CASE Tools and System Development Life-Cycle
30 December 2006CASE Tools
Computer-Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools are used by system analysts, designers, and developers to capture information about business requirements, create a design for the data structures to fulfill those requirements, and generate front-end and server program code. CASE tools can automate much of the manual, repetitive, and error-prone work needed for system development, and can greatly increase the productivity, accuracy of the design, and robustness of the implementation.
System Development Life-Cycle
CASE Application Development Method (CADM) – 7 phases:
1. Strategy
2. Analysis
3. Design
4. Build
5. Test
6. Implementation
7. Maintenance
1. Strategy
The purpose of the Strategy phase is to formulate a basic description of the overall scope of the project and how the project will proceed. The entire focus is on the business. The goal is to gain a clear understanding of the business area’s goals, objectives, processes, direction, and needs in order to structure and document the vision of project. Results of this phase include strategy ERD, process flows, strategy document, cost-benefit analysis, and workplan.
Strategy Document is also referred as project charter, project definition document, and scope document. Strategy document outlines the scope of a project and defines an agreement about what the project is committed to deliver. It also includes the estimated budget, time frame, resources, controls, and standards within which the project must be completed.
2. Analysis
The analysis phase breaks logically into two parts: information gathering and requirement analysis.
Within the information gathering portion, techniques for getting at user requirements include interviews, questionnaires, and joint application development (JAD) sessions, along with reviews of the current system, the report audit, and user and system documentation.
In requirements analysis, we extract the system requirements form the information gathered and place them in an organized structure. This can be done at both the unit level and, ultimately, at the system level.
3. Design
The Design phase includes two broad subphases:
- Database Design
- Application Design
You should already have a complete ERD from the Analysis phase, but need to do the physical database design. The basic strategy of database design is to map entities to tables, making adjustments fo subsets, denormalization, aggregation, and summary tables.
At the simplest level, application design is the design of software, including the creation of structures that address modules, programs, procedures, navigation, internal controls, and security.
4. Build
In the Build phase, you build the database and application. The Build phase deliverables consist of the following:
- Unit tested application system
- Populated databases
- System documentation
- User documentation
- Help system and online documents
5. Test
In the Test phase, you develop a test plan that should describe not only test to be run but also how test failures or variances will be handled. Tests include unit testing, system testing, user acceptance tests, and training and documentation. Through this phase, the new system is formally tested.
6. Implementation
In this phase, the project team will rollout a system to production environment and provide adequate user support. The rollout/migration process involves transition period where the system is closely monitored and support is transferred from the project team to the system operation group.
7. Maintenance
Maintenance is a process that continues throughout the life of the system. A predefined process must be put into place to handle ongoing problems, modifications, and enhancements.
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