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MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Chapter 5
Chapter 5: Business Analysis
5.1 Learning Outcomes
After complete this lesson, you would be able to:

How to do business analysis in an organization.

Discuss the various fact finding techniques.

Find the examples of fact finding tools.

Discuss the prototyping process and how does it support in
analysis.
5.2 Introduction

In the preliminary investigation, the main task is to identify what
activities are taking place in the existing system, such as: - How the activities are to be carried out?
- Who are responsible for the activities?
- To whom the information is for?
- Where the activities are carried out?

Later, BA will need to collect the right requirements from the user
about the proposed information system.

Then, BA will study and analyse the existing business system and
think if the improvements or solutions to the current system are
feasible.

In the job of analysing, BA must NOT: - Concluding solutions for those problems identified.
- Identifies only areas that can be computerized, which can cause
subsequent interface difficulty.

This study includes both manual and computerized functions.

In summary, the task involved in this analysis phase are: - Understanding current system working
- Determining proposed information system requirements
- Proposed new information system
Understanding current system working

It is important for the BA to understand how the current system
works.

By understanding this, BA will be able to identify the strength and
limitation of the current system.

Facts-gathering tools applied here to obtain information about the
current system.
Determining proposed information system requirements

Fact-finding tools appear here as well to gather user requirements.
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3 main activities involved in the process of requirements
determination are: - Requirements anticipation
- Requirements investigation
- Requirements specification
Requirement
Anticipation
Requirement
Investigation
Requirement
Specification
 Requirements anticipation
- BA would employ a certain degree of their own experiences before
investigating the system.
- BA tries to relate experiences particularly of similar systems they
have studied before.
- Relevant experience is indeed beneficial in systems investigation
but on the other hand, experience can introduce bias or shortcuts
during investigation.
- Sometime, experience analysts tend to map their current projects
investigation with past projects studied, even though they are
different. Thus, they may take shortcuts by assuming certain
features without conducting any appropriate investigation.
- Every system being studied is unique.
Thus, thoroughly
understanding of the system is critical. The pass experience does
can be used to help in analysing but not to replace the analysis.
 Requirements investigation
- An important and reliable method of gathering requirements is
through investigation.
- This activity is the core of system analysis.
- Fact-finding techniques are employed to carry out the requirement
investigation. All these investigation will be documented.
- In conducting this activity, the following characteristics of existing
systems are to be uncovered:  Input
 Output
 Process
 Control
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 Requirements specification
- The fact gathered after the requirement investigations are examined
to identify both existing and potential problems.
- A list of desired features for the new system, in alignment with the
organization’s needs is derived.
- Essential features are separated from the less critical features and
are documented accordingly as requirement specification.
- Operational details to performance criteria are specified.
- The requirement specification document will be produced which
stated the requirement or needs of the customer for the new
information system.
5.3 Fact-Finding Techniques
 Interview
- Interviewees are current users, sometimes customers/suppliers, of
the current system or potential users of the proposed systems.
- During interviews, it is important to gather as much relevant
information as possible.
- Interviewer will ask more open-ended question so to obtain the
qualitative information.
- The Interviewing process consists of 7 Steps:
1. Determine the people to interview
2. Establish objectives for the interview
3. Develop interview questions
4. Prepare for the interview
5. Conduct the interview
6. Document the interview
7. Evaluate the interview
- Matters to be considered:  Create a conversational atmosphere rather than an interrogative
atmosphere for more cooperative participants.
 Conducted in an appropriate environment.
 The interview must well prepare.
- This technique is often the best source of qualitative information,
such as getting individuals’ opinions.
- The interviewee’s face expressions and their body language can be
observed.
- Limitation of interview:  Tend to take up considerable and dedicated time of both
interviewer and interviewee.
 Interviewees may not speak the truths.
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 Interviewees may give irrelevant details.
- The successful of an interview depends very much on the good
communication skill of the interviewer (SA).
 Questionnaires
- It enables a large number of participants, from various departments
to even various countries, to be involved in the systems
investigation.
- With standardized questions, the facts gathered tend to be more
reliable and often more honest responses.
- Questionnaire uses more close-ended questionnaires to gather
quantitative information.
- Questionnaires should be tested and if necessary, modified before
printed and distributed.
- Recipients of questionnaires should be selected depending on the
information they can provide. SA should ensure the respondents’
backgrounds and experiences that qualify them to answer the
questions.
- Guidelines to design a good questionnaire:
 Brief and user-friendly
 Clear instructions and guidance on how to answer the questions
 Questions in logical order, going from easy to more complex
questions
 Use simple terms and words to avoid misunderstanding
 Avoid leading questions
 Limit open-ending questions that are difficult to tabulate
 Limit questions raising concern/negative issues
 Include a section for general comments
 Test the questionnaire in advance on a small group before
finalizing it
 Use signed questionnaires when the SA need to know who the
respondents are in order to match or correlate information
 Use anonymous questionnaires for sensitive and controversial
topics
 Documents review
- Records and reports can provide analysts with valuable information
about the organization and its business operations.
- In document review, SA examines information that has been
recorded about the system and users.
- Records include written policy, manuals, regulations and standard
operating procedures used by most organizations as a guide for
managers and employees.
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- Sometimes the documented records can be out-dated. Thus, it
might be no longer in use or the actual practices might not comply
to the system documentation.
- SA should review copies of the actual forms and operating
documents that are currently used in the system. Both blank copies
of forms and samples of actual completed forms should be
collected.
 Observation
- Refer to observing the current operating procedures, in order to
have a fully understanding of the system’s operation.
- Seeing the system in action gives an additional perspective to
supplement what we have heard and read from interview,
observation or questionnaires.
- By personal observation, SA could verify statements made in
interviews as well as determine if procedures operate as specified
in the system documentation.
- SA might even discover if the system documentation and the
statements from interviewed truly reflect the system in operations.
- Through observation, we might correct any misconceptions or
erroneous impressions.
- Plan the observation in advance by preparing a checklist of the
steps that wanted to be observed and the questions to be asked.
- Observation checklists:
 Ask sufficient questions about present system operation so
that you have a complete understanding of the present
system operation
 Observe all steps in the processing cycle – documents,
inputs, outputs, processes involved
 Examine each form, record, and report – determine the
purpose of each item
 Consider each person working with the system
 Talk to people who receive current reports
- Thus, workers might tend to be more hardworking as they are
being observed. Also, sometimes, the workers can be nervous and
make more mistakes when being observed.
 Research
 Journals, periodicals, books – to obtain background information,
technical material, news about industry trends and developments
 Internet sites of hardware and software vendors – to obtain
information about product and services offered
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 Independent firms - provide information and links to hundreds of
hardware and software vendors
 Newsgroups – exchanging information with other professionals;
seeking answers to questions
 Professional meetings, seminars, discussions – to obtain solution
from other IT professionals
 Site visits - to observe a system in use at another location and
obtain important information on considering the purchase of any
new software package
 Sampling
 Is a process to collect examples of actual documents/material and
right candidates from a gigantic pool of resources.
 Main objective is to ensure that it represents the overall population
accurately
 Can be considered when using interviews and questionnaires
 Sampling techniques :
i) Systematic sample
 Select every tenth customer for review
ii) Stratified sample
 Select five customers from each of four ZIP codes
iii) Random sample
 Randomly select any 20 customers
5.4 Fact Recording Methods

