Walden University • SDLC Software Development Life Cycle

Functional Modeling Your goal in functional modeling is to depict what activities users perform and how the system reacts to those activities. This type of model expresses the high-level functionality of the system from the users’ perspective. For this Application, use the WestEast College case and create an activity diagram that depicts the system’s interactions with the students. Explain and justify the choices you made in your model.

: Fact Finding and Requirements Development One of the most important responsibilities of a systems analyst is to identify the requirements for a project by gathering information from various stakeholders of the system. Stakeholders include the users of the system, those who are paying for the system, and those who will support the system after it is implemented. The stakeholders may have different opinions on what the system should do. For this Application, you apply what you’ve learned about...

Once the organization has decided to move forward with the development of a new or modified system, it is time to determine what tasks are necessary to move the project from initiation to completion. In this Application, you use some standard project management approaches to create a work plan and project schedule (Gantt chart) for a development project. Consider this scenario: As a systems analyst at a medium-size company, you are helping to design an online system the human resources departmen...

Feasibility Analysis How do you determine whether a project is one your development team (and the organization as a whole) should consider? Performing a feasibility analysis enables you to figure that out. In this Application, you use a non-IT scenario to practice this important skill. Consider the following: You have just graduated from college and are beginning your first professional job. Until now, you have been using mass transportation to get to school, but that may no longer be the optima...

Analysis and Design Methodologies - In this unit, you have examined phases of the SDLC and the role of analysis and design in the overall process. A question remains, however, about the analysis and design. What methodology or approach should you use? One common methodology is the structured, or traditional, approach. Another is the object-oriented approach. In this Application, you contrast the activities of these two approaches to analysis and design and look at how the role of the systems an...

Structural Modeling Structural modeling is a different view of the same system that you analyzed from a functional perspective. This model shows how data is organized within the system. Structural modeling provides a conceptual structure for the data, not specific technical aspects such as in what database it will be stored. In this Application, create a structural model that depicts the system’s interactions with the students in the WestEast College case. Perform the following steps: • Iden...