Thursday, January 26, 2012

System Analysis and Design: Assignment 8


Use Case for Student Application
Actors: Student, UGTO Officer, Cashier
Description:  The student inquires requirements in UGTO so that they will know all they must give for the student application in the university. Then the UGTO will receive the given requirements of the student application and give the applicants their respective USEPAT schedule. All the applicants can take USEPAT exam if they pay a USEPAT fee in the cashier. Then the applicant will pay in the cashier and receive an official receipt for the proof in UGTO that they can now take a USEPAT exam. The very important requirements on the application in the university is that they must a high school graduate and can give a Form-138 for the proof of finishing high school and also a Certificate of Good Standing from the Principal’s office. If the applicant cannot provide on those requirements then they cannot continue in applying in the university.

Use Case for USEPAT Examination
Actors: Student, UGTO
Description:  After the UGTO has given a USEPAT schedule and their location or venue for examination then the student must arrive on those schedule he has given. After presenting the official receipt on the UGTO officer, then the applicant can now take the exam. The applicant must have a pencil for the exam. After taking the exam, the applicant will know if they can take and enroll a Bachelor’s Degree or Vocational courses depending on the result of the exam. The only thing that an applicant cannot take a USEPAT exam if they did not pay on the cashier for the USEPAT fee.

Use Case for English Bridge Program
Actors: Student, Institute of Language, Cashier
Description:  The applicant must present the USEPAT result in Institute of Language for the verification of enrolling the applicant on English Bridge Program if he has a failing grade on English test of USEPAT exam or giving him exemption of EBP if he passes the English test. For the applicant who must take the EBP must first pay in the cashier for the EBP fee and module then the applicant must present the official receipt in Institute of Language for receiving the EBP module. The applicants undergo a 10-day program in EBP and after completing that requirement is that they receive a certificate for completing the program. Only the applicant who did not pay the EBP fee who cannot pursuit the English Bridge Program.

Use Case for Medical Examination
Actors: Student, Clinic Personnel
Description:  The student must take a medical examination for the requirements in enrolling in the university. The student only goes to the clinic for the Physical Examination and then fill-up the required form for their data in the clinic.

Use Case for Interview
Actors: Student, College Faculty
Description:  The student must first take an interview on their chosen college or course they want to take and then goes to the respective location of those colleges. They will be interviewed by the college faculties because they are the one who decide if the student passes and qualified in enrolling in their college and their respective courses. Only the student who take a USEPAT examination who can be interviewed by the college faculties.


