UNIVERSITY EXAMINATIONS: 2018/2019
EXAMINATION FOR THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF BUSINESS
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
BBIT207 SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT
FULL TIME/PART TIME/DISTANCE LEARNING
DATE: APRIL, 2019 TIME: 2 HOURS
INSTRUCTIONS: Answer Question One & ANY OTHER TWO questions.
QUESTION ONE (COMPULSORY)
a) Discuss the key drivers of knowledge management (6 Marks)
b) Describe the approaches to addressing competitive effectiveness using IS/IT (4 Marks)
c) Describe the potential benefits and the potential blocks to problem cognition when using
techniques in system development (4 Marks)
d) Describe THREE barriers to a new business entering an established market according to
Michael Porter. (6 Marks)
e) Explain what is meant by “iterative prototyping” in the context of systems analysis and
design (2 Marks)
f) Define the term information systems development (2 Marks)
g) The Human Resources and Finance departments of an organization both use the payroll
system. Employees can access the system to look at their pay details and to change their
home address. In this context, explain the importance of the qualities of: (6 Marks)
i) accessibility
ii) privacy
iii) security
QUESTION TWO
a) Discuss the view that modern life cycle models with their emphasis on prototyping,
create systems that are often fragmented and difficult to integrate; of unsatisfactory
reliability, performance, and functionality; and of limited longevity. (8 Marks)
b) Compare and contrast the following systems development methodologies (provide
relevant examples for each ) (12 Marks)
i. Blended methodologies
ii. Object oriented methodologies
iii. People oriented methodologies
QUESTION THREE
a) Describe a methodology which can be considered to reflect the “science” paradigm and a
methodology which can be considered to reflect the “systems” paradigm. Refer to the
main objectives, phases/activities, and deliverables of the methodology in your
description. Justify your classification of the methodologies. (10 Marks)
b) A systematic approach to practice, should be used by the ISD professional when
developing information systems.
i) List and explain THREE overall objectives that should form the framework for
systematic practice in the development of an information system. (6 Marks)
ii) Briefly explain TWO areas where lack of focus by the ISD professional might have
undesirable effects on the development of an information system. (4 Marks)
QUESTION FOUR
a) An address book holds a collection of entries, each recording a person’s first and last names,
address, city, state, zip, and phone number. It must be possible to add a new person to an
address book, to edit existing information about a person (except the person’s name), and
to delete a person. It must be possible to sort the entries in the address book alphabetically
by last name (with ties broken by first name if necessary), or by ZIP code (with ties broken
by name if necessary). It must be possible to print out all the entries in the address book in
“mailing label” format. It must be possible to create a new address book, to open a disk file
containing an existing address book to close an address book, and to save an address book
to a disk file, using standard New, Open, Close, Save and Save As … File menu options.
The program’s File menu will also have a Quit option to allow closing all open address
books and terminating the programThe initial requirements call for the program to only be
able to work with a single address book at a time; therefore, if the user chooses the New or
Open menu option, any current address book will be closed before creating/opening a new
one. A later extension might allow for multiple address books to be open, each with its own
window which can be closed separately, with closing the last open window resulting in
terminating the program. In this case, New and Open will result in creating a new window,
without affecting the current window.The program will keep track of whether any changes have
been made to an address book since it was last saved, and will offer the user the opportunity to save
changes when an address book is closed either explicitly or as a result of choosing to create/open
another or to quit the program. The program will keep track of the file that the current address book
was read from or most recently saved to, will display the file’s name as the title of the main window,
and will use that file when executing the Save option. When a New address book is initially created,
its window will be titled “Untitled”, and a Save operation will be converted to Save As … – i.e. the
user will be required to specify a file. Because this is to be a “standard GUI” style application, some
attention needs to be given to the user interface at this point. A user interface like the following
might be adopted. Not shown in the screen shot is a File menu with New, Open, Close, Save,
Save As …, Print, and Quit options. For the “Edit” and “Delete” buttons, the user must first select a
person in the scrolling list of names, and then can click the appropriate button to edit/delete that
person.
i) Based on the list of requirements above, which ones are considered non-functional
requirements? (7 Marks)
ii) Based on the list of requirements above, which ones are considered functional
requirements? (7 Marks)
b) Poor user interface design is the reason why so many software systems are never used.
State and explain three human factors that you would take into consideration when
designing a user interface. (6 Marks)
QUESTION FIVE
A company has over the years used software development methods that rely on documented
specifications and designs. Agile methods are being considered seriously in the pursuit of growth
and internationalisation of the business.
a) Explain the agile principles for rapid software development and justify its appropriateness as a
method for adoption. (12 Marks)
b) Discuss the view that modern life cycle models with their emphasis on prototyping, create
systems that are often fragmented and difficult to integrate; of unsatisfactory reliability,
performance, and functionality; and of limited longevity. (8 Marks)
