Quality Assurance and Implementation

Quality has long been a concern of businesses, as it should be for systems analysts in the analysis and design of information systems. The user of the information system is the single most important factor in establishing and evaluating its quality. It is far less costly to correct problems in their early stages than it […]

The Total Quality Management Approach – Six Sigma

Total quality management (TQM) is essential throughout all the systems development steps. According to Evans and Lindsay (2004), the primary elements of TQM are meaningful only when occurring in an organizational context that supports a comprehensive quality effort. It is in this context that the elements of customer focus, strategic planning and leadership, continuous improvement, […]

Responsibility for Total Quality Management

Practically speaking, a large portion of the responsibility for the quality of information systems rests with systems users and management. Two things must happen for TQM to become a reality with systems projects. First, the full organizational support of management must exist, which is a departure from merely endorsing the newest management gimmick. Such support […]

Top-Down Systems Design and Development

Many companies first introduced computer systems on the lowest level of the organization. This is where the immediate benefits to computerization are most observable and cost-effective. Businesses often take this approach to systems development by going out and acquiring, for example, COTS software for accounting, a different package for production scheduling, and another one for […]

Using Structure Charts to Design Modular Systems

Once the top-down design approach is taken, the modular approach is useful in programming. This approach involves breaking the programming into logical, manageable portions, or modules. This kind of programming works well with top-down design because it emphasizes the interfaces between modules and does not neglect them until later in systems development. Ideally, each individual […]

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)

Modular development has led to a concept called service-oriented architecture (SOA), but one that is very different from the modules in the structure chart. Instead of being hierarchical like the top-down approach found in structure charts, the SOA approach is to make individual SOA services that are unassociated or only loosely coupled to one another. […]

Documentation Approaches

The total quality assurance effort requires that programs be documented properly. Software, systems, and formal and informal procedures need to be documented so that systems can be maintained and improved. Documentation allows users, programmers, and analysts to “see” the system, its software, and procedures without having to interact with it. Turnover of information service personnel […]

The FOLKLORE Documentation Method

FOLKLORE is a systems documentation technique that was created to supplement some of the techniques just covered. Even with the plethora of techniques available, many systems are inadequately documented or not documented at all. FOLKLORE gathers information that is often shared among users but is seldom written down. FOLKLORE was first developed in the 1980s […]

The Testing Process – Quality Assurance

All the system’s newly written or modified application programs—as well as new procedural manuals, new hardware, and all system interfaces—must be tested thoroughly. Haphazard, trial-and-error testing will not suffice. Testing is done throughout systems development, not just at the end. It is meant to turn up heretofore unknown problems, not to demonstrate the perfection of […]

Maintenance Practices & Auditing – Quality Assurance

Your objective as a systems analyst should be to install or modify systems that have a reasonably useful life. You want to create a system whose design is comprehensive and farsighted enough to serve current and projected user needs for several years to come. Part of your expertise should be used to project what those […]