Briefing Study Guides and Case Studies

Introduction

These briefing studies and case studies are aimed at systems analysts, junior business analysts and degree or diploma students. Their primary focus is on business systems, their analysis and the specification of a set of business requirements, all done using a pragmatic approach to the use of the Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method, SSADM.

They hardly touch on technologies, apart from covering off Technical Systems Options, which will be generic in nature. The requirement specifications produced stop just prior to anything that would be solution specific.

So, if you're into business analysis, systems analysis, requirements gathering and capture or an IT project lifecycle, you'll learn something here.

Background

The author, Mark Ridley, has been using SSADM since 1990, and has spent 16 years as a freelance business analysis consultant.

In that time he has seen and has been retained to correct many instances of a flawed approach to analysis and specification within in-house IT departments.

What you will find here is a distilled set of experiences and best practice techniques, applicable to most data processing environments, within the context of briefing study guides and case studies.

Enough, here is what is available right now:

• Tutorial: Requirements Analysis & Specification
  The purpose of this Briefing Study guide is to define an optimal set of techniques that delivers a Business Requirement Specification to an external supplier. From the specification and access to the business users for design decisions, the supplier will be able to prepare a fixed price quote for the system covering logical design, physical design, code, build and internal test
   
• Case Study: Acme Fashion Supplies Feasibility Study
  Updated 18/02/07 Added Non-functional aspects. First draft.
  The case study presently covers the Terms of Reference, and partial Dataflow and Logical Data Models. This is a work in progress and mimics the products' development in a real project.
   
  Acme Fashion Supplies provide fashion goods, aimed at European and traditional UK tastes, on a sale-or-return basis. Their customers are high street shops and other retail outlets.
   
  It uses mainly manual processes with some ad-hoc computer support. Acme has embarked on a strategy to provide automated and integrated support to these processes and to embrace the opportunities presented by the world wide web and the internet.
   
• SSADM Style: Diagramming notation explained
  Pretty much all of the studies and guides use standard diagrams of various sorts. This slide sequence explains the notation used for each.
   

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