Preferred Analysis Method - Top-Down Approach

Meet with the Project Sponsor and the representatives of high-level business areas in the organization.

1. Identify the information they need the system to be able to report, and why they need that information.
   

2. Record the information needs as Types, Type Relationships, and Type Attributes of data that the meeting participants need to be able to record in order to extract the information required.
   

3. Show the group a functional prototype of a system that would allow them to capture data and report information.
   

4. Update the data model and review the prototype until the group agrees that the identified attributes, relationships, arcs, super-types and sub-types allow them to capture and report all the information they need.
   

5. Note the functions that the functional prototype currently provides.
   

6. Review the deficiencies of the functional prototype to identify:

• functions that would reduce the amount of time it would take to capture data,

• functions that would present the information provided by the system in a more easily-understood manner

• functions that would make data entry and retrieval easier

• business rules that would reduce the entry of invalid data

• business rules that would restrict access to data and information to authorized people only  

For each high-level business area in the organization…

1. Analyst meets with the Senior Staff Member and senior staff representing lower-level business areas.
   

2. People in these meetings must identify the information they need someone to provide to them, and the data they will record, if they are to support requirements identified by their supervisors.
   

3. As above, the analyst must provide a functional prototype to the meeting participants so that they can verify the structure of the data model, identify functional deficiencies in the prototype, and identify useful functional enhancements to the prototype.
   

For each group within each previously-identified business area…

1. Identify the data that members must be able to record in the system from information they will obtain from others.
   

2. Verify that the functional prototype will allow them to capture the data they need to provide and to extract the information they require.
   

3. Record prototype functional deficiencies and useful enhancements.
   

For each previously-met group…

1. Verify that all required data-entry, data-retrieval, data integrity, and data access functions have been identified, and that the data model supports their needs.  Start this verification process with "low-level" business areas, and work back to the Project Sponsor and senior staff.