IT Management Assignment, Essay Example

Give users what they ask for. If they want lots of reports and reams of data that is what you should provide.

Within the concept of Systems Analysis and Design it has been stated “Give users what they ask for. If they want lots of reports and reams of data, that is what you should provide”.

Pro Arguments

The system is being developed for the end user and as such they provide the specification of requirements. If they require a lot of reports and output data, then that is their prerogative. They look at the Systems Analysts and Designers to come up with the most technically sound means of achieving the business objective.  This means customizing the system to their specific needs and the technology harnessed should be optimized to achieve that result. “users are considered to be incidences of actors” (Mayhew, 1999). Output might be based upon a number of standard pre-defined reports that are hard coded into the system. Additional flexibility might be in the data base design i.e. Relational Database concepts that permit the integration of report program generators like SQL and Crystal that facilitate easy user interface to generate reports and create libraries of information / output that they desire.

Con Arguments

The system may be one part of a much larger holistic system that has to follow certain design standards and parameters. This may mean imposing some constraints on subsidiary systems that function within the grad architectural design of the larger system.  This means keeping any new system design in line with cost parameters and overall operating procedures of the integrated system.  It is important to remember “The cleverest code in the world is worth nothing if a program’s interface proves an unwieldy barrier to users” (Cooper, 1995). In addition there may be variations which the user first needs to become accustomed with “user interfaces and the ways of interacting with computers may differ with different computer systems” (Stone, 2005)

Works Cited

Cooper, A. (1995). About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design . New York: John Wiley.

Mayhew, D. J. (1999). The usability engineering lifecycle: a practitioner’s handbook for user . London UK: Academic Press.

Stone, D. L. (2005). User interface design and evaluation . San Francisco CA: Morgan Kauffman.