Sunday, January 22, 2012

System Analysis and Design: Assignment 3


This assignment 3, defines what project manager is? Then basically, we did interview a system analyst so that our information here is the basis of our answers in this assessment. In general terms, he said that he must work with his responsibilities of executing, planning, and closing in any project, computer networking, and software or telecommunications development. By that definition according to the project manager, he is working in related branch in computer networking and software development because he is working in the information system development. Moreover, a project manager is also the responsible for accomplishing the stated project objectives. The key project management responsibilities include creating clear and attainable project objectives, building the project requirements, and managing the triple constraint for projects, which are cost, time, and quality which is also known as scope. In addition to that, a project manager is often a client representative and has to determine and implement the exact needs of the client, based on knowledge of the firm they are representing. The ability to adapt the procedures of the contracting party, and to form close links with the nominated representatives, is essential in ensuring that the key issues of cost, time, quality and above all, client satisfaction, can be realized. According to him, being a project manager is very hard and difficult for adapting that kind of issues and situations. Handling all those kinds of problems could be considered of being a good and effective project manager. For him, he could meet all those qualifications because he has the complex experience of being a project manager for a couple of years. Based on him, the term and title project manager has come to be used generically to describe anyone given responsibility to complete a project. However, it is more properly used to describe a person with full responsibility and the same level of authority required completing a project. He said that if a person does not have high levels of both responsibility and authority then they is better described as a project administrator, coordinator, facilitator or expeditor. Being a project manager is very essential in the IT business industry because they lead and handle the big project that was assigned to him. Project manager has many responsibilities to do their effectively and efficiently. However, there are many hindrance and obstacles when doing their jobs. For more information he had answered during the interview is that there are specific responsibilities of being a project manager like him. He said it varies depending on the industry, the company size, the company maturity, and the company culture. Yet, there are some responsibilities that are common to all project managers. First, he emphasized the responsibility of developing the project plan, managing the project stakeholder, managing the project team, managing the project risk, managing the project schedule, managing the project budget, and last but not the least managing the project conflicts.
Ms. Sharon Lei Lomantas is also a project manager in their team in City Information and Technology Center and a System Analyst. A project manager, according to Ms. Lomantas, is the one who organizes the task of every team member in the given project and the leader of the information system project of the company. Ms. Lomantas said that a project manager must have many experiences in handling a team in a project because of the complexity of t hat profession and for the reason that it is crucial in the hands, skills and characteristics of the project manager the successfulness of the project. As a project manager, he or she must have a high leadership skills for him or her to effectively guide and implement the necessary steps that a team must do in order to achieve the correct requirement that the client want to. And to be an effective leader, a project manager must had an experience before as a member in a team in a large project of a company because in that way, a project manager can fully understand the hardships, the necessary responsibilities of every team member, and every individual members of the team their skills and capabilities as how they must work their jobs in the project. As Ms. Sharon Lei Lomantas said, a project manager does not necessarily need to involve in programming task because it is a burden for a project manager to do that kind of task for the reason that he is the only leader in the team and he supervise all the task of every member in the team. The project manager only dictates to the every individual in the team their respective tasks but the project manager must know first the individual capabilities of the team members for him to correctly assign the important tasks in the project, and each member has individual task based on their capabilities because the project might fail if the project manager did not correctly assign the important tasks to the one who cannot fulfill the assign duty. The project manager also dictates to the team members on how to do all those tasks that they were assigned for them to really understand their main purpose in the project, and the project manager is the leader in the team and must lead the flow of the project. We had also interviewed Mr. Mark Fernandez who is working in Digital Interface, Inc., and he said that a project manager does not necessarily have a high IQ but the important is that he must be a critical thinker. A critical thinker in all aspect of the project, whether in financial, in resources, in management, and other related issues that may affect the development of the project. To be a project manager does not need to have a high IQ for the reason that managing a team in a project can be learned through experience and having an experienced to be a member in a team in the project especially if you are a system developer or a system analyst in the team, because those positions are very crucial in the success of the project. And if the project manager does not correctly assess and guide a system developer and system analyst there proper tasks that they must accomplish, there is a high possibility that a project may fail or maybe the deadline of the project is delay because of the slow development process of the project. A project manager, according Mr. Mark Fernandez, knows how to assess a problem that affecting the flow of the project, example in the delayed gathering of data of the system analyst. Because of the work of the system analyst is the foundation of the information system project. Mr. Mark Fernandez must always follow-up the deadline of the project for the client.

Interviewed person:
Ms. Sharon Lei Lomantas


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

Thursday, January 19, 2012

System Analysis and Design: Assignment 7

 
 

Use Case for Student Application
Actors: Student, UGTO, Cashier
The student must go first to UGTO for the requirements and the scheduling of USEPAT examination and then payment of USEPAT in cashier.

Use Case for USEPAT Examination
Actors: Student, UGTO
Under the supervision of UGTO personnel, the student takes the USEPAT Examination.

Use Case for English Bridge Program
Actors: Student, Institute of Language, Cashier
The student will take an EBP Examination under the supervision of IL personnel. If the student fail the exam, he will undergo EBP class and have a payment for it in the cashier.

Use Case for Interviewing
Actors: Student, Faculty
The student will undergo interviewing in respective colleges of choice.

Use Case for Medical Examination
Actors: Student, Clinic
The student will undergo Medical Examination with the supervision of Clinic Doctor