Question

During the systems development life cycle (SDLC), certain key problems discovered in the later stages could be directly traced back to inadequate and/or poor efforts in the requirements phase and industry studies show that over 50% of systems problems belong to this case. In addition, as mentioned in this week lecture notes "the cost of errors in requirements that weren’t discovered until later" may go up to 1,000 times. As a systems analyst, what should we do to minimize this problem? How might this be avoided?

Please no handwritten notes as those are hard to read.

Answer 1

• After calculating the actual total cost of the errors in the requirement phase, try and use all the possible resources available to reduce the cost and find a solution to the problem. Establish a good relation with the user so that the user is ready to reduce the cost of the errors that might have been caused.
• The best way to make a product cost effective is to keep it in track. Analyse each phase of it.This would certainly minimize the cost and also avoid the problems that might occur.
• Constantly communicate with the user at every stage so that if a problem has occurred then it can be cleared easily because if the user knows nothing about what the problem is and they will never be able to explain what exactly they want.
• Doing so, errors that might have occurred in the early stage could be easily detected and can be detected earlier then to find the same problem later when the cost of removing those errors or resolving them could have increased a lot more than before.
• There is something called as Interviewing and Questionnaires that a system analyst follow to find out the issues that might have been caused by a product. By doing so he collects a lot amount of feedback that can be used in future for developing new product.
• It is necessary that the system analyst ask the correct question to the users in order to get the right feedback. This can also minimize the cost and can avoid lot of problems that might have occurred if not analyzed ahead of time.
• Draw a chart and show it to the users and let them understand the product completely like what their product is going to do how it is going to work and everything in brief.
• This will give them a basic idea of how their final product output will be. And therefore if there are any changes they need in their product can be done before the product is implemented. This saves time also other than cost.
• Changes done to any product after its full implementation there are high chances of problems arising then making changes earlier avoiding any issues.
• Make sure that your product is approved by the user. Maintaining a good relationship with the user is important as mentioned before. Try completing the product before deadline and without or with minimal errors possible.

These are the main points to remember as a system analyst to reduce the cost or avoid problems in your product.