Slide 62 of 65
Notes:
At the beginning of this module, we suggested that an analyst needs an organized method for collecting facts. An inexperienced analyst will frequently jump right into interviews. ``Go to the people. That's where the real facts are!'' Wrong! This attitude fails to recognize an important fact of life: people must complete their day-to-day jobs! Your job is not their main responsibility. Your demand on their time is their money lost. Now you may be thinking, ``But I thought you've been saying that the system is for people and that direct end-user involvement in systems development is essential! Aren't you contradicting yourselves?''
Consider the following step-by-step strategy:
- Learn all you can from existing documents, forms, reports, and files. You'll be surprised how much of the system becomes clear without any people contact.
- If appropriate, observe the system in action. Agree not to ask questions. Just watch and take notes or draw pictures. Make sure that the workers know that you're not evaluating individuals. Otherwise, they may perform in a more efficient manner than normal.
- Given all the facts that you've already collected, design and distribute questionnaires to clear up things you don't fully understand. This is also a good time to solicit opinions on problems and limitations. Questionnaires do require your end-users to give up some of their time. But they choose when to best make that sacrifice.
