Chapter 6

Systems Development
 Agenda
• Systems Development Concepts
• Challenges in Systems Development
• Types of System Development Methods
– Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
– Rapid Application Development (RAD)
– Object Oriented Development (OOD)
– Extreme Programming (EP)
 Systems Development Concepts
• A process for creating and maintaining
information systems not only computer program
• Computer program: three components
(hardware, software, and data)
• Information systems
– Five components (hardware, software, data,
procedures, and people)
– Never off-the-shelf
– Fit the business objective and user’s requirements
• Maintenance information systems: fix the
problem and adopt change
 Scales of Information Systems

System Type Description

Personal Supports one person with limited set of

requirements
Workgroup Supports a group of people normally with a
single application
Enterprise Supports many workgroups with many
different applications

Interenterprise Supports many different organizations with

many different cultures, different countries
and heritages
 Systems Development Challenges
• Determining requirements
• Estimating schedule and budget
• Changing technology
• Diseconomics of scale
– As the development teams become larger, the
average contribution per worker decreases
– Brooks’s Law: adding more people to a late
project makes the project later
– Training and coordination
 Types of System Development
Methods
• Four major methods
– Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
– Rapid Application Development (RAD)
– Object Oriented Development (OOD)
– Extreme Programming (EP)
• No single method works for all information
systems
 Systems Development Life Cycle
• Classical approach
• Five phases
– System definition
– Requirements analysis
– Component design
– Implementation
– Maintenance
• Problems
Five Phases in the SDLC
 System Definition Phase
• Define project
– Goals and objectives
– Scope–statement of work
• Assess feasibility
– Cost (budget)
– Organizational (operational)
– Schedule
– Technical
• Form a project team
– Project manager
– In-house IT staff
– Outside consultants and staff (as needed)
– User representatives (management and staff)
System Definition Phase
 Requirement Analysis Phase
• The most important phase
• Conduct user interviews
• Evaluate existing systems
• Determine new forms/reports/queries
• Identify new application features and functions
• Consider security
• Create data model
• Develop requirements for the five components
• Obtain user approval
Requirements Analysis Phase
 Component Design Phase
• Design five components
– Hardware specifications (processing computer and
network)
– Software specifications (source and code)
– Create data model and database
– Normal, backup, recovery for both user and operator
– Job description of duty and responsibility for both user
and operator
• Determine alternatives
• Evaluate each alternative against requirements
• Select the best alternative that meets the
requirements
 Security Consideration
• Users authentication
• User groups
• Primary system features and functions
• System restrictions (minimum rights)
• Permissions to user groups for specific
features and functions
Component Design Phase
 Implementation Phase - I
• Build, test, and convert to the new system
• User training document review and test
procedures
• System testing
– Test plan
– IT professional, user
– Product quality assurance (PQA)
– Normal and incorrect action
– Beta testing
 Implementation Phase - II
• System conversion
– Pilot: control negative impact
– Phase
– Parallel: save but expensive
– Plunge (direct): new system only
Implementation Phase
 Maintenance Phase
• Fixing the system to work correctly or adapting
the system to changes in requirements
• Tracking failure or enhancement requests for all
five components
• Prioritize requests
• Fixing failures
– Patch: high priority failures
– Service pack: low priority failures
– New release: major enhancements
System Maintenance Phase
 SDLC Problems
• A need to crawl back up the waterfall
• Unusable documenting requirements
• Scheduling and budgeting difficulty
 Rapid Application Development
(RAD)
• Proposed by James Martin
• Characteristics
– Break up the design and implementation phases of
the SDLC into smaller pieces
– Continuous user involvement
– Prototype
– Joint application design: user, developer and PQA
personnel
– Use CASE and visual development tools with
repository and code generator (computer assisted
software engineering or computer assisted systems
engineering)
Martin’s RAD Process
 Object Oriented Development
• From discipline of object-oriented programming for
designing and writing programs
• Unified Modeling Language (UML): a series of
diagramming techniques to facilitate OOP development
• Unified Process (UP): for developing computer program
not information systems with five phases
– Inception phase: new system definition
– Elaboration phase: construct and test the framework and
architecture of most risk and uncertainty use case (requirement)
for the new system (a description of an application of new
system)
– Construction phase: low risk features and functions use case
(requirement)
– Transition phase: conversion
– Maintenance phase
Stages in the Unified Process
Unified Process Principles
 Extreme Programming
• An emerging technique for developing computer
programs
• Not useful for large scale development systems
that require business processes and procedures
• Characteristics
– Customer centric (customer working full time
in the development project
– Just-in-time-design for programming
– Paired programming to reduce error and
maintaining effort
Comparison of Development Techniques
 Discussion
• Ethics (155-156 and163a-b)
– State the pros and cons of the system development project for
the Baker, Barker, and Bickel in terms of the “time and material”
contract and the fixed cost contract.
– State your choice and reasons of the choice for the previous
question if you are bidding the systems development contract.
• Problem solving (165a-b)
– State the focus or attention as a future new system user in the
process of systems development.
• Opposing forces (171a-b)
– Should you be honest with the schedule and budget estimation
for an in-house systems development project (state the
reasons)?
– Create a schema or process to estimate the schedule and
budget for an systems development project.
• Security (179a-b)
– Create a security system of the future information system for the
Baker, Barker, and Bickel.
 Case Study
• Case 6-1 The Need for Technical
Feasibility (185-187): only 3 and 5
• Case 6-2 Slow learners, or What? (187-
189): only 2