The Key Actors Of The Rich Picture Information Technology Essay

There are many actors in the rich picture of the Youth Action such as Centre Staff, Young Volunteer, Centre Director, Regional Manager, Funding Bodies, Trust Board, and Executive Committee. The management teams of the Centres are represented as Centre staff in the Rich picture, and they do manage the Centres and operation of the projects including the Volunteers’ information. Then they have to report to the Centres Director and Regional Manager about the administration of the projects under their control of territory. The Young Volunteers are those who volunteer in the projects run by the Youth Action. Most of the volunteer are teenagers as the Youth Action aims to make vulnerable young people from committing from the crime. Centre Director is the one who direct the centre and manage the employees of the Centre and the running projects of his Centre. Regional Manager is the one who supports the requested activities from the Centre and ensure the operation of the Centres and projects in his region. Funding Bodies are the organization which support finance to the Youth Action’s projects and the charity must be evidence for the success of the projects. The Trust Board includes members who are Chief Executive, Finance director and other five individuals form the related community. The Trust Board is the over sighting body of the Charity, to know the operation of the charity in detail. The Executive Committee keeps an eye on the operation of the Charity, processing projects and Centres.

A2. 2. The key issues and areas of conflicts in the environment

The Youth Action is a Charity organization that target young people having high probability in committing crime. The main issue of the Youth Action is that they need a MIS to manage the organization in appropriate way. As to collect suitable data to record the information of the young people, financial information of each projects, and information of projects to show how well it is running. Again, at each Service centre, the information of the projects is stored in their own system therefore Head Office face problems in collecting the information of projects. Although most of Centres use Spreadsheet format to store the projects’ information, they are having problems that wrong data have been entered, same data have been entered to different project and secure system to hold the data is required.

Another problem area is between the service centre staff and Centre Director, as each centre has to report to Centre Director or Regional Manager quarterly. They do not have a typical format of reporting. Then, in the scenario, not much information is stated about Contracts between the Funding Bodies and the Charity. I my assumption Contracts are important part of the projects and it is vital for the Charity. Thus, I add Contract in my rich picture to demonstrate that Contracts should also be record in a system. The reporting to the Head Office should also computerize so that MIS must include reporting feature. Handling of the project information should be in a way of standard format. Projects information is the heart of the Charity as all of the overseeing bodies (Trust Board, Executive Committee, and Funding Bodies) want to know the demonstration of the value of money and the situation of the projects.

A2. 3. The main focus of the environment

In the Youth Action rich picture, the main idea that focuses about the environment is that processing lie between Centres and Head Office. As the projects’ information are vital to the charity and they can demonstrate the value of money funded by the Fundraiser. Therefore, I make assumption, in this rich picture, about the environment that the proposed system would be integrated. As the management of the Head office concerns about having centralized management system, we should consider about the information to be collected and processed for potential decision-making. The report from the Centre about projects should be transferred to the Centre Director quarterly and Centre Director should report to Regional Manager and Head office too. That report should be seen by the Funder to know the how well projects are running and value of money. After review the report, the Fundraiser would decide for the further support to the Charity. Therefore, this part is vital for the Charity live on.

A2. 4. The control of the system, data, processing of the environment

The control of the system lies at the head office by its related departments. Although Finance department and Marketing department own their system, they are not integrated each other. I guess the Trust Board and Executive Committee would observe the information that is reported to the Head Office. Consequently, the information gathered at the Head Office must precise and have a common outline for easier application of that information for managerial support. For that reason, the service Centres have to take care about the information entered to the system. In the proposed system, there would be a reporting mechanism that helps Centres in sending reports to superior. Then head office including the overseeing bodies would review the report and making evaluation on the project success. Thus, the Centre would be directed by the head office about project, administration of the centres and managing of the young volunteers.

The projects’ information is the hearted of the system and they are the fundamental data of the environment that the system integrated. The proposed system would hold projects information that is precise and accurate in order to meets the requirements of the users and the senior management. The privileges of the system must be determined to facilitate the access control of the system. The processing of the system would lies mainly at the Centres and Head office.

Section B

B1.

B1. 1

B1. 2

Use case Title: Organize Group

Primary Actor: Tim

Primary Scenario

The use case start when Tim collects the young volunteer information from school, the youth offending service, the police, and youth clubs.

Then arrange that information for additional usage in Dig-It project.

Tim selects 30 volunteers at one time on the project.

After that, Tim arranges the group, which contains 10 young people per group.

Match the group with one volunteer as the group leader and this is the end of the use case.

Secondary Scenario

Step1: Tim does not able to get the information of young people. Then Tim attempt again to get the young people information. The use case continues.

Step3: The number of young people collected is not sufficient for the project. Tim rearranges the group. The use case continues.

Step5: The group Leader volunteer would not available for the project. Tim choose another volunteer for the project. The use case continues.

Use case Title: Phone to Group

Primary Actor: Tim

Secondary Actor: The Volunteer

Primary Scenario

The use case starts when Tim makes a phone call the group at the time that the group would finish the volunteer work.

The lead volunteer pick-up the call.

The use case ends when the volunteer answer the condition of their work to Tim.

