Beginning a Study
Determining Basic Requirements
Analysts structure their investigation by seeking answers to four major questions.
• What is the basic business process?
• What data are used or produced during that process?
• What are the limits imposed by time and the volume of work?
• What performance controls are used?
Understanding the process
Beginning with the basics, analysts must ask questions which describe and provide a background of fundamental details about the system.
For example:
• What is the purpose of this business activity?
• What steps are performed?
• Where are they performed?
• Who performs them?
• How long does it take?
• How often is performed?
• Who uses the resulting information?
By applying these questions in an example investigation of a stock reordering system shows how a broad understanding of the situation is gained.
Q: What is the purpose of stock reordering?
A: To ensure that adequate quantities of stock and materials are on hand and available for use without carrying an excessive and therefore costly quantity.
Q: What steps are performed?
A: Verifying stock on hand. Determining future requirements and optimum times to place orders. Determining economic quantities to order.
Q: Where are they performed?
A: The purchasing department, using information provided by manufacturing, sales and inventory staff members, as well as by its own records, handles ordering and lead time projections.
Q: Who performs them?
A: Purchasing managers approve all orders. Stock managers assemble buying instructions and write orders.
Q: How long does it take?
A: The process may take a few minutes for simple and routine orders or may require hours for orders involving a new or high-priced item or other special circumstances.
Q: How often is it done?
A: This is a continuous process. Different items are always being ordered.
Q: Who uses the resulting information?
A: Information produced as a by-product of this process is used to manage inventory, schedule services and manufacturing, monitor purchasing and pay suppliers, as well as meet unexpected requirements for purchasing and inventory reorder information.
Identify Data Used and Information Produced
Analysts next need to determine which data are used to perform each activity. For example, to reorder stock, the buyer might require data describing:
* the quantity of an item on hand
* expected demand for the item
* supplier name
* item cost
To know when to place an order, the buyer would also consider the necessary lead time (how far in advance to order an item so it is delivered in time).
Most business transactions produce additional information which is useful to managers in evaluating employee, business and systems performance and may be useful in a different context to both management and analyst. For example, data about stock reordering may also provide information about warehouse demands, purchasing practices, sales and cash flow.
Determine Process Timing and Volume
The frequency of business activities varies greatly. For example, some activities, such as paying taxes, occur only a few times a year, whereas paying employees may be a weekly activity. Therefore, analysts should learn how often the activity is repeated. Knowing whether an activity occurs frequently may lead the analyst to raise many additional questions to determine the reason for the frequency and its effect on business activities.
Probably the easiest way to get this information is to identify the reason for the activity: What causes the activity to be performed? This is sometimes referred to as the trigger function. Activities may be triggered by customers (through orders, telephone calls or letters), by events (the completion of an application to open a new bank, charge or credit account), and by the passage of time (the ending of the day, week or month). Unless analysts know what triggers an activity, the reason for the activity may be misunderstood and the activity afforded either more or less significance in the system than it deserves.
The volume of items to be handled may increase the amount of time needed to complete the activity. Savings Banks prepare consumer account statements (summaries of deposits, withdrawals etc.) only four times a year. Although the frequency of this activity is very low the volume of work is very high. The sheer quantity of items making up an activity can produce special problems for the analyst to study even though the activity occurs infrequently.
Identify Controls
In business situations that are well controlled either by management or process monitoring, determining whether an activity has been performed properly may be no problem. But during the analysis stage, analysts must examine control methods:
• Are there specific performance standards?
• Who compares performance against standards?
• How are mistakes caught?
• How are errors handled?
• Are the errors excessive?
Weak or missing controls are an important discovery in any systems investigation.
Organisation-Wide Requirements
In business, departments depend on each other to provide services, manufacture products and satisfy customers. Therefore, the work that one department does affects other departments. When analysts study systems for one department, they also assess the implications for other departments the interact with the system under investigation. Sometimes systems involve work that takes place across several departments. In other instances, systems that operate separately depend on data provided from other departments. It is the analysts responsibility to identify dependencies between departments and determine how a systems project may affect them.