Assessment Task - Business Problem Identification

Introduction

The aim of this assignment is to demonstrate your understanding of business analysis and the nature of business problems in an organisational context.

The learning outcomes covered by this task include:

1 Critically evaluate the nature and characteristics of business information systems problems and their organisational contexts

2 Demonstrate coherent and advanced knowledge of the major, contemporary organisational problem solving methodologies, and their applications to business analysis and business information system analysis.

The task

You are required to act as the business analyst working for the organisation in the case study. You have been asked to do the following:

1. Identify all key problems (for each problem identified, you are required to provide a brief explanation).

2. Prioritise all key problems and pick up 2 problems which you consider to be most problematic and discuss in detail why the problems need to be addressed and how they should be treated and why? For discussing the treatment for the problem, you are required to apply Russel Ackoff (2011) framework ‘The 4 Different Ways of Solving a Problem

3. Designate whether the key problems you have identified (in task 1) are hard or soft system problems. You need to explain why you have made your decision.

4. Identify key stakeholders and problem owners.

5. List possible models, tools and techniques that can be used to analyse the current system. Critique each of these models, tools and technique in addressing the problems in the case study. (Note: the emphasis is on critiquing the methods and not to give examples of the methods).

As part of this section, consider both object oriented and structured approaches as covered in previous units (e.g. Requirement Analysis Modelling INF60010.

For those who are a bit rusty (or have not studied these techniques in detail) here are some resources to look at: structured approaches: comparison between object oriented and structured approaches, object oriented approaches)

6. Draw a Rich picture bringing all the components identified together as in 1 - 4.

7. Using Blum's paper evaluate and place SSM on the Matrix of method categories (figure 2). You need to carefully outline why you have placed SSM in a specific quadrant. (Blum, BI 1994, ‘A Taxonomy of Software Development Methods', Communications of the ACM, vol. 37, no. 11, pp. 82-94)

8. For any assumptions you have made in effectively completing the above tasks, please provide details in the appendix. This has been discussed in the note on using the case study.

Attachment:- Case Study.rar