C2001 System Analysis & Design Term 2 2008 assignment, part 2
Hi! Meet again in the second part of C2001 module term 2 2008 assignment post.
In this post I will write the answer of the assignment’s question that I posted in the previous post. Basically, the scenario question of this assignment is about a clinic, New Century Health, that wants to have its own information system to increase their productivity. We take role as an IT consultant that will help this clinic to get the best Information System. You can read the full scenario and the questions in the previous post, or you can click here.
Now, the answer is as follows:
Answer for question (i)
Based on the New Century Health Clinic Scenario above, the first thing that we need to do is to find out whether the project to develop a computerized system for the clinic is feasible or not feasible. The New Century Health Clinic’s project feasibility is determined by three factors. Those three factors are:
ü Operational Feasibility
ü Technical Feasibility
ü Economic Feasibility
After we find out about these three feasibility factors mentioned above, then we can decide whether this project is feasible or not.
So, the kinds of question that I will ask in order to review the feasibility of the project will be:
ü Questions about the operational feasibility of the project.
ü Questions about the technical feasibility of the project.
ü Questions about the economic feasibility of the project.
And now, let’s discuss about each feasibility factor in order to decide the feasibility of the New Century Health Clinic’s project.
a.) Operational Feasibility
Operational feasibility factor deals with matters like how effective the clinic’s system will be used to help to do the clinic’s tasks after the system has been implemented in the future. Is the new clinic system will be easy to be used by the clinic’s staff is also a consideration, because even if the new clinic system is very sophisticated, it will be no good if the clinic staff have a lot of difficulties when operates it. So, that is what we consider in the operational feasibility.
The questions that we may ask to assess the operational feasibility are questions such as:
ü Is developing a new system is a practical decision in helping the clinic achieve its business goals?
ü Does the New Century Health clinic manager support the idea of this project?
ü Does the clinic’s current system have become too troublesome so there is a need for a better new system?
ü Do the users, in this case the clinic’s office staffs support the idea of the project?
ü Do the clinic’s staffs also see the need to replace the current system with a new system?
ü Does the new system will cause the clinic to reduce its office staff?
Those are the examples of questions that we can ask to find out whether the project for the New Century Health Clinic is operationally feasible.
b.) Technical Feasibility
Technical feasibility factor deals with issue about the New Century Health Clinic’s resources. We need to examine whether the clinic will have enough resources to purchase, implement, and use/operates the system. This is important because later the system will plays an important role in the clinic’s operation. So, the new system will be wasted if there is nobody in the clinic that able to operate or maintain the system. Technical feasibility also considers the technology that will be used in the new system. Is the technology used by the new system is common and easy to find in the today’s market also have to be considered. Because if the new clinic system use a technology that is easy to be found in the market, then if there is any failure or damage in the system’s software or hardware, it will be easy to find person to repairs it or to find a hardware replacement.
The questions that we may ask to assess the operational feasibility are questions such as:
ü Are the resources needed to develop the new system such as skilled people or hardware technologies are available or easy to find in today’s market?
ü Does the New Century Health Clinic already have the required software, hardware, or network infrastructure needed by the new system?
ü If the clinic currently don’t have any of the required software, hardware, or network infrastructure needed by the new system, can it get or purchase those things without a big difficulties or problem?
ü Does the clinic’s staff have enough skill needed to operate the new system?
Those are the examples of questions that we can ask to find out whether the project for the New Century Health Clinic is technically feasible.
c.) Economic Feasibility
Economic feasibility is checking whether the new system will be economically feasible for the clinic’s operation. We can say that the clinic’s new system has an economic feasibility when the new system’s benefit is more than the cost to develop and to maintain the new system. So, we can say in other words that the new system is economically feasible if the system can give the clinic more profits and benefits compared to the cost to develop the new system. Economic feasibility is a very important factor to consider, because it will do no good for the New Century Health Clinic even if the new system can do very good tasks in helping the clinic’s daily operational but it doesn’t have any good benefits that out-weight its development and maintenance cost.
The questions that we may ask to assess the economic feasibility are questions such as:
ü What will the clinic save by using the new system?
ü How much is the tangible benefit of the new system?
ü What are the intangible benefits of the clinic’s new system?
