There are many different areas involved in the system development process. Their importance is listed below with reference to the book series System Development Instant Reference.
Project Planning
Project need to be completed on time, meet user expectation and within budget. It involves many different parties and task. Success does not depend solely on the project manager; rather, it is a shared responsibility that requires understanding and involvement from all team members, especially in how their roles impact project delivery. There are standard and rules to follow when working for a large organization like government. It is a real challenging task and very easy to have problems or become out of control without proper planning and management.
The purpose of this book is to outline essential project tasks, standards, and methodologies, along with common problems and recurring issues observed across various projects. It also presents adopted practices for addressing these challenges, including development strategies, design and implementation considerations, and team management skills. The book covers what needs to be done, how to do it, and how to prevent or resolve different types of problems.
Interactivity
System development involves both static and dynamic content that must be carefully designed. Users interact with the system through interfaces and navigation controls, expecting clear guidance and responsive feedback for every action they perform.
Designing the user experience is not solely the responsibility of designers; it requires active involvement from system analysts and programmers as well. After gathering requirements, the first step is to analyze the information to be handled, consider how it should be organized and presented, and then formulate the interface and interactions. Only once this foundation is established should architecture design and coding begin.
The purpose of this book is to explain how information should be presented, how to make systems more intuitive and comfortable to use, and how to enhance operational convenience. It covers practical approaches to handling text, audio, and video—all aimed at improving the overall user experience.
Architecture and Coding
The most important and critical task for computer system are system design and implementation. It involves the process of collecting user requirement, formulating a preliminary and conceptual design by determination of the basic architecture and the component, follow up by selection of available solution with reference to pattern, framework and some middle ware from third parties, what language or tool to use and how to implement the details. Testing and quality assurance is also important to make sure the final product meet user expectation.
The purpose of this chapter is to list out all the major system design and development technologies, from planning, design, to implementation and maintenance for consideration and evaluation. Readers will learn about development techniques that might not be taught in universities, the technical aspects that need to know when entering a new industry, what technology is suitable under what situation, and understand the latest development trends in the industry, plus development advice, debugging and performance tuning techniques.
Data Migration and Conversion
Most of the system development are revamp of the existing computer system. Many existing data need to be migrated to the new system and it must involve some kinds of data conversion. Data mapping needs to be done since the data structure of the existing and the new system is different.
In this chapter, it lists out the essential task, from identifying what data to migrate, how to map and recreate them in the new system, how to check if the data is properly migrated and converted. It covers procedures of what to do, how to do and how to verify.
Security & Privacy Protection
Most of the computer system are implemented in a web-based environment nowadays, which are accessible either in an internet or intranet environment. They are easily subjected to cyber-attack, either externally or internally. This explains why security play such an important role in system development. Without proper consideration in details and sufficient control, data could be amended or stolen easily for whatever bad intentions. The effect could be fatal when most transaction are privacy related, no matter personal information or money.
The purpose of this chapter is to list out the essential IT security and privacy protection consideration, from planning, design, to implementation and maintenance phases. It covers what have to do, how to detect, prevent and tackle including practice of both system administration and code development.
Procurement Plan
Computer System require hardware and software on the market to implement, and acquisition of them require procurement. Different from buying a personal product in a retail store that involve only simple pay and get, there are rules and operational procedures to follow for a company and government department.
In addition to many approvals to seek to make the final purchase, there is even an Agreement on Government Procurement of the World Trade Organization for public organization.
This chapter lists out the common IT procurement practice, including procedure and task to do, so as to help staff to understand the whole process better and make proper preparation on it.
User Acceptance Test Plan
System is developed based on understanding of the user requirement collected, system and functional specification agreed and written down before. In most cases, the final product is somehow different from user expectation and there are issues or bugs found due to misunderstanding, new issue discovered or whatever reason.
User Acceptance Test is to find out the gap between the development and the user team, and make sure all potential issues are identified and solved before production rollout. To achieve this, it must be carefully planned and ensure all scenario are tested.
This chapter lists all the tasks that need to be done, including all the detailed steps, so as to help the staff to understand the whole process and complete their work on hand.
System Rollout Procedure
System rollout is not a simple matter, especially true for project with certain size.
Systems are built from different hardware device, software component or service, and so IT staff need to work with people in different fields, areas or levels, sometimes may even involve suppliers coming from other parts of the world. There are just too many details to care about, to check and to verify. Sometimes, the process could be quite complicated, and the to-do list could be extremely long. So, it is quite easy for staff to miss or omit some details. The purpose of this chapter is to assist readers step-by-step and suggest appropriate ways to complete their job on hand.
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