
advantage of the precise planning of the resources for development, this will bring the
final product at low cost.
 Efficiency & Flexibility
 System analysis will not only reduce the costs, and also helps to gain flexibility &
flexibility in the system development. Also, it gives clear development targets for
each version by defining the set of requirements
 The greater flexibility of SA is to cater almost every future requirements of business
by mitigating the IT requirement
Risk :
 Certainly, this process helps in identifying the potential risks. Its risk management is
carried out to evaluate and mitigate the negative impacts of the potential risks on the
process by deeply consideration of risks against benefits.

3B. The effect of scope creep is a major cause of delays on most software development
project. As the Systems Analyst for the GCTU e-learning implementation project,
outline steps and strategies you would employ to keep the scope of the e-learning
system from growing and including new functions that should not be part of the
system?
(10 marks)

It is important that a functional specification is produced at the outset, written in terms that
the customer (GCTU) can understand. For example, a walk-through of the process that the E-
learning software will support, perhaps illustrated with mocked-up screen shots, will help to
clarify how the new system will work from the user's point of view.

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Question 4 [20 Marks]

(20 marks)

ANSWER
The implementation of this Strategy will convert the old information system into a new
information system, when the new information system becomes operational and is a less
expensive method than the other methods because the IT group has to operate and maintain
only one system at a time. Charlene should not make immediate decision to completely
change the old information system. Direct cut-over conversion strategy will only be
successful only if the proper testing of the system is done before installing the new system.
Charlene should know that this conversion Strategy is a Risky approach as compared to the
other strategy methods. Problems can also results from the errors cause by the users or
developers. In direct cut-over strategy the detection of minor errors is much more difficult
than other strategies. This strategy also lacks as there is no backup option to revert the old
information system and the system can also be faced with difficulties in live data because it
has a much larger volume than the test data.

The implementation of Dual System strategy will keep all the data safe and secure in both the
systems.

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Charlene should run both the new and old system in parallel to check the efficiency and
performance of the new system as compared to the old information system.
The most important advantage of this dual system strategy or parallel operation strategy
Charlene should know that this strategy covers the least minimum risk than the direct cut-
over conversion strategy. So the loss of any kind of data is not possible. The verification of
the work of new information system is much easier than the older information system.
Also If the new system installed is not comfortable or not working according to Charlene then
there always a backup of old information system.

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