Question
How does the fact finding techniques such as Document review, Oberservation, Questionnaires & surveys, sampling and Research help you in answering the following questions:
-
What is the traditional approach to systems development?
-
What is the object oriented approach to systems development?
-
What textbooks, journals and/or websites might be useful to search for articles about comaparing and contrasting the traditional and object oriented approach to systems development?
Answer:
Systems Analysts adapt several fact finding techniques in finding out the information required for developing the Information System effectively. The following is a detailed description of each fact finding technique and how it is going to help in finding out the answers to the above questions.
Interviews
An interview is nothing but a planned meeting with concerned person(s) during which a systems analyst can obtain required information. A productive interview requires prior knowledge and planning in the areas such as determining
-
the people to be interviewed
-
establishing the objectives of the interview
-
developing the questions
-
documenting and
-
evaluating the interview
Interviews can help to certain extent in finding out the traditional and object oriented approaches to systems development. But care must be taken in chosing the right person and dcumenting the interview to ascertain valuable information from them. Unless we have some preliminary knowledge, it is difficult to make an interview productive and find out the answers to the above questions.
Document Review
This technique helps in understanding how the current (existing) system is supposed to work. If there were any modifications introduced into the system, they need to be documented and such updated documents if available can help us in understanding the traditional and object oriented approaches to systems development.
If we review the copies of actual forms and operating documents of well established Information Systems we can gain some useful information.
Observation
Pesonally observing the current operating procedures develop better undertanding of the current system, and improves relationship with the users. But practical observation of the current systems does not help us in comparing and contrasting the traditonal and object oriented approach to the systems development.
Questionnaires & Surveys
A questionnaire is a document containing number of questions which can be used to obtain information about wide range of topics. There can be three categories of questions in any questionnaire.
They are:
-
Open-ended questions
-
Closed-ended questions
-
Range questions
Whatever the type of questions may be, but phrasing the questions require some knowledge about the topic. Inorder to fulfill the objective of the questionnaire, the person who prepares it should have the knowledge.
So inorder to differentiate between the traditional and object oriented approach to systems development, a survey probably may not help. But to find out the sources of information, it is helpful to certain extent. A survey with open-ended questions when conducted on the persons who really work in these areas can help to certain extent in finding out the textbooks, websites and journals.
Research
It is an important fact finding technique that can be adapted to collect information and gain knowledge over wide range of topics.Background information can be obtained from textbooks, IT magazines, Internet and Newspapers.
Internet is an extremely valuable resource for researching. This does not require any subject knowledge. We can access authorized information from genuine sources as well, with the help of internet. Electronic databases contain enormous information but they require permission to access.
Libraries are the best sources of information where we can get a wide range of books pertaining to a specific topic. Inorder to understand the traditional and object oriented approaches to systems development,we can refer to lot of textbooks as well as some IT magazines and Newspapers that are available in the libraries. Updated news and information can be gathered from IT magazines and journals which contain articles written by experts in the corresponding field.
So we can conclude that researching is best fact finding technique that can be adapted in deriving the answers to the above questions.
Sampling
Sampling techniques can be implemented in three different ways.
-
Systematic sampling
-
Random sampling
-
Stratified sampling
This is all about collecting samples using different methods and deriving a conclusion based on the samples. The main objective of the sample is to ensure that it represents the overall population accurately.
Sampling technique is not ideal in finding out the answers to the questions. This is suitable to implement over a group.
Inorder to develop an effective and ideal Information system one has to choose the ideal fact finding technique that best suits the requirement.