ü How much is the development and daily maintenance cost of the clinic’s new system? Is it lower than the benefits?
ü How the clinic’s new system will help the clinic’s business?
Those are the examples of questions that we can ask to find out whether the project for the New Century Health Clinic is economically feasible.
Finally, after we see what operational, technical, and economic feasibility is, now we can decide whether the New Century Health Clinic project is feasible. Firstly, based on the given scenario, the clinic has office staffs that is started to be overwhelmed by the growing clinic’s business, so we see that the implementation of the new system will put a good help in the clinic’s daily operational. Secondly, the office staffs in the clinic has their experience in doing the job, so with a little training they will be able to adapt and operates the new system without much difficulty. Lastly, in the last part of the scenario it is said that actually the clinic wants to hire new office staff but Dr. Jones recommend to develop this new system as an alternative, so beside helping the clinic’s operational the new system is also expected to give economic benefits for the New Century Health Clinic. In conclusion, I think that it seems the New Century Health Clinic’s project is feasible.
IV. Answer for Question (ii)
If the New Century Health Clinic decides to contract me in performing the preliminary investigation for the clinic’s new system, then I will perform the preliminary investigation with performing these steps:
1. Understand the problems and opportunity
2. Define the clinic system project’s scope and constraints
3. Perform fact finding
4. Determine the clinic system feasibility
5. Estimate the time and cost needed to finish the clinic system project
6. Present the preliminary investigation result to the clinic’s management
These are the six steps that I going to do in performing the preliminary investigation on the New Century Health Clinic’s system project. And then, I will explain each of these steps here.
1. Understand the problems and opportunity
In this step, we will try to understand the real problem that faced by the New Century Health Clinic that motivates them in requesting for development of a new clinic system. We have to investigate what problems that they want to solve by developing a new system and whether developing a new system is really the best way to solve the problem that is currently faced by the clinic. It may happen that actually the clinic doesn’t need a new computerized system. So, that’s why we need to find out the underlying problem behind the clinic’s request for a new system. Additionally, we also have to analyze what the effect that will happen to the clinic if they start using the computerized system in the future.
2. Define the clinic system project’s scope and constraints
We need to define this project’s scope and constraint in order to avoid unnecessary development cost and reduce the development time of the new system, so the clinic system can be done as fast as possible. In this case, we will consult and find information from Anita Davenport as the office manager of the New Century Health clinic. So, we will find out more information to define the project’s scope and constraints from her.
Clinic system project’s scope is the boundary of the project. We have to define the boundary or the scope of the clinic project to be as specific as possible. We can use graphical representation such as diagrams or any other graphic model to show the overview of relation between the clinic’s systems, staff, business process, and any other elements that will get affected by the implementation of the new clinic system. After we manage to get a clear scope for the project, then we can also define the scope of this preliminary investigation. Furthermore, knowing the project scope will help us to avoid any unnecessary expenses and save project development process time.
Additionally, after we already have a well defined project scope, then we also need to define the clinic system project’s constraints. The clinic system’s constraints or can be said as the requirement is a condition that is expected to be fulfilled or satisfied by the new clinic system. This may covers many things from cost, time, software, or hardware. It is important to clearly define the clinic system’s constraints as it also affects the project scope. Finally, we have to know that there are some characteristic of system constraint:
ü Present and Future Constraints
Present constraints are constraints that must be fulfilled by the clinic system soon. For example, the clinic system must be able to help the office staffs in managing the growing administration works as soon as possible.
Future constraints are constraints that need to be fulfilled in the future, so it is not as urgent as present constraint.
ü Internal and External Constraints
Internal constraints are requirements that come from the New Century Health Clinic itself.
External constraints are requirements from outside the New Century Health clinic, but have a strong effect on the clinic’s business/operation. For example, government law and regulation may force the clinic system to be able to satisfy a certain condition.
ü Mandatory and Desirable Constraints
Mandatory constraints are constraints or requirements that absolutely must be fulfilled when the clinic system becomes operational.
Desirable constraints are constraints that are actually optional and not very important to be satisfied by the clinic system.
