Assignment 1 - Individual Assignment

Overview

The purpose of this assessment is to provide students with the opportunity to deepen, extend and apply the knowledge and skills developed from the first 4 weeks of material. Students complete the assignment individually. This activity will provide an indication of any intervention that may be required to support students.

There are a growing number of case studies of expensive IT failures, leading in some cases to the actual failure of the business. It has been argued that a significant cause of project failures is poor requirements specification. The purpose of this assignment is to individually investigate this further.

Learning Outcomes Assessed

The following course learning outcomes are assessed by completing this assessment:

K2. describe the most recent advances in deriving the laws, hypotheses, and conjectures in planning, developing, evaluating and introducing modern information systems;

K3. identify the causes of success and failure in information systems, derived from documented case studies;

S1. develop skills to analyse the user requirements;

S2. analyse the laws, rules, and theories in Information Systems;

Requirements: Demonstrate understanding of particular concepts covered in lectures by investigating and answering provided question(s). The questions may involve theory or application of theory to specific examples. This may require further reading and research beyond the material discussed in class.

Short Answer questions

McIlroy's law
Software reuse reduces cycle time and increases productivity and quality

a) Describe and illustrate the aboveMcllroy'slaw with examples. This law was published in 1968; is this law still valid today? Justify your answer with examples.

Glass' law
Requirement deficiencies are the prime source of project failures.

b) Describe the above Glass' law in your own words. Illustrate with a practical example.

Short Essay question

Conduct some research and find a project that has failed due to deficient requirements. Outline this project case study and the lessons to be learned from this. Suggest strategies that may have contributed to the failure of the IT project and recommend strategies that could have been adopted to mitigate against the failure. Use referencing appropriately to cite your sources and justify your suggestions. Refer to the laws described in your text to support your answer. It is expected that you will write 800-1000 words in this answer.

Applied Task

Examine the student administration system that you use to enrol in courses each semester. Write a list of at least 10 detailed functional and non-functional requirements for part of this system. Create a traceability matrix based on these requirements. (Consult your tutor to approve which part you are focusing on prior to submission)