MANAGEMENT INFORMATION

SYSTEMS

INFORMATION GATHERING :
PROCESSING, ANALYSIS AND DESIGN

By
Kevin Gogo

9/25/2023
 TERMINOLOGIES USED IN INFORMATION
GATHERING
 Data: these are raw or factual information that is
organized to be analyzed.
 Information: raw data that has been verified to be accurate
and timely
 Information gathering: The act of collecting information
 System : A group of interacting, interrelated, or
interdependent elements forming a complex whole.
 Information system: stem consisting of the network of all
communication channels used within an organization

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 SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE OVERVIEW

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INFORMATION GATHERING METHODS
1. Interviews
2. Questionnaires
 Types of Questions used in questionnaire
3. Joint Application Design (JAD)
4. Observation
5. STROBE
6. Brainstorming
7. Document analysis
8. Focus groups
9. Prototyping
10. Survey
11. Sampling 4

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INTERVIEWS
 It is the single most important investigation method.
 Traditional information gathering method used to seek facts,
opinions, feelings, informal procedures, goals, etc.
 Most analyst time and effort.
 May be a formal in that it has been carefully planned, but informal
in that there should be the atmosphere of a chat.
 Needs preparation: The more preparation done in advance, the
more time can be given to the user in the interview.
 A poorly-prepared interviewer will quickly lose respect!

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INTERVIEWS CONT…
 Guidelines for conducting interviews:
 Needs preparation: The more preparation done in advance, the
more time can be given to the user in the interview.
 A poorly-prepared interviewer will quickly lose respect!
 Read background materials.
 Interview people at different levels in the organisation.
 Needs checklist to determine what info is needed.
 Need interview guide – to control the interview to ensure all points
are covered. It’s the route of how to obtain info needed.
 Choose types of questions (open-ended, close, probes)
 Decide the structure of interview (pyramid, funnel, diamond)

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INTERVIEWS CONT…

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INTERVIEWS CONT…

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INTERVIEWS CONT…
Interview Structure
 Pyramid Structure: For inductive questioning and useful when
interviewee needs to warm up. From specific to general questions.

 Funnel Structure: For deductive questioning and useful to help

interviewee to relax and express more freely. From general to
specific questions.

 Diamond Structure: Combines the strengths of both pyramid and

funnel structures but is more time consuming.

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QUESTIONNAIRES
 Important fact finding technique, but irregularly used.
 It is a traditional gathering method used to conduct surveys.
 May be used to quantify info found in earlier interviews.
 A desirable way to gather large amounts of data about
current system and future system.
 Requires large amount of planning.
 Need to find out what you wish to find out...is a
questionnaire necessarily the best way of doing it?

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QUESTIONNAIRES CONT…
 Consider Questionnaires IF:
1. The people you need to question are widely dispersed.
2. There are a large number of people involved in a systems project
and it is desirable to know what proportion of a given group
approve/disapprove of particular features of proposed system.
3. You want to carry out an exploratory study and wish to measure
opinion before any direction is set on the systems project.

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QUESTIONNAIRES CONT…
 Guidelines for conducting questionnaires:
 Use them in conjunction with interviews
 Use them when the target information sources are widely
dispersed
 Plan carefully the questions!
 Group questions into logically coherent sections
 Place important and less controversial questions first.
 Pre-test the questionnaire to identify confusing questions

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TYPES OF QUESTIONS
In general there are 2 types of questions: open-ended and closed.
 Open-ended: Those that leave all possible response to the
respondent. E.g. “Describe any problems you are experiencing...”

 Closed: Those that limit or close the response options to the

respondent. E.g. “Below are listed five software packages. Please
tick the package you use most frequently”.
 Bipolar questions are a special type of closed questions in which
the answer is limited to two choices: true/false, agree/disagree,
yes/no, etc.

 Probe questions are follow-up questions (why?, give example,

illustrate, etc.) aimed at gathering even further information. 13

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TYPES OF QUESTIONS CONT…
 Tradeoffs between open and closed questions.

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TYPES OF QUESTIONS CONT…
 Benefits of open-ended questions:
 Helps interviewee to relax and express more freely
 Reveals avenues for further questioning
 More interesting for the interviewee
 Provides more details

 Drawbacks of open-ended questions:

 Too much details might be given in answer
 Potential for loosing control of interview
 Interviewer may seem unprepared
 Interviewee not prepared or not willing to give details
 Too much time in comparison to information gathered
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TYPES OF QUESTIONS CONT…
 Benefits of closed questions:
 Saves interview time
 Easy to analyse results
 Straight to gathering information
 Helps maintaining control of interview

 Drawbacks of closed questions:

 Potentially boring
 Not much details obtained (limited)
 Don’t help the interviewee to relax

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JOINT APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT (JAD)
 JAD was developed by IBM.
 It is a method that focuses on development jointly with the
users in a group setting.
 This technique seeks to encourage collaboration and team
work.
 It consists of a workshop where knowledge workers and IT
specialists meet, to define and review the business
requirements for the system.
 Encourage use of creative thinking techniques to produce
ideas outside of box!

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JOINT APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT (JAD) CONT…
 Held away from regular place of work – minimal distractions.
 Flip charts, whiteboards, post-it notes, group support systems.

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JOINT APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT CONT…
 Guidelines for conducting JAD:
 Only when there is support for team problem solving in the
organisation.
 Should involve analyst, users, executive, technicians, etc.
 Requires commitment and leadership.
 Good communication skills and a note taker are essential.
 Audio visual equipment should be available.
 Good scheduling and agenda-driven.

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JOINT APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT CONT…
 Benefits of JAD:
 Saves time.
 Synergy of ideas.
 Development is faster.
 Improvement of ownership.

