Joint Application Development (JAD)

IFT 540 Homework – 3 Field Exercise and Petrie Electronics
Homework – 3 Field Exercise and Petrie Electronics – Case Questions

Abhilash K Chaudhary, Arizona State University, Poly Campus, Mesa, AZ, 85212
Survey the literature on JAD in the academic and popular press and determine the “state
of the art.” How is JAD being used to help determine system requirements? Is using JAD
for this process beneficial? Why or why not? Present your analysis to the IS manager at
your work or at your university. Does your analysis of JAD fit with his or her perception?
Why or why not? Is he or she currently using JAD, or a JAD-like method, for determining
system requirements? Why or why not?
Joint Application Development (JAD)

State of the Art
JAD is a modern information gathering technique of systems development. It is a
methodology which involves clients in the development and design of the system in
workshops known as JAD sessions. The aim of JAD is to get all the stakeholders, such as
clients, managers, IS personnel, etc., together in a room with visual aids so that the team is
able to note down the exact system requirements. Each JAD session has no time limit and can
last to a week. JAD sessions are held away from the main office to avoid all the distractions
and get fresh perspective. Each JAD session involves a team with the following roles and
many others:
 Session Leader: Session Leader organises the sessions and makes the rules for the
sessions. This individual is neutral and resolves all the conflicts in that JAD session.
 Scribe: The scribe writes down, records and documents whatever goes on in the JAD
session.
 Project Manager: This individual provides the impacts of the system on the
organisation.
 Client representatives: These individuals are responsible for input concerning the
system design.
 IT Analysts: These individuals are generally programmers and assess technical
feasibility.
The deliverables of the workshop are identified in pre-workshop activities defined as below:
 Identify project objectives and limitations
 Define project deliverables
 Select workshop participants
 Prepare workshop material and participants
 Organize workshop activities
 Coordinate workshop logistics
JAD has several advantage over the traditional requirement gathering approaches which are
listed below:
 Better Delivery timeline
 Reduced Costs
 Better system understanding
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 Improved quality
 Wide adoption of JAD methodology
Once the workshop is completed, it is made sure that all the issues are addressed and resolved
before the system is built. By conducting JAD workshops in a dedicated environment ensures
focus and great requirement gathering, however, they can be expensive if the venue is not
owned by the organization.
IS Manager at Tata Consultancy Services Pvt Ltd
After presenting above JAD “state of the art” to one of the IS managers at Tata Consultancy
Services Pvt Ltd, she agreed on the above perspective of the JAD methodology. She added
the following as well:
 Benefits of JAD
o Promotes teamwork
o With the involvement of client, JAD ensures that the system design is
customer oriented
o Enhances the quality of the system and its development cycle
 JAD life cycle
o Planning Sessions
o Preparation
o Designing Sessions
o Finalization of the JAD session documentation
However, upon asking how much does her organization use JAD methodology, the IS
manager pointed out that JAD is mainly used when there is no project history or if it is a first-
time project for the organization. AGILE is mainly used in Tata Consultancy Services Pvt
Ltd. Conducting JAD sessions for each project is time and cost consuming and needs well
trained participants. Moreover, more than often the clients and the customers themselves
prefer AGILE over Joint Application Development sessions. JAD becomes expensive when
there is a wide scope and variety of stakeholders and gathering all of them in one place is
even more expensive and taxing.
Petrie Electronics – Case Questions
6.41 What do you think are the sources of the information Jim and his team collected?
How do you think they collected all of that information?
As mentioned in the case, Jim and his team has collected information through following
sources:
 Conducting interviews with the key stakeholders inside the company
 Jim and his team also collected information about the pre-existing similar
systems
 Jim also worked with marketing groups to put together focus groups of loyal
customers to get the ideas about what would be valued in the customer loyalty
system
 They also researched the competitions, such as airlines, which have extensive
customer loyalty programs
 They also researched vendors and trade journals

6.42 Examine PE Table 6-1. Are there any requirements or constraints that you can think
of that were overlooked? List them.
Additional requirements:
 The system should be able run on multiple devices such as desktops, tablets, mobile
phones, etc.
 Security of the data should be of highest priority, i.e., no data should be revealed to
irrelevant users.
 System should be able to detect and prevent fraud, because, this is a customer loyalty
system which might attract fraudulent.
 The client interface and the web design of the application should be highly attractive
and easy manoeuvring to customers.
 System should be able to present fundamental statistics back to Petrie Electronics for
data analysis
Additional Constraints:
 System should have low response time
 Simplicity should be present in the system design and the loyalty program as well
 Data Storage: even hundreds of customers can generate millions of transactions over a
month, hence, the requirement of data storage
6.43 If you were looking for alternative approaches for Petrie’s customer loyalty program,
where would you look for information? Where would you start? How would you know
when you were done?
As mentioned in the case, the information gathering could involve multiple sources, such as
conducting interviews with the stakeholders, performing requirement analysis in focus
groups, researching the competitions, etc.
To start looking for the information, Internet would be the first step. Searching on Google for
the similar systems. Then moving forward to find out other companies who might use similar
system and study them. Monitoring vendor brochures, company websites as well as sales
information. Conducting interviews with the involved demographics and gathering
information from vendors, trade journals, etc.
It is difficult to put a period on requirement gathering, the flow of information never ceases.
However, to have more than enough would be the point where no new information or
requirement is coming up regarding the loyalty system. When such a situation occurs where
no new ways are found to gather requirement or no new information is being found, that
would be the halting point and moving on to the next phase.
6.45 Why shouldn’t Petrie’s staff build their own unique system in-house?
As mentioned in the case study, to build such a system in-house is an antiquated approach
and would be time and cost consuming. Moreover, the new system would be needed to be
integrated in the existing system which would lead the IT staff with more work to customize
the interface. Additionally, as given from the requirements, such as scalability and proven
performance and constraints, such as staff and time to implement, it is favourable to
outsource the project or employ the similar approach to develop the system.
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IFT 540 Homework – 3 Field Exercise and Petrie Electronics

Homework – 3 Field Exercise and Petrie Electronics – Case Questions

Joint Application Development (JAD)

 They also researched vendors and trade journals

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