Analysis

The analysis phase is a continuation of the planning phase and goes more in-depth into what the actual project requirements are and what they involve. This phase involves the understanding of the business unit's process flows, a very critical element in bringing about high-quality systems.

Often, once an SA understands the work flows, he or she can recommend changes in those flows, apart from technology, so that the work effort is reduced. This is called business process reengineering (BPR) and could potentially be a huge part of an SA's work.

An output of a preliminary investigation will be Data Flow Diagrams (DFD), drawings that highlight the way that the business flows are actually occurring today, along with proposed new flows. The DFDs will become the building blocks toward realizing a complete new system or a remodel of an old one.

Tip  

It is key to remember that you must always first understand the business work flows before you apply technology. Too often people get the cart before the horse and wind up with a poor product as a result.

In the Analysis phase you're going in-depth, trying to ascertain how the different users interact with the current system, what the current system documentation (if any) looks like, and so forth. You may even get into things like performing surveys to find out what people think about the different system requirements, or perhaps work on some sampling to get a flavor for how the current setup works. In short, you're trying to utilize any tool in your bag that might help you be certain that you've trapped in detail exactly what it is that is being asked for.

Getting Your Hands Dirty with SDLC-Planning and Analysis

Perhaps the best way to think about the SDLC process is to try to imagine a home fix-up project that you've undertaken-maybe a landscaping project, a room remodel, or finishing a basement .

Your husband or wife says: 'Honey, we need to do something with that backyard!' This is the work request.

From this humble beginning you might've started out by drawing the layout of what you were going to work on. In the landscaping example, you'd have a rough sketch of the outline of the grounds, coupled with symbols for the trees, bushes, flowers, grasses, and accoutrements such as statuary that you planned on placing in the area. You could roughly analogize that this is your landscaping DFD. You have enough information to understand where things go, but probably not enough to completely understand how you'll fully go about doing your landscaping job.

If the job were big enough, you might actually hire a landscaping architect to develop plans for you before you go about doing your work. This would represent a feasibility study, in which you bring in an expert and ask them how they envision accomplishing what you have in mind. In this case, the landscaping architect provides you with the blueprints-your DFD-but you still have to go about doing the work. Note that this work is expensive and you'd probably not undertake it with a smaller project.

 

The outcome of this step is a document called the Systems Requirements Document -a thorough paper that details the requirements that the different parties (managers, end users, recipients of reports , etc.) stipulated, forecasted project costs, and positive takeaways as well as suggesting suitable alternatives to full-scale systems development.

This phase tracks closely to the Guide to the PMBOK 's Planning process group .