Werabe University

Institute of Technology
Department of Information Systems

Fundamentals of System Analysis & Design

Chapter Two: Project Identification,

Selection and Initiation & Planning

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 Project Identification, Selection and
Initiation & Planning Phase
• At these two phases major activities to be conducted
are:
Need (identification) assessment
Selection of a project
Project initiation
Detailed study
Feasibility study
Project planning

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 Project Identification and Selection
• Possible sources or request for a new system with their
own reasons are:
 Manager
 User
 System analyst ( formal planning team)
• It is also important to check that requests are not due to
negative competition or simply due to the desire for a
change. This is what we call checking the validity or
logically of the requests.
• Next to identify the possible area for system development
selection of a project that do need immediate attention
by considering its link the major objective of the
institution and other issue is another point to consider.

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 Project Initiation and Planning
 It is time now to create some initiation including:
 Forming a team
 Establishing management relationship &
 Formal communication with customers
This is just to let everybody in the institution
responsive to the effort of developing an information
system
 

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 Conducting Detailed Study

• Detailed study, collecting facts and information about

existing system using fact finding methods (traditional
and modern).
• And every information should be documented in a
form of log and file

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 Conducting Feasibility Study
• Assessing feasibility means answering questions
relating to the utility (usefulness) and viability
(capability) of the system that is going to be developed
• This means answering the following questions:
Is it really cost-beneficial to develop the proposed
system ?
Is it possible to develop the proposed system?
Is it…

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 Cont’d…
• In order to answer the previous questions we
conduct various kind of feasibility analysis
• Types of Feasibility Analysis
1.Economic Feasibility
2.Technical Feasibility
3.Operational Feasibility
4.Schedule Feasibility
5.Legal Feasibility
6.Political Feasibility

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 Cont’d..
1. Economic Feasibility
• Assessing economic feasibility involves comparing the costs of the
information systems development project with the benefits the
information system is going to have for the organization once it has been
developed.
• Benefits of an information system can be tangible or intangible.
•Tangible benefits are those benefits that can be translated in to
monetary values (such as Birr or Dollar).
•Intangible benefits are the benefits the proposed IS would give to the
organization but which cannot easily be measured in monetary terms.
• Look at the following benefits of a proposed payroll system and classify
them as tangible or intangible.
oReduction or avoidance of the monthly overtime payment required to
prepare payroll in time
oImproving the morale of the organization’s employees
oImproving the satisfaction of the finance people
oReduction in erroneous overpayment to employees
oAvailability of new information say percentage of salary paid per
department division 8
 Cont’d…
• Costs can be classified one-time (initial) and recurring (operational).
•One time costs are costs incurred to develop the IS and to put it in
place.
•Recurring costs on the hand those costs incurred to use and
maintain the system once it has been developed.
• Following are possible cost of a payroll system. Classify them into
initial and operational
oPayment to analyst, designers and programmers
oCost of purchasing server class computers, network cables, switch
and so forth
oCost of purchasing papers for printing reports from the IS
oSalary of database administrator to be hired to administer and
maintains the IS
oCost of training user
oCost of purchasing additional hard disk for each year for the coming
five years

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 Cont’d…

2. Technical Feasibility
• Assessing technical feasibility means checking
whether the organization has got technical
capability to develop the proposed IS

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 Cont’d…
3. Operational Feasibility
• Refers to whether the proposed system
can be implemented and operated with
the staff the organization have and meet
its intended purpose.
• The difference between technical and
operational feasibility is that while
technical feasibility is technology oriented,
operational feasibility is people oriented.

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 Cont’d…
4. Schedule Feasibility
• Involves checking if the project team can
build the proposed system within the
time allotted

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 Cont’d…
5. Legal Feasibility
• Concerns if the IS development project would
have any legal implications for the
organization due to government regulation or
software license agreements.

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 Cont’d…
6. Political Feasibility
• Requires identifying the people that are
going to be affected by the information
system to be developed and any power shifts
it may bring within the organization

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 Planning for the IS Development Project
• Planning requires:
Definition of the scope
Identification of tasks
Their sequence and
Duration
• After doing this it is just using a tool to represent it in
a form of schedule
Defining scope of the IS Development Project
• Scope defines the boundaries of a project- What
part of the business is to be studied, analyzed,
designed, implemented and improved?

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 Cont’d…
Identification of tasks through decomposition (phases, activity, task)
• Once we have defined the scope of the project, we can identify the tasks
work to be done in the project
• Usually, analysts use a top down work breakdown approach to identify
the tasks
• For instance consider the following work break down structure you can
use to enter tasks in Microsoft Project:
1. Project Initiation and Planning
1.1 Feasibility study
1.1.1 Determining economic feasibility
1.1.2 Determining operational feasibility
1.1.3 Determining technical feasibility
1.2 Project planning
1.2.1 defining the scope of the project
1.2.2 defining tasks in the project
2. Analysis
2.1 Determining user requirement

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 Cont’d…
Estimating Task Duration
• The next in planning for the IS development project is estimating
the time required to carry out each task identified above
• Usually an average of optimistic, pessimistic and realistic time
estimates is taken to arrive at the most likely time duration of a
task
 Optimistic duration (o) - the minimum amount of time it would take to
perform the task if everything is going on well
 Pessimistic duration (p) - the maximum amount of time it would take
to perform the task if all things go wrong
 Realistic duration (r) - the amount of time needed to perform the task
under normal circumstances
• Usually more weight (4 times) is given to the realistic duration
when computing the average of the three estimates to arrive at
the expected completion time (ET) of the project task while giving
1 for others

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 Cont’d…
Consider the following example
• A project team determines that it would take 4 days to conduct technical
feasibility assessment if no member of the project team takes leave, no member
is absent or sick, no member will be interrupted by phone call and so forth and
every one works effectively 8 hours a day nonstop
• They also determine that it would take 10 days if all possible problems such as
members of the team being absent, users are busy with a meeting to supply
data for the assessment and so forth
• However, the team has the experience of usually conducting technical feasibility
assessments in 6 days in other projects taking into account
• What is the expected completion duration of the time needed to conduct
technical feasibility assessment for this project?
 

