STAGES of Structured System Analysis and Design Method Explained:

Stage 0 Feasibility Study

In order to determine whether or not a given project is feasible, there must be some form of investigation
into the goals and implications of the project.
For very small scale projects this may not be necessary at all as the scope of the project is easily
understood.
In larger projects, the feasibility may be done but in an informal sense, either because there is not time
for a formal study or because the project is a must-have and will have to be done one way or the other.
When a feasibility study is carried out, there are four main areas of consideration:
Technical is the project technically possible
Financial can the business afford to carry out the project
Organizational will the new system be compatible with e!isting practices
Ethical is the impact of the new system socially acceptable
"o answer these #uestions, the feasibility study is effectively a condensed version of a fully blown systems
analysis and design. "he re#uirements and users are analy$ed to some e!tent, some business options are
drawn up and even some details of the technical implementation.
Stage 1 Investigation of the current environment
"his is one of the most important stages of %%&'(. "he developers of %%&'( understood that though In
almost all cases there is some form of current system even if it is entirely composed of people and paper.
"hrough a combination of interviewing employees, circulating #uestionnaires, observations and e!isting
documentation, the analyst comes to full understanding of the system as it is at the start of the project.
This serves many purposes:
the analyst learns the terminology of the business, what users do and how they do it
the old system provides the core re#uirements for the new system
faults, errors and areas of inefficiency are highlighted and their correction added to the re#uirements
the data model can be constructed
the users become involved and learn the techni#ues and models of the analyst
the boundaries of the system can be defined
The products of this stage are:
)sers *atalogue describing all the users of the system and how they interact with it
+e#uirements *atalogue detailing all the re#uirements of the new system
*urrent %ervices 'escription further composed of
*urrent environment ,ogical 'ata (odel
*onte!t diagram -'F'.
,eveled set of 'F's for current logical system
Full data dictionary including relationship between data stores and entities
"o produce the models, the analyst wor/s through the construction of the models as we have described.
0owever, the first set of data-flow diagrams -'F's. are the current physical model, that is, with full details of
how the old system is implemented.
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Stage %usiness System O"tions
0aving investigated the current system, the analyst must decide on the overall design of the new system. "o
do this, he or she, using the outputs of the previous stage, develops a set of business system options.
"hese are different ways in which the new system could be produced varying from doing nothing to throwing
out the old system entirely and building an entirely new one. "he analyst may hold a brainstorming session
so that as many and various ideas as possible are generated.
The ideas are then collected to form a set of two or three different options which are presented to the user. The
options consider the following:
the degree of automation
the boundary between the system and the users
the distribution of the system, for e!ample, is it centrali$ed to one office or spread out across several
cost3benefit
impact of the new system
"he users and analyst together choose a single business option. "his may be one of the ones already
defined or may be a synthesis of different aspects of the e!isting options. "he output of this stage is the
single selected business option together with all the outputs of the feasibility stage.
Stage & 'e(uirements S"ecification
"his is probably the most comple! stage in %%&'(. )sing the re#uirements developed in stage 1 and
wor/ing within the framewor/ of the selected business option, the analyst must develop a full logical
specification of what the new system must do.
"he specification must be free from error, ambiguity and inconsistency. 4y logical, we mean that the
specification does not say how the system will be implemented but rather describes what the system will do.
The product of this stage is a complete requirements specification document which is made up of:
the updated data catalogue
the updated re#uirements catalogue
the processing specification which in turn is made up of
user role3function matri!
function definitions
re#uired logical data model
entity life-histories
effect correspondence diagrams
Stage ) Technical system o"tions
"his stage is the first towards a physical implementation of the new system. ,i/e the 4usiness %ystem
5ptions, in this stage a large number of options for the implementation of the new system are generated.
"his is honed down to two or three to present to the user from which the final option is chosen or
synthesi$ed.
However, the considerations are quite different being:
the hardware architectures
the software to use
the cost of the implementation
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the staffing re#uired
the physical limitations such as a space occupied by the system
the distribution including any networ/s which that may re#uire
the overall format of the human computer interface
&ll of these aspects must also conform to any constraints imposed by the business such as available money
and standardi$ation of hardware and software.
Stage * +ogical design
"hough the previous level specifies details of the implementation, the outputs of this stage are
implementation-independent and concentrate on the re#uirements for the human computer interface. "he
logical design specifies the main methods of interaction in terms of menu structures and command
structures.
5ne area of activity is the definition of the user dialogues. "hese are the main interfaces with which the
users will interact with the system. 5ther activities are concerned with analy$ing both the effects of events in
updating the system and the need to ma/e in#uiries about the data on the system. 4oth of these use the
events, function descriptions and effect correspondence diagrams produced in stage 7 to determine
precisely how to update and read data in a consistent and secure way.
The product of this stage is the logical design which is made up of:
'ata catalogue
+e#uired logical data structure
,ogical process model includes dialogues and model for the update and in#uiry processes
%tress 8 4ending moment.
Stage , -hysical design
"his is the final stage where all the logical specifications of the system are converted to descriptions of
the system in terms of real hardware and software.
"he logical data structure is converted into a physical architecture in terms of database structures. "he
e!act structure of the functions and how they are implemented is specified. "he physical data structure
is optimi$ed where necessary to meet si$e and performance re#uirements.
"he product is a complete 2hysical 'esign which could tell software engineers how to build the system
in specific details of hardware and software and to the appropriate standards.
ADA!TA"#$ A!D D%$ADA!TA"#$
9 & methodological approach of studying a business from a number of different perspectives is more li/ely to
provide a more thorough understanding of the business, its processes and data, than the :ad-hoc: approaches
that were used previously. "his in turn should -it was hoped. lead to systems that are more complete and
correct.
9 %%&'( approach of having to complete one phase before beginning the ne!t led some projects into what is
referred to as :analysis paralysis:. ;hat is meant by this is that because a business and its processes never
stays the same for very long, the systems team would continually have to revisit analysis and design products
for amendment, causing delays in getting to the programming and delivery stages of the system.
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9 "here is also a cost in training people to use the techni#ues. "he learning curve can be considerable if the full
method is used, as not only are there several modeling techni#ues to come to terms with, but there are also a lot
of standards for the preparation and presentation of documents.
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