Question

Assume that you have a friend who makes and then sells hand-crafted decorations for people’s houses, such as cushions/pillows, tablecloths, etc. by taking orders from people at various weekend craft-markets where she displays her range of products. She has asked you, as a Business Analyst, to make software to help her manage records about what things her customers have ordered, including colour/pattern preferences, and where they ordered from, so that she can make sure she prepares and then takes the completed orders to the next craft market held in the same place for collection by the customers. Currently the information is recorded on paper.

You agree to help her. When it is time for requirements elicitation, you prepare a set of questions to ask your friend. Write down (as your answer here) 5 of the questions you plan to ask, so that you will be in a better position to propose a solution.

Answer 1

Requirement gathering:

This is the most important phase of software development which gives a clear vision to its developer that what is the need of the software, how will it be used and who will be the end user of the software. Thus all the requirements should be gathered in such a way that there is minimum need of changes in requirement in later phases to build a software with strong root.

Questions to be asked for requirement elicitation:

1. Application type and platform

To start with developing a software, it is important to know that how the software will be used i.e. on mobile, on browsers etc. The platform for using the requirement will be finalized, further it will have below questions:

a) If the software is to be developed as mobile device:

i. Will it support androids and iOS both

b) If the software is to be developed as web application:

i. What are the possible and highest priority browsers which are needed by her to be used by customers to place orders.

2. Registration process and what customer details are needed:

To use the application, it is manadatory for the customer to get identified. The minimum details of the customer for proceeding to place order is needed to be stored in the database.

This is to be collected from my friend that:

a) What are exact attributes of the customers to be stored to identify him

b) What are the details e.g. a username or email and a password which are mandatory for a customer to enter in the software to login to the application to place order.

3. Storing card details:

As the product to be develiered is Point of Sale which includes the sale and receiving of payment. It will be needed to clarified whether:

a) The new system will accept payments online or not

b) If the payments are to be made online that what all options are needed to be available for making payment e.g. online net banking, credit/debit cards etc.

c) If the payments are not be made online, does the application need to store the card or other payment details of the customer OR it will be entered and erased once the payment is done.

4. Product hierarchy

There is a wide collection of hand crafted products, thus need to know:

a) how the current product list is handled, and

b) how the products can be categories for a better display to the customer

5. Material hierarchy

The application will be selling the hand crafted product, which can have many combination of material to be used and composed. Thus it is needed to be clarified that:

a) How does the material variation needs to be displayed with products and

b) How the selection of various material type will impact the rate of the product