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6 Part 1 • SyStemS analySiS FundamentalS

the knowledge obtained, estimating the scope of the project, and documenting the results. The
output of this phase is a feasibility report that contains a problem definition and summarizes the
objectives. Management must then make a decision on whether to proceed with the proposed
project. If the user group does not have sufficient funds in its budget or if it wishes to tackle unre-
lated problems, or if the problems do not require a computer system, a different solution may be
recommended, and the systems project does not proceed any further.

Determining Human Information Requirements
The next phase the analyst enters involves determining the human needs of the users involved,
using a variety of tools to understand how users interact in the work context with their current
information systems. The analyst will use interactive methods such as interviewing, sampling
and investigating hard data, and using questionnaires, along with unobtrusive methods, such as
observing decision makers’ behavior and their office environments, and all-encompassing meth-
ods, such as prototyping.
The analyst will use these methods to pose and answer many questions concerning HCI,
including questions such as, “What are the users’ physical strengths and limitations?” In other
words, “What needs to be done to make the system audible, legible, and safe?” “How can the
new system be designed to be easy to use, learn, and remember?” “How can the system be made
pleasing or even fun to use?” “How can the system support a user’s individual work tasks and
make them more productive in new ways?”
In the information requirements phase of the SDLC, the analyst is striving to understand
what information users need to perform their jobs. At this point, the analyst is examining how
to make the system useful to the people involved. How can the system better support individual
tasks that need to be done? What new tasks are enabled by the new system that users were
unable to do without it? How can the new system be created to extend a user’s capabilities
beyond what the old system provided? How can the analyst create a system that is rewarding
for workers to use?
The people involved in this phase are the analysts and users, typically operations managers
and operations workers. The systems analyst needs to know the details of current system func-
tions: the who (the people who are involved), what (the business activity), where (the environ-
ment in which the work takes place), when (the timing), and how (how the current procedures
are performed) of the business under study. The analyst must then ask why the business uses the
current system. There may be good reasons for doing business using the current methods, and
these should be considered when designing any new system.
Agile development is an object-oriented approach (OOA) to systems development that
includes a method of development (including generating information requirements) as well as
software tools. In this text, it is paired with prototyping in Chapter 6. (There is more about
object-oriented approaches in Chapter 10.)
If the reason for current operations is that “it’s always been done that way,” however, the
analyst may wish to improve on the procedures. At the completion of this phase, the analyst
should understand how users accomplish their work when interacting with a computer and begin
to know how to make the new system more useful and usable. The analyst should also know how
the business functions and have complete information on the people, goals, data, and procedures
involved.

Analyzing System Needs
The next phase that the systems analyst undertakes involves analyzing system needs. Again,
special tools and techniques help the analyst make requirement determinations. Tools such
as data flow diagrams (DFDs) to chart the input, processes, and output of the business’s
functions, or activity diagrams or sequence diagrams to show the sequence of events, illus-
trate systems in a structured, graphical form. From data flow, sequence, or other diagrams,
a data dictionary is developed that lists all the data items used in the system, as well as their
specifications.
During this phase the systems analyst also analyzes the structured decisions made. Structured
decisions are those for which the conditions, condition alternatives, actions, and action rules
can be determined. There are three major tools for analyzing structured decisions: structured
English, decision tables, and decision trees.