After we look at the characteristic of constraints above, now we can see that actually we need to make priority in defining the project’s constraints. For example, we have to fulfill present constraint before future constraint, and then we have to consider fulfilling external constraint such as government law more than internal constraint that can come after that, furthermore we have to decide carefully which constraint is mandatory and which constraint is desirable constraint. So, by doing this we can define a high quality project constraint.
Finally, a well defined project scope and constraint is really useful to avoid any misunderstanding. So, the New Century Health Clinic manager will understand what exactly the scope of the new system project is and what will be done by the new system.
3. Perform fact finding
Now, it is time for us to perform fact finding for the clinic’s new system project. There are some actions that we will do in performing the fact finding. The aim of doing the fact finding is to find more detailed information about the current clinic’s system and also to find out what the new system is expected to do in order to be better than the current system.
The fact finding activities that we will do are:
ü Analyzing the clinic’s organization chart
Before we start to perform the fact finding activity, firstly we need to understand the New Century Health Clinic’s organization structure. To get this information, we can study the clinic’s organization chart to find out who are doing what job at what position. Only after we understand the organization structure of the New Century Health clinic, then we can start the fact finding activities.
ü Perform Interviews
Interview is one of fact finding method that we are going to use. One of the advantage of using interview as one of our fact finding method is that we can get an in depth information from an interview session. But, because an interview is consuming a lot of time so we will just interview some key person in the New Century Health Clinic that have a good understanding and knowledge about the clinic’s current system as a whole. So, we will interview the manager who is Anita Davenport, and also Dr. Jones. The aim of this interview is to get information about the clinic’s current system, its problems and limitation, and what the new system is supposed to do later on.
ü Review the documentation from the clinic’s current system
This is another fact finding technique that we use in performing fact finding for this project. Because we may leave out some information uncovered during our interview sessions, so we can confirms all the facts that we have learned by reviewing the documentation from the clinic’s current system. These documentations can be a payroll and tax report, patient records, supplies report, insurance report, etc. By doing this, we can confirm every fact that we got with the real documentation from the clinic’s current system, so we reduce the risk of getting inaccurate fact.
ü Observe the clinic’s operation
The last fact finding method that we are going to use in this project is observing the clinic’s current system in operation under real environment. This method will give us the best information about how exactly the clinic’s current system do its function from getting input, doing process, and producing output. For example, in this New Century Health Clinic, we can get information about payroll, tax report, and profit distribution by observing the work done by Fred Brown. And also we can get information about how the clinic’s current system handles everyday appointment and communication with the patient by observing the works that done by Lisa Sung. These examples also apply for other functions that are done by the other staffs.
4. Determine the clinic system feasibility
Now we already have some information from the previous three steps of preliminary investigation that is explained above, so now we can use our knowledge about the clinic’s problem and opportunity, the project’s scope and constraints, and also the facts that we collected from the fact finding activities. We can use this information to determine the feasibility of the New Century Health Clinic project. The feasibility will cover factors like operational, technical, and economic feasibility.
5. Estimate the time and cost needed to finish the clinic system project
In this step, we will create an estimation of the clinic project’s cost and timetable. We need to make these two things because the manager of the New Century Health Clinic will be looking for this estimated cost and time in making the decision whether to carry on with the project or reject and cancel the project. Because these two things are important, we need to consider some factors in deciding the estimated cost and time needed to finish the clinic’s new system project.
The factors that we need to consider are:
ü What are we needed to develop the system. For example, what kind of information that we need to find out for the project, how are we going to collect those information, and is there any difficulties that will slow down our process in searching for those information.
ü How many fact finding technique that we are going to use?
ü How much is the cost needed to follow up all the information that we get from our fact finding activities?
These factors should be well considered so we can make a good estimation of the project’s cost and time.
6. Present the preliminary investigation result to the clinic’s management
This is the final stage of our preliminary investigation for the clinic’s project. After we have done our fact finding, determining problem and opportunities, defining the project scope and constraints, determining the feasibility of the project, and estimating the cost and time needed to finish the clinic’s project, so now is the time for us to make a report of our preliminary investigation of the project. The preliminary investigation report will be presented to the clinic’s management, in this case the New Century Health Clinic’s office manager, Anita Davenport.
The structure of the preliminary investigation report will be:
ü Introduction
This is the first part of the report and it contain an overview of the proposed new clinic system for the New Century Health Clinic, description of the clinic system, and also names of the person who involved in this project.
