Application Development - The CIO's Guide to Oracle Products and Solutions - page 216

In most companies, the programmer works within a project team that
is managed by a project leader who, in turn, is managed by a project man-
ager. Each project team has one or more programmers and probably one
or more systems analysts. The programmer works on the code and sel-
dom, if ever, works with the end users. The systems analysts, on the other
hand, work directly with the end users to develop the requirements and
specification for the system being designed.
While a programmer can lack all the social graces because few outsiders
deal with this person, the system analyst is on the front lines. The analyst
needs to be articulate, friendly, and a good listener. The system analyst
must also have the capability of paying a great deal of attention to detail
and be creative in coming up with techniques for uncovering hidden infor-
mation. For example, when developing the FOCUS system, a financial sys-
tem used by the New York Stock Exchange, I had to uncover hundreds of
mathematical formulas that could be used to analyze the financial forms.
I also had to design dozens of screens that could be utilized efficiently by
the end users. Instead of my designing the screens (this was pre-Internet
days), I turned the end users loose with a word processing programmer
and asked them to list the information they wanted to see and where they
wanted to see it. This is called JAD or joint application development .
When I first starting working for the New York Stock Exchange, I was
responsible for building a computer system that processed a series of
financial forms (like your tax forms) that were required to be filled out by
the various member firms of the stock exchange. These forms contained
hundreds of financial items.
My job as an analyst was to work with the people in the regulatory
department who understood how to process these forms. These were the
end users. Our job was hard, as the financial forms were complex. The
end users were accountant types with vast experience in interpreting
these forms. The reason for looking at these forms at all was to determine
whether the firm was financially healthy—a very important job.
As the systems analyst on the job, I had to meet regularly with these end
users and try to pick their brains. We met several times a week to work on
the project. There was lots of yelling and screaming and tons of pizza. In the
end, however, we developed a document that was quite detailed in describ-
ing everything that the system—called FOCUS—was supposed to do. Once
this document was complete, it was turned over to the programmers, whose
job it was to turn the document into a complete working system.