Extended: Get Appraisal

It starts when the volunteer give appraisal about the volunteering work.

It ends when Tim record the information.

Secondary Scenario

Step1: Tim cannot phone to the group. He retires to call. The use case continues.

Step2: No one pick up the phone. Tim calls again. The use case continues.

B2. B2. 1

In the Dig-it system use cases diagram, there are three actors. Tim stands for Primary actor and Local authority and the volunteer stands for secondary actors. Tim is full time worker who manage the project that is why I choose Tim as the Primary actor of the use case diagram. The local author is the organization that helps Tim while gathering elderly information by giving the information. The Volunteer is the Leader of the group, he is chosen by Tim to manage the group.

Tim is the main of the Dig-It project. He has to collect the information of elderly and makes arrangement for the volunteer group. Then appoint the leader and allocate group to the elderlys’ gardens. After that, he makes a phone call to the group to get the appraisal from the group leader. The appraisal must be record and the local authority would review the success of the project then they would provides more and provide employments for the young people. The lead volunteer and the local authority indirectly connected to the system. As the result, I choose as the secondary actors.

B2. 2

Use case Title: Organize Group

Primary Actor: Tim

Primary Scenario

The use case start when Tim collects the young volunteer information from school, the youth offending service, the police, and youth clubs.

Then arrange that information for additional usage in Dig-It project.

Tim selects 30 volunteers at one time on the project.

After that, Tim arranges the group, which contains 10 young people per group.

Match the group with one volunteer as the group leader and this is the end of the use case.

The Primary Scenario I choose is Organize Group as this use case is an important one. The case study also stated that the young people are gathered from school, the youth offending service, the police, and youth clubs. I make an assumption that Tim would request the information from those organization. When Tim has collected the information, he has to arrange the raw data to information to apply in the project. For once time, Tim choose 30 young people for the project. They are then grouped into 3 or 4 group which contains 10 peoples including a lead Volunteer chosen by Tim. The use case ends when Tim has done all the processes described and Tim is the main actor.

B2. 3

Use case Title: Organize Group

Primary Actor: Tim

Secondary Scenario

Step1: Tim does not able to get the information of young people. Then Tim attempt again to get the young people information. The use case continues.

Step3: The number of young people collected is not sufficient for the project. Tim rearranges the group. The use case continues.

Step5: The group Leader volunteer would not available for the project. Tim chooses another volunteer for the project. The use case continues.

This is the alternative assumption of the usecase Organize Group. When Tim collecting information, he would need to request from the organizations. If the information requested is corrupted or something else would happen, Tim would not able to have the information so that he necessitate to request again. Sometime, the young people arranged would not sufficient for the project, so that Tim has to rearrange and has to seek again on the young people information. It can also happen that the chosen volunteer would not be available for that time, Tim has to choose another volunteer as to continue the usecase.

B2. 4

In this usecase, I make many assumptions to be more realistic. If I could ask in the real life, I would ask detail to Tim about the processes he is doing now. Especially while he get information from the organization about both elderly and young people. How this information have been transferred? How the information have been saved? Then how the project information have been saved? If I could ask those questions to Tim in real life, I believe that the Usecase Diagram would more practical.

Section C

Critical Analysis of the tools used

In this report, there are two types of requirement analysis tools has been used to seek out the system requirements of the Youth Action’s MIS. They are Rich Picture and Usecases Diagram. Both tools are well known tools of the requirement analysis stage. The rich picture is shown in section A and the usecases diagram is shown in section B. It is important carried out the requirement analysis properly as poor requirement analysis can lead to the system development not a success. The Youth Action charity environment is complicated and human activities are surrounded we should consider the human perspective in the requirement analysis.

The rich picture is a tool that use in early stages of SSM. It is use to uncover the unstructured problems that are concealed. It is a simple graphical illustration of the environment of the Youth Action where the proposed MIS would establish. The rich pictures are adding human elements in considering the requirement analysis of the system development. Rich picture is not only easy to construct but also simple to read even end user can understand rich picture. It includes system boundary, people, places, lines of communication (relationships), areas of conflicts, and concerns of the people of the system environment. Sometime, it can contain emotions and that could be angriness of the employees to the employer. It is more compatible with the real life problematic situation. It takes time to draw but the benefits of it are more because they can find the root cause of the problems and conflict areas.

In the Youth Action rich picture, I draw the communication lines between people, conflicts, concerns, and overseeing bodies. The rich picture can demonstrate the problem situation in detail and user can be more easily to understand than by reading the case study. The rich picture can express both hard facts and soft facts of the system environment but it more emphasis on the human activity (soft facts). The symbolic expression of the rich picture can express the situation that can represent the organization atmosphere. It can handle the ideas coming out from the requirement analysis phase and very basic step of the system development. It is the most important diagram in system development but least popular in system diagrams. DSDS, SSM and Multiview framework use rich picture at the basis requirement stage to know well about the system environment and human activity of the future system.