ü System Request Summary
This part contains the summary of the new clinic system project. So, the reader will have a better understanding about the project.
ü Findings
This is the part where we explain our findings in the preliminary investigation. Here we explain what we have learned about the problem and opportunity, scope and constraints of the clinic system, project feasibility, and also the estimated time and cost needed to finish the development of the new clinic system.
ü Recommendations
Here we will write our recommendation about the project to the management staff of the New Century Health Clinic, Anita Davenport. In the end, she will be the one who make decision about the project but we will give our best recommendation as her consideration in deciding something about the project.
ü Estimated time and cost
In this part, we explain in detail about the estimated cost to develop the clinic system, to implements/installs it, and to do the maintenance. Beside the cost we also give the timetable of the clinic’s new system project.
ü Expected benefit
We will explain the benefits of the new clinic system in this part. The benefits will cover the tangible benefit which we can measure in dollars, and also the intangible benefit that we can’t measure in dollars.
ü Appendix
Appendix of the preliminary investigation report will have the entire supporting document such as result of interview and observation during fact finding techniques, etc.
So, this report will be presented to Anita Davenport as the office manager of the New Century Health Clinic. Based on this report, she will make decision whether to approve this system or not. After the preliminary investigation is approved, then we can continue to the system analysis phase.
V. Answer for Question (iii)
In performing the preliminary investigation for the New Century Health Clinic project, I will need information about the company, in this case the clinic. Because the clinic will be the only source where I can get enough information and perform fact finding activities about the new clinic system project. So I will need to have a good understanding about the New Century Health clinic, its organization structure, and also the roles of each staff in the clinic. By possessing this information, I can do my preliminary investigation better because I will know who to ask for every kind of information that I need to collect during the preliminary investigation.
Firstly, let’s take a look at the New Century Health Clinic’s organization structure. Based on the given scenario about the New Century Health Clinic, I will draw the organization chart with focusing more on the office staffs.
New Century Health Organization Chart
From the organization chart above, now we have information about the roles of each person mentioned in the scenario.
The roles of staffs in the clinic:
ü Clinic’s owner : Dr. Jones and Dr. Garcia
ü Office Manager : Anita Davenport
ü Payroll, Tax Report, and distribution of profit : Fred Brown
ü Maintain patient records : Susan Grifford
ü Reporting of Insurance and clinic’s accounting : Tom Capaletti
ü Appointment book and prepare daily appointment : Lisa Sung
ü Order and Organize office & clinic supply : Carla Herrera
Now, we can start gathering information in our preliminary investigation using this information as our guide.
The information that we are going to collect is information about how the performance of the current clinic system is and what are the problems and limitations faced by each staff on every day operation. The fact finding technique that I will use in this preliminary investigation are interview, documentation review, and observation. I won’t use survey or questionnaire since the clinic is small with just a few staffs.
First, I will use interview as one of my fact finding technique. I choose this technique because we can get an in depth information from a person by having an interview session with him/her. Since an interview session will take a quite long time, so I will just interview some key person in the New Century Health Clinic. The persons that I’m going to interview are:
1. Dr. Jones and Dr. Garcia
2. Anita Davenport
3. Susan Grifford
4. Lisa Sung
1. Dr. Jones and Dr. Garcia
The objective of interviewing Dr. Jones and Dr. Garcia is to get their perspective about what are the problems and limitations faced by the clinic by using its current system and also what is their expectation for the new clinic system.
Examples of question that we may ask to Dr. Jones and Dr. Garcia are:
ü What is your opinion about the clinic’s current system?
ü Do you ever experience that a clinic staff takes a very long time just to do a single clinic task? If yes, what task is that?
ü What do you think about the amount of workload of each clinic staff? Are they still capable to handle that amount of workload?
ü What do you expect from the new clinic system?
2. Anita Davenport
With her position as the office manager, Anita Davenport has a good knowledge about the performance of the clinic’s current system. This is the information that we will try to get from her.
Examples of question that we may ask to Anita Davenport are:
ü What is your opinion about the clinic’s current system?
ü What are the processes are there in the current system?
ü Who carry out each of these processes?
ü How is the performance of the current system? Is the processing time satisfying?
