Assignment:
You have to select a topic to perform research, plan and design a business information system during the first week of this course. Please refer to Week One of this Course Guide for some suggested example of this topic.
Focus of the Final Paper
Construct a system analysis paper based on your weekly presentations. Please note this is an individual paper. The paper should represent the research and recommendations you have performed for the proposed business information system over the previous four weeks in a cohesive format. Your paper should demonstrate critical thought. The paper should be 2400 to 3000 words, excluding the title, diagrams, and reference pages. The structure of the paper should be as follows:
• Cover Page
• Introduction
The introduction should familiarize the reader with the proposed business information system and outline the major points that you will cover in the paper. It should include your thesis statement. If you need assistance with writing a thesis statement, visit the Ashford Writing Center's website for help.
• Body
Make the suggested changes to the PowerPoint assignments for Weeks One through Four based on the constructive feedback provided by your instructor. Do not simply copy and paste your previous assignments into your final paper. Read your writing and improve upon what you have already written to connect everything learned in this class. Be sure that your paper addresses the following points.
o System Overview
Provide a brief overview of the proposed business information system and describe
What it would accomplish for the business organization
Who are the stakeholders in the proposed business information system
What are the business information system requirements
How the requirements are elicited, analyzed, documented, reviewed and confirmed
How would the business analyst ensure the business information system or solution satisfied all stakeholder requirements.
Explain which of the potential approaches to system development (computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tools, joint application design (JAD), rapid application development (RAD), participatory design (PD), or the use of Agile Methodologies should be considered for the proposed business information system design. Support your explanation with examples from your own experiences and/or from any scholarly journal citations.
Briefly discuss what each stage of the Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) approach would accomplish in your proposed business information system.
o Requirements Determination
Discuss the types of documents that would be useful to analyze for requirements gathering purposes and why they would be important. Additionally, discuss which documents would be possible to obtain as well as which ones would be difficult to obtain (think about the records and knowledge keeping within the organization, some information resides in specific documents while some is scattered throughout the organization).
Create a questionnaire that includes at least ten well-written questions that you can use for information gathering.
Explain your rationale for the style in which you wrote the questions.
Identify which modern requirements determination methods (Joint Application Design and/or Prototyping) would be appropriate for this business information system and explain why you think they would be suitable.
Using your proposed business information system scenario, discuss at least one example of each of the nine system characteristics:
What are the Components and Interrelated Components in the proposed business information system,
What would be the Boundary of the proposed business information system,
What is the Purpose of the proposed business information system,
What is the Environment of the proposed business information system,
What are the Interfaces of the proposed business information system,
What are the Constraints of the proposed business information system, and
What are the Inputs and Outputs to the proposed business information system
o Scope and Feasibility
Explain the proposed business information system's scope. Please refer to Table 4-3 in the text
Develop a business information system plan. Please refer to Table 4-4 in the text.
Assess the business information system's feasibility from the system analyst's perspective by using the six categories of feasibility factors (economic, operational, technical, schedule, legal and contractual, and political feasibility) outlined in the text (pp. 90-98)
Develop a Project Scope Statement for the proposed business information system, refer to Figure 4-12 in the text. Include the following categories in the statement:
General Project Information,
Problem/Opportunity Statement,
Project Objectives,
Project Description,
Business Benefits,
Project Deliverables, and
Estimated Project Duration.
o Diagrams
Develop a context-level data-flow diagram for the proposed system (use Fig. 6-5 in the text as a guide). You can use Microsoft PowerPoint to develop the data flow diagrams.
Develop a level-0 diagram for the proposed system (use Fig. 6-6 in the text as a guide).
Using the level-0 diagram that you previously constructed, select one of the level-0 processes and prepare a level-1 diagram (use Fig. 6-8 in the text as a guide).
o Data Modeling
For the proposed business information system and the data flow diagrams developed previously, consider potential customer transactions. Provide a list of all the entities (like supplier, customer, etc.) for which system will need to store information.
Identify a set of attributes for each entity listed above (like customer name, supplier phone). See pp. 197-199 in the text.
Specify an identifier (like employee ID, supplier phone, etc.) for each entity and explain the rules you applied when you selected the identifier. See pp. 199-201 in the text.
Develop an entity-relationship diagram for entity relationships. Be sure to specify the cardinalities for each relationship (use Fig. 7-10 in the text as a guide). Remember, cardinality of a relationship is the number of instances of an entity that can be associated with each instance of another entity.
o User Training and Maintenance
For a business analyst, it is also important to plan for training of all users of the system and develop a maintenance plan for the life of the system (use Table 10-5, and 10-6 in the text as a guide). Provide a brief suggested plan for user training.
For the proposed business information system, provide a brief plan for maintenance of the system (use Table 10-7 in the text as a guide).
To ensure readability, supply headings for each section of the body.
• Conclusion
In your conclusion, restate your thesis statement. Review your conclusions. Include any ideas you have about the business information system that you did not already discuss.
• References
Provide an APA-formatted reference list. In addition to the text, cite at least four additional scholarly references from the Ashford library to support your discussion.