Assume you have a company that recently extended it's operations into your country. Create the company and advise them how to develop a system to...

Baraka wholesalers is an organisation that sells foodstuffs in both credit and cash. The organisation has an existing computer system but a proposition has been made to improve the existing to enable the system to produce invoices, cash receipts, payslips and a payroll which are currently being produced manually. In order to improve the new system, the following procedure is followed.
Preliminary survey
A board comprising of senior members of the organisation is formed to investigate the possibility of improving the existing computer system. The outcomes of this study determines if the investigation for the proposed system is to be continued. If so then the board comes up with specific objectives of the proposed system. A committee is then appointed to ensure that the objectives are met.
Feasibility study
In case the project is given a go-ahead, a study team is put in place to carry out a study and at the end write a report to provide the board with information on: the aims and objectives of the proposed system, the cost/benefit comparison, outline of the proposed system, the effects of the system on the organization and the implementation of the system. The team is also to give recommendations to the board. The board then studies the report in detail and may seek further information on certain areas such as the effect of the new system on the company profits. A decision is then made by the board on whether to go on with or drop the project.
Investigation and fact recording.
Here, a team is put in place to gather, all the information on the current system, noting down all its strengths and weaknesses. This helps in formulating a new system that will eliminate the weaknesses and retain the strengths. In fact finding, various techniques are used. This include interviews, questionnaires and observation. The users of the current system are fully involved in the fact finding process. The team then keeps a record of all thr facts obtained. This information is important in understanding the current system.
Analysis
All facts that have been gathered concerning the existing computer system are assesed with the aim of fully understanding the system. The existing is then critized against a number of principles such as if the purpose of the system is fully satisfied, how economical the system is by relating to the benefits of the system and the cost of maintaining it, how satisfactory the work flow of the system is, the flexibility of the system, the realibilty of the system and the time taken by the system to produce the required information. The board at this point requires a full and accurate statement of the data processing requirements. This provides the required information for the main design of the proposed system. The board can then choose to identify a single design or have different alternatives for the design. Other parties are also involved. These may be the suppliers of the goods to the organization. They may be requested to submit a proposal on how they as an interested party will meet the requirements of the proposed system. In other cases a consultancy firm may be given this task.
Design
This is the outcome stage in the documentation of the proposed system. All the details and procedures associated with the design of the proposed system are reached. The aspects of the new system that will be computerized and those that will be left manual transmission identified and sorted out.
Implementation
This involves the coordination of the user department and the data development department in getting the system operational. This may take in two phases, the build stage and the test stage. This stage also involves staff training. The amount of training required depends on the complexity of the proposed system. Aids such as lectures and courses may be used in training the staff. The programmer is involved to design programs that address the objectives of the proposed system. These include the files containing the customer details and employee details that were initially in handwritten form and converted into machine readable forms. The steps that are involved in the production of the output such as payslips are converted into computer language. Adopting the new system van be done in two ways, where the old and new system may be allowed to run concurrently as the aspects of the new system gradually replace those of the old system until the new system is fully adopted or the old system may be discarded and the new system put into operation immediately.
Maintenance and review
This is done after the implementation of the proposed system to see to it that the objectives originally set have all been achieved, to deal with any unforeseen problems in operating the new system and to ensure that the system is able to cope with the changing operations in the business. The system will be maintained through repairing defects and enhancements of the existing. This will require the services of computer specialists such as a data operations manager or a computer operator.

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Faimus answered the question on February 3, 2018 at 13:05