You are required to analyse the effectiveness of the Qantas Online Air Ticketing system. To do this you are required to employ at least two data gathering techniques, one of which must be observation. You will need to research the existing online ticketing system and other information you can find about the airline. You also need to observe how at least three (3) users interact with the system. Suppose the 3 users want to travel to different cities. You need to script two or more scenarios for these users, and then observe their interaction. For instance, two possible scenarios might be as follows:
(A) You want to travel to the Whitsundays next Friday. Before reserving your seat, you want to be sure that you can finish packing without rushing it, and reach the airport on time. You therefore want to find out when your flight is departing on that day.
(B) You want to check-in online, so that you don't have to queue at the airport, but can go straight to the boarding gates. Without going through to finalising the payment, see if your participants can check-in.
Amongst the information sought are answers to the following questions.
Questions you need to address are:
1. What are the major business objectives and processes (operations) that the airline company carries out?
2. List the information systems and subsystems that are used to support their portal and describe how they are related to the overall business objectives and processes.
3. Detail the scenarios you developed and how the users you observed interacted with the system, when carrying out the tasks of those scenarios.
4. Recommend improvements to the system and describe the analytic consequences. For instance, not all airlines provide systems for online check-in. If the company were to add such functionality, what do the analysts need to consider?
5. Describe the stakeholders involved. Who are they? Why do analysts need to consider their interests?
6. Discuss, in detail, the data collection techniques you used to answer the above questions.
Rationale
This assessment task covers topics 1 to 8 and has been designed to ensure that you are engaging with the subject content on a regular basis. More specifically it seeks to assess your ability to:
develop and test your ability to research the role of information systems in solving business problems
describe the purpose of systems analysis and design in the development of information systems and identify the list of stakeholders
identify some data gathering techniques you will also learn about the role of the system analyst in the development of information systems.