Database Reference
In-Depth Information
a detective and gather up every piece of documentation you can find.
When I built the FOCUS system, I scrounged around and managed
to find policy manuals and memos that got me part of the way toward
understanding what these people did for a living. Other sources of infor-
mation include reports used for decision making, performance reports,
records, data capture forms, web sites, competitors sites, and archive
data. But passive review is seldom enough. The next step is to be a bit
more active and direct.
The first thing you can do is interview end users. For our FOCUS proj-
ect, while I had already created a project team consisting of tech people
and end users, I decided that it would be worthwhile to interview a repre-
sentative sampling of people working in different jobs that all touched the
process to be automated.
You can't interview someone without preparation. This consists of first
understanding all that you can about the job and person being inter-
viewed, and then preparing a set of questions for this person.
Sometimes an interview is insufficient to meet your needs. Your subject
may not be able to articulate what he or she does. he next step, then, is to
observe the person on the job.
I've done much work in the artificial-intelligence arena, where observa-
tion is a large part of the systems analysis process. One of the case histories
that people in the field often talk about is one concerning the building of
a tax expert system.
At one end of a large table sat a junior accountant. A large number of
tax books were piled in front of the junior accountant. At the other end
sat some of the most senior tax accountants at the firm. There was nothing
piled in front of them. In the center of the table sat the system analysts,
armed with a video recorder. The interviewer was armed with a script that
contained a problem and a set of questions. The task at hand was for the
junior accountant to work through the problem guided by the experts. The
experts had nothing to refer to—just what was in their memories. Thus
they were able to assist the junior accountant in solving the problem while
the video camera recorded the entire process.
Direct observation can only be done selectively—a few people at the
most. Another technique, which will let you survey a broad number of
people at one time, is the questionnaire. Building a questionnaire requires
some skill. There are generally two types of questions:
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