 Drawbacks of JAD:
 Requires careful preparation.
 Requires commitment, involvement and time.
 Participative approach in organisation is key to success of approach.
Otherwise, attendees will feel that their presence is simply ritualistic.

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OBSERVATION
 “A picture is worth a thousand words” is also true with systems
analysis.
 More than any other activity, observing the business processes in
action will help in the better understanding of business functions.
 It is an information gathering method that seeks to find out what is
actually done in order to contrast it with what is documented.
 It also helps to examine relationships between people in the
organization.
 Understand the fundamental business needs.
 Be able to visualise the new system, while observing existing processes.
 Very famous method is STROBE.

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STROBE
 STRuctured Observation of the Environment.
 Allows analyst to observe particulars of surroundings to
confirm/declare what has been found elsewhere.
 Analyst observes seven concrete elements:
1. Office Location
2. Desk Placement
3. Stationary Equipment
4. Props (properties)
5. External Information Sources
6. Office Lighting and Colour
7. Clothing

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BRAINSTORMING

 Brainstorming is used in requirements elicitation to get as many

ideas as possible from a group of people.
 Generally used to identify possible solutions to problems, and
clarify details of opportunities. Brainstorming casts a wide net,
identifying many different possibilities.
 Prioritization of those possibilities is important to finding the
needles in the haystack.

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DOCUMENT ANALYSIS
Reviewing the documentation of an existing system can help when
creating AS-IS process documents, as well as driving gap analysis for
scoping of migration projects.

In an ideal world, we would even be reviewing the requirements that

drove creation of the existing system – a starting point for
documenting current requirements.

Nuggets of information are often buried in existing documents that

help us ask questions as part of validating requirement completeness.

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FOCUS GROUPS
A focus group is a gathering of people who are representative of the
users or customers of a product to get feedback. The feedback can be
gathered about needs / opportunities / problems to identify
requirements, or can be gathered to validate and refine already
elicited requirements.

This form of market research is distinct from brainstorming in that it is

a managed process with specific participants. There is danger in
“following the crowd”, and some people believe focus groups are at
best ineffective. One risk is that we end up with the lowest common
denominator features.

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PROTOTYPING

 Prototype is Pre-production model of a product, engineered for full

service test.

 Prototypes can be very effective at gathering feedback. Low fidelity

prototypes can be used as an active listening tool. Often, when
people can not articulate a particular need in the abstract, they can
quickly assess if a design approach would address the need.
 Prototypes are most efficiently done with quick sketches of
interfaces and storyboards. Prototypes are even being used as the
“official requirements” in some situations.

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SURVEY
 When collecting information from many people – too many to
interview with budget and time constraints – a survey or
questionnaire can be used.
 The survey can force users to select from choices, rate something
(“Agree Strongly, Agree…”), or have open ended questions allowing
free-form responses. Survey design is hard – questions can bias the
respondents. Don’t assume that you can create a survey on your
own, and get meaningful insight from the results.
 I would expect that a well designed survey would provide
qualitative guidance for characterizing the market. It should not be
used for prioritization of features or requirements.

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SAMPLING
 Sampling : is a statistical method of obtaining
representative data or observations from a group (lot,
batch, population, or universe)

Sampling techniques
 Simple random

 Stratified random

 Cluster

 Stage

 Purposive

 Quota

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FOOD FOR THE THOUGHT
1. How can you ensure on a successful interview?
2. Who is the questionnaire method appropriate for?
3. What are the benefits of using prototypes for information gathering
4. What are the benefits of observation?
5. What does ‘document analysis’ involve and what would you look
at?
6. Explain Joint Application Development (JAD)
7. Why is it important to prepare for the interview
8. Why is it important to record your findings?
9. What should you keep a record of during and after your
investigations?
10. Identify TWO positives and TWO negatives of the various
information gathering techniques 29

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FOOD FOR THE THOUGHT CONT…
11. What instruments does one need to conduct a successful
interview?
12. Elaborate FOUR problems that one could encounter during
questionnaire method of administration
13. What are the disadvantages and advantages of survey as a method
of information gathering
14. What are the disadvantages and advantages of focus groups as a
method of information gathering
15. Discuss the various techniques of information sampling and their
related advantages and disadvantages

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INFORMATION ANALYSIS AND PROCESSING

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 Information analysis: - An examination of data
and facts to uncover and understand cause-effect
relationships, thus providing basis for problem
solving and decision making.

 Information processing: refers to the

manipulation of digitized information by
computers and other digital electronic
equipment, known collectively as information
technology (IT)

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WHAT INFORMATION ANALYSIS ENTAILS

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1. Adding up numbers.
2. Comparing information to estimate the
similarity of one thing to another, or two things
together.
3. Contrasting information by setting two things
in opposition so as to show the differences.
4. Correlating information to establish
relationships between pieces of information
which may be related.
5. Measures of central tendencies (mean, mode,
median, standard deviation etc)
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TECHNIQUES OF DATA ANALYSIS

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N/B Data analysis could either be qualitative or
quantitative data.

 Tally sheets

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TECHNIQUES OF DATA ANALYSIS CONT…

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 Summary sheets

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TECHNIQUES OF DATA ANALYSIS CONT…

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 Use of computers with the various data /
information processing tools

Data / information processing tools

 Sage

 Ms Excel

 SPSS

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TECHNIQUES OF DATA ANALYSIS CONT…

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Further analysis for information presentation
purposes can be made on.

 Graphs (bar, line)

 Tables

 Pie charts

 Scatter diagrams

 Histograms

 Story boards

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PRESENTING OF INFORMATION

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 N/B Before one presents information one has to
know who the information is being presented to.

 Presented information has to be: -

 Of interest
 Understandable
 Convincing
 Timely
 Simple
 Participatory

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 9/25/2023
THANKYOU FOR
LISTENING

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