Facts about the existing system must be recorded/documented so
that they can be referred to during the subsequent stages.

Often, systems analyst use specialised forms for documenting a
system such as special forms for interviews and special forms for
summarising document contents.

One type of documentation is a narrative in a list format in which
you make suggestions for improvement.

Other forms do documentation includes diagrams, flowcharts,
sample forms and so on.
5.4.1 Example Of Fact Recording Tools
1.
Narrative Description
2.
Flowcharts eg. System flowchart, program flowchart, clerical
procedural flowchart.
3.
Data Flow Diagram
4.
Data Dictionary
5.
Graphs and Histograms
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7.
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Decision Tables
Decision Tree
Narrative Description

It is sometimes necessary to document in narrative form the
interviews undertaken with users and their representatives.

This documentation, if done to a high standard, will give and
insight into attitudes and interests of the user population which
might be valuable to the design team.
Consider an order processing system. Whenever an order is
received the system should first check to determine if payment has
been received with the other. There are two possibilities – yes and
no – which lead on to differing responses.
If payment were included with the order, the system would then
have to check on the availability of the items ordered. Here there
are two further possibilities – the items can be in stock or not.
If the item is in stock, they would then be shipped or delivered to
the customer.
If the item is not in stock, a record of the customer’s order to be
made so that the item will be despatched when stock becomes
available.
If the customer has not included payment with order a similar set
of activities would be undertaken but they would be preceded by
credit evaluations.
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System Flowcharts

At high-level systems flowcharts, showing inputs, outputs and
main processes in each section or department, are useful in giving
an overall picture.