Where
• ET - Expected time for the completion for an activity
• o - Optimistic completion time for an activity
• r - Realistic completion time for an activity
• p - Pessimistic completion time for an activity
In this case, ET = 6.33 days
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 Cont’d…
Identification of task sequences
• Before preparing the time schedule using planning
tools it is necessary again to identify sequence of
tasks especially in case of PERT chart for
scheduling.
Preparing the time schedule using planning tools
• Once we have a list of the tasks to be carried out
in the project, sequence and duration they take
• We can use either Gant charts or PERT (Program
Evaluation and Review Technique) charts to
graphical present the time schedule for the project

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 Steps in PERT Construction
1. Identify each activity to be completed in the project
2. Determine time estimates and calculate the expected
completion time for each activity  
Activity Immediate Optimistic Time Realistic Pessimistic Expected
predecessor (o) Time (r) Time (p) Time (ET)

A - 4 5 12 6

B - 1 1.5 5 2

C B 2 3 4 3

D A,C 3 4 11 5

E C 2 3 4 3

F C 1.5 2 2.5 2

G D, E, F 1.5 3 4.5 3

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 Cont’d…

3. Determine the sequence of the activities and precedence

relationships among all activities by constructing PERT network
Activity Immediate predecessor
A -
B -
C B
D A,C
E C
F C
G D, E, F

D G
A 2 5 7
E

1 Dummy Activity
4
F
B 3 C 6

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 Cont’d…
• Network diagrams have two major
components: arrows and nodes.
• Arrows reflect the sequence of activities
• Nodes reflect activities that consume
time and resources (the beginning and
ending of activity)
• Dummy activity - that do not require
time but used just for documentation.

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 Cont’d…
4. Determine the critical path
• Critical path is a series of collected activities
that starts from the origin to the destination
nodes and it tells the total amount of time to
complete the project
• For the above network we have four possible
ways to get to the destination from the origin
1. ADG 2. BCDG 3. BCEG 4. BCFG

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 Cont’d…
A. Work forward chain calculation
• Objective is to determine earliest start (ES) and
earliest finish (EF) time for each activity
• Start from the origin and assume ES=0 at origin
EF = ES + ET
• Where EF = Earliest finish ES = Earliest start and
ET = Expected activity time
Earliest start time rule
• The earliest start time for an activity leaving a
particular node is equal to the largest value of the
earliest finish times for all activities entering the node
 

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 Contd…

B. Work backward chain calculation

• Objective is to determine latest start (LS) and latest
finish (LF) times for all activities
• Assume EF=LF at the destination node
LS = LF – ET
•Where LS = latest start LF= Latest Finish and
ET= Expected activity time
Latest finish time rule
• The latest finish time for an activity starting for a
particular node is equal to the smallest value of the
latest times for all activities leaving the node

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Cont’d…

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 Contd…
C. Calculate slack time (ST)
• Calculate slack time for each activity which is the
difference between latest start time & earliest start
time or latest finish time & earliest finish time
ST = LS – ES = LF –EF
• The critical path is the connection of activities with
0 slack time
• For any activity on the critical path slack time is
always 0
• The critical path is the longest path on the network
but shortest time by which the project will be
completed
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 Cont’d…

Activity Earliest Start Latest Start Slack Time(ST) On Critical Path

(ES) (LS) ST=LS-ES

A 0 0 0

B 0 1 1

C 2 3 1

D 6 6 0

E 5 8 3

F 5 9 4

G 11 11 0

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 Cont’d…
Q. Assume you have a project with ten activities labeled A–J. Derive the
earliest completion time (or early finish—EF), latest completion time (or
late finish—LF), and slack for each of the following tasks (begin at time
0). Which tasks are on the critical path? Draw Network diagram for these
tasks, and make sure you highlight the critical path on your Network
diagram .
Activity Preceding Expected EF LF Slack Critical Path
Event Duration Time(ST)
ST=LF-EF

A - 3
B A 1
C A 2
D B,C 5
E C 3
F D 2
G E,F 3
H F,G 5
I G,H 5
J I 2

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 Gantt Chart
• A Gantt chart is simple horizontal bar chart that
depicts projects tasks against a calendar
• Each bar represents a named project task
• The tasks are listed vertically in the left hand column
while the horizontal axis is the calendar timeline
• Gant chart offers the following advantages
 They are easy to learn, prepare, use
 They show overlapping tasks that can be performed at
the same time
 The bars in a Gantt chart can be shaded to clearly
indicate percentage completion and project progress
 

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Cont’d…

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 Preparing and Communicating a
Project Plan Document
• At the end of the planning phase a summary of the
activities conducted during the planning phase and
the results obtained from will be prepared in a project
planning document called Base Line Project Plan
(BPP)
• Base Line Project Plan (BPP) is a document which
contains all the necessary information about the
project like, the scope, the team formed and the
schedule
• This has to be communicated with all stakeholders
and agreed upon before moving on to the next phase
analysis
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