7Assessor's comments
Assessor
Qualification BTEC Level 3 in IT Michael J Kniveton
name
Unit number and title Unit 11 Systems Analysis & Design Learner name Joseph McCaffery
Start Date 20/10/2019 Deadline 05/12/2019
Assignment title 2 of 2 Techniques & Tools
Overall Grade
QCF Code F/601/7278 Credits 10 Credits
First submission / Date submitted
resubmission?*
Resubmission
authorisation Date
by Lead Internal
Verifier*
* All resubmissions must be authorised by the Lead Internal Verifier. Only one resubmission is possible per assignment, providing:
The learner has met initial deadlines set in the assignment, or has met an agreed deadline extension.
The tutor considers that the learner will be able to provide improved evidence without further guidance.
Evidence submitted for assessment has been authenticated and accompanied by a signed and dated declaration of
authenticity by the learner.
**Any resubmission evidence must be submitted within 10 working days of receipt of results of assessment.
Grading criteria Achieved?
Carry out a structured analysis of a specified business process.
P4
Produce a requirements specification for a business process
P5
Produce a design for a specified system requirement
P6
Suggest alternative solutions
M2
Explain any constraints on the system design
M3
Analyse costs and benefits
D1
Generate comprehensive design documentation independently.
D2
Maths feedback English feedback
1
,Assessor feedback
Action plan
Assessor signature Michael J Kniveton Date
Learner signature Joseph McCaffery Date
Assignment brief
2
,Assignment title What Is Systems Analysis?
The purpose of this unit is to:
Enable learners to gain an understanding of the principles of systems analysis and equip them with the skills
to analyse business requirements and design solutions to meet business needs.
Scenario
A large IT support company currently employs a team of technicians to manage their IT infrastructure and
support their customer support needs. Recently, the company has taken over a similar but smaller
company which also employs technical support staff in the same way. The number of IT technicians is
different in both the companies, but the general structure of both IT support units is the same (figure 1).
Manager
IT
IT Support
Network Supervisor
Supervisor
Network IT IT IT
Technician Technician Technician Technician
Figure 1 Organisational structure chart
Other staff members involved in the IT support provision includes staff representatives from different
departments who constitute an IT user group. This group meets with the IT manager monthly to discuss IT
developments and other issues. In addition, other managers, e.g. Finance, Sales, etc., have staff that need
IT support on specialist software.
The company feels that it needs a centralised IT-based support system that will track, monitor and report
on the progress of problems identified by users across the two sites and external clients to improve the IT
support service. To progress this, they have decided to employ an Systems Analyst to undertake the
analysis and design of a new system. (You).
Question Response
3
, Where is the other About two miles away in an industrial estate
company based?
Why did you decide to A few reasons, I suppose. We were a little concerned that if that company got
take over the other bigger they might start to threaten us and take our business. We felt that there
company in the first would be economies of scale in terms of purchases, maintenance contracts, etc.
place? I am not sure what will happen in the future in this area, but potentially if one of
the bigger national chains came to our area, then the bigger we are the more
easily we might fight them off.
And why start thinking We knew that one of the IT departments had a particular successful and
now about developing a innovative network manager and we hoped to use her skills – we know that she
centralised support has some useful ideas about how a new support service might be constructed.
function? We used an in-house questionnaire in the parent company last year to see how
the users felt about IT support and there were a number of problems raised. We
think that if we centralise, this will improve the consistency of responses to IT
queries, share specialist expertise, etc.
Do you intend that the Initially yes, but over the next three months, I want all of the jobs to come into a
two IT departments will central place so that they can be prioritised and allocated out to balance the
work relatively workloads and keep everyone productive. In the longer term, we may choose to
independently on a day shut down one of the technical support areas completely and rely on technology
to day basis? that monitors the networks at a distance. We would ask technicians to travel as
and when necessary. Even at the beginning, I expect that if we have a particular
problem at one site, then technicians will come from the other one to help with
the work. I guess that if we log all of the problems centrally on a database then
we should be able to see trends and common problems – maybe even start to go
back to suppliers with fault records to negotiate special deals.
At this stage, are you Too early to say, but it is possible that we might promote one of the network
thinking of any managers and ask her to play a more strategic role in running the networks.
redundancies in the IT Then, over time, we may only need a network technician at the smaller site, if
support section? we do need one at all. At the moment, anyone who is available in technical
support answers the phone and responds to emails, but we may want to appoint
someone to be on the help desk full time so users get immediate responses to
problems.
What about supporting I want them to have a single point of access for their queries. At the moment,
the users – any changes they either call or sometimes come to the technicians’ area and ask them to fix it
to how you manage there and then, which can be disruptive to other work. Over time, we can
that? analyse the questions and problems, and maybe our human resources
department can arrange some special training events for common problems.
Fig 2 Transcribed record of the meeting
Task 1
4