INFORMATION SYSTEMS ENGINEERING

Information Systems Engineering - AC

[Name of the Institute]

Information Systems Engineering - AC

Introduction

The Clean Brite Company (CBC) Ltd. supplies cleaning products to several commercial sectors and industries, such as public organizations, hospitals, catering organizations, hotels, food processing industries, and so forth. It has a wide range of cleaning products that it offers to different sectors, depending upon the requirements of each of the sector. The company has been in operations since the year 1982. In 2005, CBC bought out its main rival, Scrubaway Allbright Ltd (SAL), and began to merge operations. This merger involved streamlining operations and reducing the workforce where necessary. During 2006, the Managing Director of CBC came under attack from the executive board because of the vast amount of money spent on unsuccessful I.T. projects during the last three years. As a result of the board's concerns, an external management consultant undertook a review of the Company generally and the I.S. development functions specifically. The Information Systems (IS) Department is viewed by the rest of the organisation as distinct and aloof. Department Heads appear to have little faith in the service offered by the IS department.

The function of Information System Development has turned out to be immensely unsuccessful because the requirements of end users are not met. Therefore, an improved amount of consideration is required to be given to the relationship between the information systems developed and the wider organisational environment. Robust, flexible systems with appropriate user-friendly interfaces are a key requirement of any new I.S developments within the organisation.

In November 2006 the management consultant presented his final report to the board. He strongly recommended the introduction of the Soft Systems Method (SSM) to firstly understand the problem domain. He then recommended the use case analysis and modelling to assist in the gathering of user requirements. Finally, unless the role of the business analyst is given proper credence within the organisation, with the problem domain being thoroughly explored and then user requirements being properly analysed and documented, there is unlikely to be any great improvement in I.S development success rates. The Rich Picture technique was also decided to be deployed in this case study of Clean Brite Environment.

Section A - Requirements Analysis using Rich Pictures

Rich Picture of whole problem situation

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The problem of the company is analysed with the help of the rich picture that is drawn above. This rich paper helps in extracting the major themes of the problem. By looking at these problem themes, the analyst draws a conceptual model of the system. This conceptual model is the root definition of the system. After this stage, this conceptual model is applied to the real life scenario.

The actors in the environment of the company were identified in the case study. These actors play major role from the point when customer decides to purchasing a product to the point when the product is delivered to him. The actors were identified because their roles and the effect of them in the entire system has an influence ...