MIS and System Analysis

Systems analysis plays a central role in the development of the MIS.  Since the MIS is a conglomerate of the various systems, a systematic approach in its development helps in achieving the objective of the MIS.  Each system within the MIS plays a role which contributes to the accomplishment of the MIS objective.

The tools of the systems analysis and the methods of development enforce a discipline on the designer to follow the steps strictly as stipulated. The possibility of a mistake or an Inadvertence is almost ruled out. The success of MIS lies in meeting the information needs of the various personnel in the organization across all levels of the management.  The systems analysis with its structural analysis and design approach ensures an appropriate coverage of the sub-systems.  The data entities and attributes are considered completely keeping in view the needs of the system in question and their interface with other systems.

The systems analysis begin with the output design which itself ensures that the information needs are considered and displayed in the appropriate report or screen format.  The subsequent design steps (viz., input process, procedure designs are taken to fulfil these) needs.

The MIS may call for an open system design. In such a case while making the systems analysis and design, the aspect of open system design is In such a case while making the systems analysis and design. The users actively come out with their requirements automatically ensuring that the user’s needs are met more precisely.

The systems analysis and design, as a tool of the MIS development, helps in streamlining the procedures of the Company to the current needs of the business and information objectives.  New transactions, new documents, new procedures are brought in to make the systems more efficient before it is designed.

An emerging model of the MIS is with the data bases stored in the back-end servers and the front end users having access to it to manipulate the data to the current requirement.  Since the data and information processing becoming more and more like the natural language processing, the role of the systems analyst is more toward data generation, storage and its management in terms of quality, status, access and usage.

The development methodology may be the conventional design of data, databases and files approach or object oriented analysis and design approach, the MIS design is same. The difference is in the development cycle time, quality of information, efficiency of design and the ease of maintenance of the system.

Objectives of System Analysis:

1. System analysis helps in discovering means to design systems where sub-system may have apparently conflicting objectives.
2. It helps in achieving inter compatibility and unity of purpose of sub-systems.
3. It offers a means to create understanding of the complex structures.
4. System analysis helps in placing each sub-system in its proper perspective and context, so that the system as a whole may best achieve its objectives with minimum available resources. It, thus creates synchronization between systems and objectives.
5. System analysis means to tradeoff between functional requirements of a sub-system (components) and its immediately related sub-systems.
6. It helps in understanding and comparing functional impacts of sub-systems to the total system.

Thus systems analysis is one of the important techniques that provide a systematic and broader outlook to understanding, examining and creating or modifying system to meet specific objectives. System analysis and design is an interactive and creative process.

Tools and Techniques of System Analysis:

1. Grid Charts:

Grid charts are a tabular method of representing relationship between two sets of factors. A grid chart analysis is useful in eliminating unnecessary reports or unnecessary data items from reports. It can also be used for identifying responsibilities of various managers for a particular sub-system. Grid chart can be very effectively used to trace flow of various transactions and reports in the organisation.

2. Simulation:

Simulation involves the construction of a model which is largely mathematical in nature. Rather than directly describing the overall behaviour of the system, the simulation model describes the operation of the system in terms of individual events of the individual components of the system.

In particular, the system is divided into elements whose behaviour can be predicted, at least in terms of probability distributions, for each of the various possible states of the system and its inputs.

The inter-relationships between the elements also are built into the model. Thus, simulation provides a means of dividing the model building job into smaller component parts and then combining these parts in their natural order and allowing the computer to present the effect of their interaction on each other.

After constructing the model, it is then activated in order to simulate the actual operation of the system and record its aggregate behaviour.

By repeating this for the various alternative design configurations and comparing their performances, one can identify the most promising configurations. Because of statistical error, it is impossible to guarantee that the configuration yielding the best simulated performance is indeed the optimal one, but it should be at least near optimal if the simulated experiment is designed properly.

Thus, simulation typically is nothing more or less than the technique of performing sampling experiments on the model of the system. The experiments are done on the model rather than on the real system itself only because the experiments on the real system would be too inconvenient, expensive and time consuming.

3. System Flow Chart:

A system flow chart is a diagram or pictorial representation of the logical flow of operations and information in an organisation. It depicts the relationship between input processing and output considering the entire system. A standard set of symbols is generally used for construction of system flow charts.

4. Decision Tree:

Some decisions involve a series of steps. The outcome of first decision guides the second; the third decision depends on the outcome of the second, and so on. In such type of situations of decision making uncertainty surrounds each step, so we face uncertainty, piled on uncertainty.

Decision trees are the model to deal with such a problem. They are also very important in decision making in a probabilistic situation where various opinions (or alternatives) can be drawn (as if they are the branches of a tree) and the final outcomes can be understood.

5. Decision Tables:

Decision tables are graphical method of representing a sequence of logical decisions. It is prepared in a tabular form. It lists all possible conditions and associated set of actions. A decision table consists of the four parts-condition stub, condition entries, action stub and action entries.