Thursday, February 16, 2012

Getting to know you - Deployment Environment - Assignment # 11

You were tasked by the IC-dean to evaluate the enrollment system of the university, list and briefly describe the characteristics that an anlayst (you) examines when defining deployment environment.

During system’s development, it is very important to take notice of all aspects that will affect the system being designed in general because the system will be dependent on these aspects. These aspects were distinguished and dealt throughout the different phases or stages of the system’s development. Examples of those aspects are the results of analysis (feasibility, technical, economic, operational, risk) that were conducted during the first two phases of the system development and those requirements that the system should meet.
You cannot put an object to a space smaller than the dimension of that object for it won’t fit or put an object into a bigger space and the remaining space will be unusable. When we apply this concept in designing system, the object refers to the system and the space refers to the environment where the system will be deployed. In order for the analyst to design a system that (as much as possible) fits on the space (working environment), there are some characteristics that an analyst should examine and those are as follows:

Compatibility with system requirements
                The designed system (since it is in form of an application) should be functional within the device specifications. Therefore, it is important to determine the specs of the device that will be use to run or implement the designed system in order to carry out the processes of the designed system efficiently. It is also important to know what is the operating system does the device has because operating systems handles and executes processes and other operations differently. For an example, Windows based computers has those files that can be executed with “.exe” extension and can set multiple user accounts with different access rights designated by the administrator while on Linux based computers, users has limited access to reading, writing and modifying files.

Compatibility among hardware and system software
                The system being designed should be compatible with the device(s) (computers, printers, scanners, IO peripherals) that is involved. The system should be able to communicate and use hardware components that comprise the device to carry out certain processes that the system requires. This functionality may include overriding or synchronizing system’s processes to the device hardware driver. Also, if the system is designed to aid an existing system, the designed system should be able to understand and communicate or synchronize to the existing system.

Conformity with IT strategic plan and architecture plans
                The strategic plan of the company composes of those strategies that were created to improve business process of the company that will set the company’s status for the next proceeding years while architectural plan of the company composes the structural design of the company, what are those departments that the company has. Designed system should be in lined with the IT strategic and architectural plans that the deployment environment (company) has. With the company’s existing strategic and architectural plan, it is possible to design and implement an effective system through the information’s present on the plans that the company formulates for improving its different company functions. It is important that the analyst should look up for the company’s strategic and architectural plan in order to better understand                 what are the events that occurs on the company and the proposed improvements with those events or processes.

Cost and schedule
                Does the needs of bringing up and designing a system will be timely enough at the current business process that is subject for automation? Does the cost compensate the propose functionalities of the designed system? These are just some of the questions that could be asked that could help when defining the systems deployment environment. Also, the time span the system design will take can be affected by the composition or structure of its deployment environment. The more complex its environment is, there will be greater tendencies that there are more components that should need to consider and may take some time. Also, the overall cost of the system should not overwhelm its deployment environment. It should be cost efficient in the sense that the cost of the system being designed is acceptable on the benefactors of it.

References:
Chapter 8 – Evaluating Alternatives for Requirements, Environment, and Implementation (Slide)
Systems Analysis and Design in a Changing World, 4th Edition

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