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The Systems Development Life Cycle March 19 – March 23
What is the SDLC:
o When developing a new information system, there are many, many steps that
must be followed. The systems development life cycle (SDLC) is an attempt to structure these steps (p. 278). o From the perspective of a definition, the SDLC is a structured step-by-step approach for developing information systems (p. 278). o When developing a system, there are three primary choices you will make very early in the process (p. 279):
Insourcing is how much will be done by your own IT specialists.
Selfsourcing is how much can be done by the end-users.
Outsourcing is how much will be done by a third-party outside the
organization. o The SDLC has seven phases:
- Planning
- Analysis
- Design
- Development
- Testing
- Implementation
- Maintenance
Phase 1: Planning:
o The planning phase of the SDLC involves determining a solid plan for
developing your information system (p. 279).
o A project manager is an individual who is an expert in project planning and
management, defines and develops the project plan, and tracks the plan to ensure all key project milestones are completed on time (p. 280).
o Three primary activities:
Define the system to be developed. Identify and select the system for development or determine which system is required to support the strategic goals of your organization.
Critical success factors (CSF) are factors critical to your
organization’s success. Set the project scope.
The project scope clearly defines the high-level system
requirements and is the most basic definition of the system.
A project scope document is a written definition of the project
scope and is usually no longer than a paragraph. Define the project plan.
The project plan defines the what, when, and who questions of
systems development activities including all activities to be performed, the individuals, or resources, who will perform the activities, and the time required to complete each activity (p. 279).
Project milestones represent key dates by which you need a
certain group of activities performed (p. 280).
Phase 2: Analysis:
o The analysis phase of the SDLC involves end users and IT specialists working
together to gather, understand, and document the business requirements for the proposed system (p. 281. o The primary activity of this phase is to gather business requirements. Business requirements are the detailed set of knowledge worker requests that the system must meet to be successful (p. 281).
o One task to gather business requirements is to perform a joint application
development (JAD) session , knowledge workers and IT specialists meet to define and review business requirements (p. 281). o Once all the business requirements are defined, the end-users sign off on them indicating that they approve of all the business requirements (p. 281). o One of the keys to success in the analysis phase is to find errors in the business requirements and the project plan. Errors are much cheaper to fix here than later in the SDLC as indicated by Figure 6.4, p. 282 (p. 282).
Phase 3: Design:
o Secondly, provide training for the knowledge workers. You must ensure that all of the knowledge workers have the required training to use the system correctly (p. 286).
o Methods of Implementation:
Parallel implementation – using both the old and new system until you
are sure that the new system performs correctly.
Plunge implementation – discarding the old system completely and using
the new system
Pilot implementation – having only a small group of people use the new
system until you know it works correctly, and then adding the remaining people to the system.
Phased implementation – implementing the new system one part at a
time. Phase 7: Maintenance: o During the maintenance phase of the SDLC, you monitor and support the new system to ensure it continues to meet the business goals (p. 287). o First, you will need to create a help desk to answer your worker’s questions (p.287). o Secondly, you will need to change the system as your business changes (p. 287).