ü What is your expectation for the new clinic system?
3. Susan Grifford
Susan Grifford is a staff that handles patient records. As stated in the scenario, the New Century Health Clinic is keep growing, so the number of patient records that she has to handle also keeps on growing. So, we have to get information from her about how she manage the patient records using the current system, what are her problems, and also what she expect the new system to help her in handling the patient records.
Examples of question that we may ask to Susan Grifford are:
ü What is your opinion about the current clinic system in respect of your work?
ü According to your experience, what are the problems of the current clinic system?
ü How is your working procedure to manage patient record?
ü Do you think that your work can be more effective if we use a better system?
ü What do you expect the new clinic system to help you with handling the patient records?
4. Lisa Sung
Lisa Sung is a staff in the New Century Health Clinic that handles the appointment book of the clinic and prepares the daily appointment list for the clinic. In her work, she needs to call the clinic’s patient in order to give them a reminder. We can imagine that when the clinic keeps growing, she would be overwhelmed with the growing workload. So, that is why I want to interview her and ask about what are her problems while using the clinic’s current system and also what does she expect from the new system.
Examples of question that we may ask to Lisa Sung are:
ü What is your opinion about the current clinic system in respect of your work?
ü According to your experience, what are the problems of the current clinic system?
ü How is your working procedure to manage the clinic’s appointments?
ü Do you think that your work can be more effective if we use a better system?
ü What do you expect the new clinic system to help you with handling the clinic’s appointment and giving reminder to patients?
So, those are the staffs from the clinic that I going to interview and also the objective of interviewing each of them.
The second fact finding technique that I will use for this project is reviewing the documentation from the clinic’s current system. These documentations are old payroll, tax report, insurance report, patient records, appointment books, office and clinic supply data, etc. By reviewing this documentation from the current clinic system, I can get a better idea about how the current system works and produce this documentation. For example, by reviewing the appointment book of the clinic, I can observe what is the information needed in the appointment book, etc. Additionally, I can confirm the result of the earlier interview by reviewing the documentations produced by the current clinic system.
The last fact finding technique that I will use for this project is observation. In this technique, I act as an observer and observe how the clinic’s staffs do their works under real situation and real working environment. By doing this, I can get information about how actually the process and tasks are carried out using the current clinic system. I can get information by observing various clinic staff. For example, I can get information about how the payroll, tax report, and profit distribution are carried out by observing how Fred Brown works. I can get information about how patient records are handled by observing how Susan Grifford works. The information about how to make insurance report and accounting document can be observed from Tom Capaletti. Information about how to manage the clinic’s appointment can be observed from how Lisa Sung manage the clinic’s appointment. And finally, the information about how Carla Harrera manages the office and clinic supplies can be collected by observing how she does her tasks. Beside collecting information about how each staff works in real condition, additionally we can figure out what is the problems of the current system and also what are the inefficiency that are caused by the current system.
Finally, I will conclude that my preliminary investigation will begin by understanding the clinic’s organization structure and the role of each clinic staff. Then I will perform three kinds of fact finding technique that are interview some clinic staffs, review current clinic system documentation, and also observe how the clinic tasks are carried out by the staff under a real working environment. These fact finding activities’ aim is to find out more about the clinic’s current system, the problems and limitations, and also to find out what is expected from the new clinic system.
REFERENCES
Bill Hauserman, 2005, Managing People and Projects: What you need to know to get started, Retrieved on June 28, 2008, from http://www.tappi.org/s_tappi/bin.asp?CID=33&DID=505279&DOC=FILE.PDF
Bwoodsy.tripod.com, 2008, CIS244 New Century Health Clinic Case Study, Retrieved on June 28, 2008, from http://bwoodsy.tripod.com/CaseStudyMain.html
Martin Pinzger and Harald Gall, 2006, Reverse Engineering, Retrieved on June 28, 2008, from http://seal.ifi.uzh.ch/fileadmin/User_Filemount/Vorlesungs_Folien/Reengineering/WS06_07/ReverseEngineering_1s.pdf
Varsys Solutions, 2008, Requirement Analysis or Feasibility Study?, Retrieved on June 28, 2008, from http://www.varsys.com/knowledgecenter_FeasibilityStudy.html
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