Sunday, January 22, 2012

System Analysis and Design: Assignment 2

System analyst has a major and general role for making the IT industry so progressive nowadays. Having the accurate one is the best thing to define well the system analyst. These facts are from slideshare.net. This is very usable to make people aware of how important they are in computer industry. The precision of definition is enough to us to widen our knowledge about these matters. These are the following roles. First, the role of an analyst is to help organizations understand the challenges before them to make this transition and to ensure that the needs and expectations of the client are represented correctly in the final solution. Working this kind of matter is very essential for making a good and precise plan for these. Second, each company needs to define the specific roles and responsibilities that an analyst plays in their organization. However, the general roles and responsibilities of an analyst are defined below. Defining the roles first in the early part of planning is very important too. Third, in general, the analyst is responsible for ensuring that the requirements set forth by the business are captured and documented correctly before the solution is developed and implemented. One of the most important things in doing a project is making the documentations more effective and efficient way so that the clients are very excited for the output of their expectations. Fourth, in some companies, this person might be called a Business Analyst, Business Systems Analyst, Systems Analyst or a Requirements Analyst. Thus, it means this kind of analyst is very important in business industries. They are very in demand in this field where as their brilliant mind and skills are much needed. Fifth, while each of these titles has their particular nuances, the main responsibility of each is the same to capture and document the requirements needed to implement a solution to meet the clients' business needs. In this situation, it emphasizes that making documentations is also the process of very tiring days of rigid planning, without these one, it might absolutely the project would not meet the customer’s needs and requirements Sixth, if requirements are not captured and documented, the analyst is accountable.  If the solution meets the documented requirements, but the solution still does not adequately represent the requirements of the client, the analyst is accountable.      Another role is, Process Responsibilities. Once the Analysis Phase begins, the analyst plays a key role in making sure that the overall project successfully meets the client needs. These include analyzing and understanding the current state processes to ensure that the context and implications of change are understood by the clients and the project team. Developing an understanding of how present and future business needs will impact the solution. Identifying the sources of requirements and understanding how roles help determine the relative validity of requirements. Developing a Requirements Management Plan and disseminating the Plan to all stakeholders. Then, identifying and documenting all business, technical, product and process requirements. Working with the client to prioritize and rationalize the requirements. Helping to define acceptance criteria for completion of the solution. Again, this does not mean that the analyst physically does all of this work. There may be other people on the team that contribute, including the project manager. However, if the finished solution is missing features, or if the solution does not resolve the business need, then the analyst is the person held accountable. Pertaining to analyst skills, generally, analysts must have a good set of people skills, business skills, technical skills and soft skills to be successful. These include having good verbal and written communication skills, including active listening skills. Being well organized and knowing good processes to complete the work needed for the project. Building effective relationships with clients to develop joint vision for the project. Assisting the project manager by managing client expectations through careful and proactive communications regarding requirements and changes. Negotiating skills to build a final consensus on a common set of requirements from all clients and stakeholders. Ensuring that stakeholders know the implications of their decisions, and providing options and alternatives when necessary.
In general term, a system analyst, recommends software and systems, researches, problems, plans solutions, and coordinates development to meet business or other requirements. They will be familiar with multiple varieties of programming languages, operating systems, and computer hardware platforms. Because they often write user requests into technical specifications, the systems analyst are the liaisons between vendors and information technology professionals. They may be responsible for developing cost analysis, design considerations, and implementation time-lines. System Analyst, in an IT Business Analyst, they are more focused on system design and the technical aspects of the solution. Their role is mostly system solution centric which means it does not generally participate in the requirements gathering process, and is involved in the creation of functional and technical specifications. This is the professional who, once requirements are clearly defined, crates the functional solution, and by working with the technical team architect and developers, creates technical specifications and designs. For short, to make the facts short, generally, the system analyst may plan a system flow from the ground up. Interact with the customers to learn and document requirements that are then used to produce business requirements documents. Write technical requirements from a critical phase. Interact with designers to understand software limitations. Help programmers during system development, examples are provide use cases, flowcharts or even Database design. They perform system testing and deploy the completed system with sample/live data with the help of testers. Document requirement or contribute to user manuals. Whenever a development process is conducted, the system analyst is responsible for designing components and providing that information to the developer. Implement the new system, and they prepare high quality documentation. Working as a system analyst has many considerations. Having a system analyst of working a big project, the company could really benefit it a lot. First thing first, the data gathered can be highly reliable, without system analyst this can’t be happened in a more organized way. Secondly, the system analyst could able to see what is being done. Third, their observations are less expensive compared to other techniques. And the last but not the least, it allows the system analyst to do work measurement. For this case, working as a system analyst has also the disadvantages of making the project. First, the people or the workers feel uncomfortable and uneasy being watched by others. Workers might feel very conscious about their doings on how they will handle it during those times. They might perform differently when bring observed. However, the work being observed may not involve the level of difficulty or volume normally experienced during that time period. Second, some activities may take place at odd times. It might be inconvenience for the system analyst. The task being observed is subjected to type of interruptions. Yet, some task may not be in the manner n which they are observed. Lastly, Sometimes people act temporarily and perform job correctly when they are being observed. They might actually violate the standard of manner. 
