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… [Continue Reading]
Quality Assurance and Implementation
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,… [Continue Reading]
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… [Continue Reading]
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… [Continue Reading]
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… [Continue Reading]
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…. [Continue Reading]
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… [Continue Reading]
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… [Continue Reading]
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… [Continue Reading]
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… [Continue Reading]
Implementing Distributed Systems – Client-Server Technology
If the reliability of a telecommunications network is high, it is possible to have distributed systems for businesses, a setup that can be conceived of as an application of telecommunications. The concept of distributed systems is used in many different ways. Here it will be taken in a broad sense so that it includes workstations… [Continue Reading]
Cloud Computing – Distributed Systems
The most rapidly growing type of computing is cloud computing. Cloud computing has been described as a metaphor for the Internet, since the Internet is often drawn as a cloud in network diagrams. Using cloud computing, organizations and individual users can use Web services, database services, and application services over the Internet, without having to… [Continue Reading]
Network Modeling – Distributed Systems
Because networking has become so important, the systems designer needs to consider network design. Whether a systems designer gets involved with decisions about the configurations of networks—or whether he or she worries about hardware such as routers and bridges that must be in place when networks meet—the systems designer must always consider the logical design… [Continue Reading]
Training Users/ Strategies & Guidelines
Systems analysts engage in an educational process with users that is called training. Throughout the systems development life cycle, the user has been involved so that by now the analyst should possess an accurate assessment of the users who must be trained. In the implementation of large projects, the analyst will often be managing the… [Continue Reading]
Conversion to a New System
A third approach to implementation is physically converting the old information system to the new or modified one. There are many conversion strategies available to analysts, and also a contingency approach that takes into account several user and organizational variables in deciding which conversion strategy to use. There is no single best way to proceed… [Continue Reading]
Security Concerns for Traditional and Web-Based Systems
Security of computer facilities, stored data, and the information generated is part of a successful conversion. Recognition of the need for security is a natural outgrowth of the belief that information is a key organizational resource, as discussed in Chapter “Systems, Roles and Development Methodologies“. With increasingly complex transactions and many innovative exchanges, the Web… [Continue Reading]
Disaster Recovery Planning – Quality Assurance
No matter how diligently you and your organizational colleagues work to ensure the security and stability of systems, all employees and systems are inevitably vulnerable to some kind of natural or human-made disaster that threatens security as well as the very functioning of the business. Some disasters are quite common, such as power outages, and… [Continue Reading]
Evaluation Techniques & Information System Utility Approach
Throughout the systems development life cycle, the analyst, management, and users have been evaluating the evolving information systems and networks to give feedback for their eventual improvement. Evaluation is also called for following system implementation. Evaluation Techniques In recognition that the ongoing evaluation of information systems and networks is important, many evaluation techniques have been… [Continue Reading]
Evaluating Corporate Web Sites
Evaluating the corporate Web site that you are developing or maintaining is an important part of any successful implementation effort. Analysts can use the information system utility approach previously described to assess the aesthetic qualities, content, and delivery of the site. As an analyst or Webmaster, you should go one step further and analyze Web… [Continue Reading]