The connecting lines describe the flow of information between
systems components.

At this level it is not necessary to show the decisions which are
made at each processing stage: this is much better left to a detailed
logic chart, decision table, decision tree or structured text form
specification.
Data Flow Diagram

To avoid an over concentration on the existing physical system it
may be worthwhile including data flow diagram at this stage.

This technique differs from conventional flowcharting in that the
symbols do not show people or equipment used but the data and
the transformation of that data in the system.
Data Dictionary

To reinforce the importance of data in an information system it
may be useful at an early stage to construct a data dictionary.

This is essentially a file listing data items and properties such as
record name to which the data belongs, where kept, uses, volumes,
restrictions, origin, etc
Graphs and Histograms

In addition to the above, the use of statistical techniques such as
graphs and histograms may be helpful in predicting future
workload based on present and past volumes of activity.

This would be important in deciding capacity requirements of the
new system, and it may be necessary to sampling techniques of
past records to achieve a measure of accuracy in these predictions.
5.5 Prototyping

In some cases, gathering complete and accurate requirements are
not possible.

User may not be able to accurately provide the new requirements,
irrespective the amount effort being made.

This is because it is not possible for the user to visualize how the
system would work.

Prototyping help the user to visualize how the proposed system
will work via prototype.
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Prototype is an actual working model of the system.
Some prototype may not be functionality complete, so to allow the
model to be used in a “live” setting but some prototype may
eventually implement as the new information system.
Prototyping process





Establish
Prototype
Objective
Define
Prototype
Functionality
Develop
Prototype
Evaluate
Prototype
Prototyping
Plan
Outline
Definition
Executable
Prototype
Evaluation
Report
Prototyping is an interactive process.
It begins by establishing the prototype objectives. And then, define
the prototype functionality.
Then, we build an initial prototype, based on initial requirements
consolidated.
The prototype is revised and evaluated fairly rapidly, usually in a
matter of weeks.
Refinement of the requirements will be made and effected by
revising the prototype.
 Advantages
- User orientation
 It could develop systems that meet user needs to a greater
extent.
- Fast development time
 It can take a few weeks or months to obtain meaningful results
compared to the traditional approach, which can take years for
the complete system to be operations.
- Fewer errors
 It reduces the percentage of error occurrence.
 With the conventional fact-finding approach, miscommunicated
system requirements, wrong requirements interpretation and
incorrect translation from design to coding may go undetected
until the end of the development process, which could take
years.
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- More opportunity for changes
 It allows errors to be detected earlier.
 User can see and work with the outputs from each subsystem or
component as it is being developed, enabling the user to suggest
changes during the development process.
 Disadvantages
- Demand high co-operations between users and the developer
 It required time that some users may not be able or not wanted
to spend.
- Total development costs can be higher
 Users are constantly making changes to the system.
 This may result a longer development time.
- No or poor documentation
 Prototyping is an interactive process, constant updates of
documentation is difficult.
 Systems developers tend to avoid the documentation completely
or produced an incomplete one.
 Thus, results in prior or on documentation at all.
5.6 Conventional SDLC Versus Prototyping Approach

Conventional approach should be used when the degree of user
experience with systems development is high. The management
and the system users should have average knowledge of computers.
It is also useful when system requirements are well defined.
However, it could be too time consuming in this conventional
approach.

When system requirements are unclear, prototyping may be the
best candidate. If immediate results are needed, prototyping is
preferred. Prototyping is also useful for projects with a large
number of alternatives to be chosen from. Prototyping tends to
concentrate more on the human interface aspect of a system
development project.
5.7 Joint Application Development (JAD)

Involve a task force of users, manager and IT professionals that
work together to gather information, discuss business need and
define the new system requirements.

A JAD team usually meets over a period of days or weeks in a
special conference room or at an off-site location to analyse the
existing system, work on potential solution and agree on
requirements for the new system.
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JAD Advantages and Disadvantages
- More expensive and can be cumbersome especially the group is
too large relative to the size of project.
- Allows key users to participate effectively
- When properly used, JAD can result in a more accurate
statement of system requirements, a better understanding of
common goals, and a stronger commitment to the success of the
new system.
Review Questions
1.
How to do business analysis in an organization?
2.
Discuss the various fact finding techniques.
3.
List the examples of fact finding tools.
4.
What is prototyping process and explain this process?
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