Most of the problems facing in system development are that identifying wrong problem issues. It can draw to the failure of the system or sometimes system does not meet the overall system requirements, needs, and wants of the people working at the organization. The rich picture can avoid the causes of the sorting out wrong problems and it can lead to the root cause of on the problems found. It can sort the different questions and idea coming upon the problem areas. In most of the requirement analysis tools such as ERD or DFD, usually skip this part and has only keen on data and processes. Unlike other tools, rich picture can convert the ideas into reality. In this case study, it can reveal thoughts and most of the questions are assumptions on the problems relating to the reality.

In my rich picture, the system boundary represents the main focus of the system that is need to consider mainly in the system development. Geographical location such as Head Office and centres are described to show their importance in the proposed system. People are included basing on their rank and processes they do in the organization, for example, Centre Directors and Regional Managers. The overseeing bodies are also included as they are also critical to the system. There are cross swords are used to describe the places where problems and conflicts occurred. Clouds are formed to show the concern of the stakeholder of the system. Arrows shows the relationships between people and places, existing systems, lines of communication and their significances. By viewing the Youth Action rich picture, one can judge realistic view of the problems areas about the conflicts and the environment of the system.

As a result, rich picture is one of the techniques considering the people aspects in the system development. By considering the soft part of the system the proposed system would meet the system requirements thus is both business and system requirements .There are two main ideas while drawing rich pictures, at first it is for discovering the main tasks of the proposed system, then they are done for identifying the problems and conflicts. Therefore, rich picture is a tool that classifies the human aspect of the system and mainly reflects on ‘soft’ think of the system development. By learning the main tasks of the system we can know the main idea of developing the system. The main advantages of the rich picture is that they are easy for stakeholders to understand so that they can confirm that the analyst understands the requirements correctly. It can said to be complete if there were no main point is left out and it helps the analyst to be more creative about the system requirements.

The usecases diagrams is another tools used in the requirement analysis of the Youth Action. There is a usecases diagram for the Dig-It system which is the first step of the MIS of the Youth Action. It is done for discovering that how much IT can support the organization and meets the organizational requirements. The Dig-It usecases diagram is the one, which demonstrates the functions of the system. The usecases are mainly use in UML Unified Modelling Language for describing the functionality of the proposed system. Functional requirements of the system are settle in the Usecases diagram by adding functions of the system. We can predict the functionalities of the system in the requirement analysis by using usecases diagrams. Each function of the system is show in oval shaped and the rectangular box is the boundary of the system. Persons critical for the system is also includes as actors, main actors is called primary actor and persons indirectly related to the system are secondary actors. Sometimes, actors may not be human in the real world.

In the Dig-It system, a usecases diagram is draw to show the functionalities of the Dig-It project. There, Tim is the primary actor as he is the main of the system. The local authority and the volunteer are the secondary actors of the system. Each functions of the system is shaped in the oval and the system boundary is called Dig-It. In the usecases diagram, there are functionalities to accomplish the requirements of the system. Here in usecases diagram we mainly think about both the ‘soft’ aspect and ‘hard’ aspect of the system requirement analysis. In the usecases diagram, I mainly consider about the communication between the user of the system and the usecases.

The usecases diagrams are those which considering the system requirements in the human perceptive. For me, usecases diagrams are easy to understand and can be take into account as the useful requirement analysis tools, as I have realized more about the proposed system after doing the usecases. At first, I identify the actors relating to the system, and then decide the system boundary after that I choose the functions that would be essential for the system. Thus, the processes that would be done after the system developed could be predicted before the system has been built. I also have to make assumption in writing the primary and secondary scenario of the use cases. We could not left out alternatives thoughts of the functions and error circumstances while establishing the Use cases diagram.

In developing the information system, the human aspects should not be left out. In old days, methodologies do not take into account about the human behavior in the information system development. As the stakeholders are main of the system, it would not be realistic if we left out them in requirement analysis. We have to take very cautious about the needs and wants of the each stakeholder. Nowadays, there are many methodologies which encourage considering the human aspects of the information system development such as SSM, Multiview, DSDM and so on. Developing the system in both consider social and technical view can lead to the system success if not system would be fail or do not meet the requirement and users disaffection would be took place.

To develop the successful information system, users’ satisfactions is important because they are the main persons who will use the system. The usecases diagrams can demonstrate the work design of the system. The rich picture can demonstrate the working processes of the system. By involving conflicts and interests of the participants of the system can be solved and helps the system development to be successful. User participation is important in most of the system development. Both technical and social perceptive to the system development is important and we have to take care of the system that meets the users’ requirements. With a successful MIS, the stakeholder of the Youth Action would encourage more on their job and controlling and monitoring the information would be easier. With the aid of the soft thinks of the IS, we could identify the problem situation with unstructured problems, then with the aid of hard thinks provides specific technical considerations of the Information system that would be included in the future system.

The emphasis on both soft and hard perceptive in system development especially in the requirement analysis would be benefit in identifying the problem alternatives of existing system. The larger the organization, the greater conflicts would be found in the environment. Therefore, it is improved that we could know what kind functions and what subsystem should include and technical specification of the system could also be described. The development of the MIS of the Youth Action must consider both human and technical aspects of the system. To be conclude that, both soft aspects and hard aspects of the system should be considerd to develop an information system that meets the uses’ requirements and deliver in time.