Hoofdstuk 11: Ontwikkeling van informatiesystemen

1. Hoofdstuk 11: Ontwikkeling van informatiesystemen

2. Overzicht • The Systems Development Lifecycle (SDLC) • Preliminary investigation • Systems Analysis • Design • Programming • Testing • Maintenance • Legacy systems • Prototyping

3. Methodologies and the SDLC • A methodology is a comprehensive set of steps, guidelines, activities and/or principles, prescribing the process by which the IS can be developed • Many methodologies distinguish a series of stages that the IS undergoes – the systems development life cycle (SDLC) • Various techniques may be prescribed during these stages

4. SDLC: Waterfall Approach The classical SDLC is predominantly a ‘waterfall’ approach: • sequence of stages in which the output of each stage becomes the input for the next • facilitates project management: clear ‘milestones’ • but can be costly, time consuming and inflexible, especially for smaller projects • establishing user requirements can be very difficult

5. Typical SDLC Stages • Preliminary investigation: establishing a high-level view of the intended project and its feasibility • Analysis: analysis of the information needs that the system should satisfy; describes what the system should do • Design: laying out how the system should be structured to meet the requirements determined by the systems analysis • Programming: writing executable code based on the design • Testing: process that determines whether the system produces desired results under known conditions • Deployment: putting the new system into operation • Maintenance: ongoing process of making further changes to it Note: many variations of divisions into (sub-)stages

6. Preliminary Investigation • Usually includes conducting a feasibility study: determines whether the project is achievable, given the organisation’s resources and constraints • Technical feasibility: proposed solution can be implemented with available hardware, software, and technical resources? • Economic feasibility: benefits of proposed solution outweigh costs? • Operational feasibility: proposed solution is desirable within the existing managerial and organisational framework? (e.g., taking into account history of IT acceptance, IT skills of staff, organisational structure, …)

7. System Analysis • Analyze the organisation’s processes, information needs and its existing systems • Data gathered from written documents, interviews, questionnaires, observation, measuring • Describe using various modelling techniques • Pinpoint problems/opportunities • Establish requirements that the new system must satisfy • Functional requirements: what tasks should the system perform? • Non-functional requirements: performance, security, …

8. System Design • Further elaborate on the analysis; lay out the components of the IS and their relationship to each other • Some design choices include: • setting automation boundaries • centralized or distributed system • file-based or database system • batch or online system • … • Modular design: IS broken down into separate modules • more manageable: different teams of programmers/testers can be allocated to them in subsequent stages • often documented in structure charts & module specifications • User interface design

9. Setting Automation Boundaries

10. Programming • Process of writing actual program code for the system specifications prepared during the design stage • Procedural versus non-procedural programming languages • Most conventional programming languages are procedural: • Programmers must specify the sequence of processing steps to be performed in order to accomplish task • Three main constructs: • sequence: execute steps in order shown • iteration: repeat a series of steps while/until a condition is satisfied • selection: conditionally execute if a condition is satisfied • Example languages: C or C++, Java, Pascal, Basic, … • Non-procedural languages: • Specify not the exact sequence but what needs to be accomplished • Example: Structured Query Language (SQL)

11. Example procedural programming languages • COBOL • Developed around 1960 • Has long been popular for business applications • Pascal • Intuitive for educational use • C, C++ • Powerful and efficient but lacks 100% portability across systems • Java • Designed to run on any system • Popular for web applications

12. Testing • Static versus dynamic testing techniques • Static: not actually executing the program; e.g. code inspection • Dynamic: feeding test cases into the program and then seeing whether its execution meets certain requirements • Levels of testing • Unit testing: testing separate program modules • Integration testing: testing whether modules work together properly • System testing: testing the system as a whole • volume testing: can it handle the amount of data and transaction rate? • stress testing: does the system break down in extreme conditions? • Acceptance testing: done by the end-user (unlike the former three); provides final certification that the system is ready to be used in a production setting

13. resources size Testing (contd.) • How to choose the test cases? • Exhaustive testing: try every combination (usually not an option…) Consider this simple scenario: • Suppose that the program needs values for n input items • Say every item has 2 possible values (e.g. yes or no) • Then, the number of test cases would have to be 2n • E.g., for n = 10, this equals 1024 • For n = 20, the number would already exceed1.000.000 • … “Exponential explosion”: • Test case selection strategies: • black box: select a suite of test cases without looking at the internal structure of the module (e.g. randomly generated) • white box: try to get a good test coverage by looking inside the module

14. Deployment • Systems changeover: process of replacing the old system by the new system • Parallel running: conservative conversion approach where both the old system and the potential replacement are run together • Direct changeover: risky conversion approach whereby the new system replaces the old system on an appointed day • Pilot study: strategy to introduce the new system to a limited area of the organisation until it is proven to be fully functional • Phased approach: introduces new system replacement in stages; mixture of direct changeover and parallel running methods • Data entry/migration • Hardware/software installation • Training

15. Systems Changeover Strategies Direct changeover: Parallel running:

16. Systems Changeover Strategies (contd.) Pilot study:

17. Systems Changeover Strategies (contd.) Phased approach:

18. Maintenance • Three types of maintenance: • corrective: fixing bugs • perfective: enhancing the system without changing its functionality (e.g. optimizing its performance) • adaptive: changing the system’s functionality in order to meet evolving requirements • Preferably coupled to: • an ongoing formal review process • procedures for version control • systematic documentation of changes • Probably the most costly stage in the SDLC

19. Maintenance Problems: Legacy Systems • Legacy systems: • old systems (e.g. 20-30 years old) • large, monolithic, and difficult (thus expensive) to modify • running on mainframes • written in (near-)obsolete languages “The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence.” (Dijkstra) • with very little or out-of-date documentation • whose original designers are retired or have left the organisation • still critical for the functioning of the organisation • often demanding high availability (e.g. customer account transaction processing in banks) • which continue to be used because the cost of replacing or redesigning (“re-engineering”) them is prohibitive

20. Prototyping • Prototyping: building experimental system quickly for demonstration and evaluation purposes • Provides easier way for users to determine information requirements • Iterative instead of sequential process • Incremental or throwaway prototyping