INFORMATION SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT

Information System Development

Information System Development

This report presents an overview report of the Information System to be implemented in an organization, which has hired me as an IT consultant. The firm requires a system to be implemented covering all the aspects of System Development Life Cycle.

Successful information systems in an organization is constantly being improved, modified, and expanded as the work in the organization changes, data and technology change, external pressures and opportunities cause the organization to change, and users become more and more computer savvy. They are complex, and they grow more complex over time as their “lives” go on. This “life” of a system consists of many stages, beginning with an idea and ending with implementation and eventual use. This process is known as the system development life cycle (Aronoff, 2008) .

Initiation

Usually, IS technology is initiated in an organization by a “champion,” a high-level existing employee who has general credence among the key people in the organization, has been exposed to IS technology, and has the vision of how his or her organization can benefit from its adoption.

Analysis

The analysis phase of the system development life cycle has a goal of determining whether the innovation will work for this specific organization. While the champion found that the innovation has proven beneficial to other organizations, it takes some detailed analyses to ensure (and also prove to others in the organization) that it will work in this organization (Huxhold, 2007).

Design

The design phase actually begins during the analysis phase because some of the information needed to determine feasibility and cost-effectiveness comes from how the system will be used. A critical component of the design phase is the user needs analysis, which defines specific user applications based upon the data needs of the organization and the business functions that it performs. Analyzing the needs of the users can take months to accomplish (in large organizations) because the mission of the organization and the responsibilities of each functional unit are analyzed to determine how the use of the system can improve the operation of those functions (Huxhold, 2006).

The result of the user needs analysis is a set of design specifications that detail what hardware, software, data, applications, and related components are needed to satisfy the user requirements. These specifications are then used by the system developers to build the system and then test it prior ...