As we had interviewed Ms. Sharon Lei Lomantas, I fully understood now the lectures and the teachings of our instructor of SAD subject and the reports of our classmates because she have much experienced of being a System Analyst in the office of City Information Technology Center in Davao City Hall Office. Ms. Lomantas was graduated in AMA on 1994 with a course of Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and she started working in City Information and Technology Center in Davao City Hall on 1994 also and in this present she’s an Information System Analyst III in CITC. Their projects were Motorized Tricycle Franchising System, Senior Citizens ID System, DCG Web Portal, Infrastructure Project Monitoring System, Davao City Animal Profile Information System, and a lot more because they have done a lot of projects since their team in CITC worked in Davao City Hall. As we are discussing the works as a System Analyst, there are lots of hard decisions to be made to make the project more efficient and successful. In the office of CITC in Davao City Hall, there are also lots of programmers and they are all in one team. We also ask the question of Mr. Gamboa about the best decision to choose by a System Analyst if the company is giving a project in a small budget, and her answer fits the answer of Mr. Gamboa that a System Analyst must always think any possible alternatives to fit the cost of the project to the amount of budget given by the client. And as a System Analyst, when proposing a project to the stakeholders or clients, they must also present lots of solutions or possible alternatives for the clients to choose what best alternatives they must implement in the project. In choosing a different system development life cycle models, it depends on the different kinds of project to work on what specific SDLC model we must implement because each SDLC model has a specific functions and rules to follow in creating a software projects. And she suggests as a beginner, we must use the traditional model to safely implement and finish the project we are trying to work. She also discussed that it is not advisable to the programmer to use multiple SDLC model in one specific project because it may cause confusion in using different tasks and process in each SDLC model, and it may also result in the failure of the project because there is no specific goal if using a multiple SDLC models. It is possible for the team of programmers to use a hybrid SDLC model if they are already experts in creating different software projects in their professions but they must set a goal in the project if they are using a hybrid model. And she gives an advice to us in working project software that we must have a thorough planning in working such a project because one of the reasons of failure in the project is on the spot work of a project without a clear planning phase of the project. And another discussion she discussed about the work of the system analyst is that the system analyst doesn’t always involved in doing a programming task in creating a project, but it depends on the  task that the project manager or the company and organization he is working with told him what task he must do in the project. But probably the system analyst is the one who do the entire data gathering for the project and must guide the flow of the system development than doing the programming tasks. The responsibility of the system analyst in the project is to gather data from the planned company project and ensure that the collected data is reliable for them to create a secure and correct output of the proposed system. And if there is a chance that there is a problem occurs in the system, the system analyst has an obligation to review the system until he find the error that they encounter the project, and he must help all the type in the system developer because the work of the system analyst is the first platform of the development of the system. They have given us a copy of their CITC Development Guidelines that was saved in MS Excel but we cannot post it in blog or any public website because of the ownership of this file and we are the only one in our group that they give us an authority to have a copy of this. But despite on that matter, I only summarize the details that their CITC Development Guidelines followed in their respective projects they had worked on. They used an Agile Model Driven Development, there are five phases AMDD Cycle and these were Initial Requirements, Envisioning, Initial Architectural Envisioning, Iteration Model, and Model Storming. In Initial Requirements, they must identify the high-level scope of the project. In Envisioning, they identify the initial requirements stack and an architectural vision. In Initial Architectural Envisioning, they are now working the technology diagram, user-interface model, domain model, and etc. In Iteration Model, they are integrating the modeling in iteration effort, and they need to model enough to give good estimates and to plan the work for the iteration. This was also the task of user-interface prototype and physical data model. In Model Storming, they work through specific issues in JIT manner; the stakeholders are actively participating, and the requirements are evolving throughout the project.  We had also interviewed Mr. Pabilona about this topic and he said that to be an effective system analyst, according to Mr. Ariel Pabilona, the person must first experience to be a system developer in a project for them to know the process and the work of a system analyst because each work that had done by the system developer must first be approved by the system analyst and the flow of the process in the system. Because the system developer and the system analyst is a partner in the team and the system developer always depends on the work of the system analyst because the system analyst is the researcher and the one gathering data for the project and the work of the system developer always based on the work of the system analyst. That is why to be an effective system analyst must first experience as a system developer in a project.

Interviewed person:
Ms. Sharon Lei Lomantas
Mr. Ariel Pabilona




References:
http://www.slideshare.net/infinityrulz/roles-responsibilities-of-system-analyst-3043450
http://www.modernanalyst.com/TheProfession/Roles/SystemsAnalyst/tabid/184/Default.aspx

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