Article about (DESIGN STAGE) in a Systems Life Cycle

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System Life Cycle ( Analysis )

Analysis is the process of examining a system and collecting information about it to know how it works, the way its processed and the what are its outputs, so that it could be decided what kind of computer system shall be used.
As mentioned before,Analysis involves the examining of a system in detail. and to succesfully examine a system, these stages/steps must be followed:
1- Collecting information about how the system works.
2-Establishing its inputs , outputs and processing.
3-Recording information.
4-identifying problems.


The first step in system analysis is collecting information - as mentioned up - and there are 4 methods of collecting information about the system, they are:


1-Examination of Documents: Examining all the documents in a system, this will help the analyst to identify the outputs and inputs of the system and that moment.

2-interviews: interviewing workers and ask them questions about the way the system works , but asking all the workers will take a lot of time,instead, key personnel or representatives of the other workers can be interviewed with, and questions can be changed because interviewing is a flexible method. ( the next question can be asked according to the answer of the worker interviewed )

3-Observation: Watching all the workers do their job and investigating the way each individual work and how workers interact with each other, this will enable the analyst to see the system as a whole.

4-Questionnaires: by making perfectly phrased questions to get the desired kind of information,or a list of answers can be mentioned and the worker will chose the one he wants, the questions are wrote down in a paper and then given to all workers so that they answer according to the questions. The making of the questions may take some time but once the papers are spread among the workers, a lot of information will be given. The problem of this way is that questions cannot be changed according to the answers of the workers, therefor its not a flexible way of gathering information.