IB Computer Science Summary:

Topic 1 System Fundamentals:

System Life cycle:

The stages through which the development of a new system passes
through.
Software development stages:
1. Existing system analysis (Planning and Analysis)
2. Requirements specification (Design Overview)
3. Software design (Development)
4. Software implementation (Development)
5. Testing and debugging (Evaluation)
6. New system installation (Development)
7. Maintenance (Evaluation)
8. Repeat

Figure 1.1 Shows Software life cycle

Hardware life cycle:

 1. Analysis
2. Design
3. Implementation
4. Operation
5. Maintenance
6. Repeat

1.1 Systems in Organization

A new system can be created to replace a system that has become
inefficient, old, redundant, or out of date. The purpose of the new system is
to increase efficiency, quality of output and minimize costs.
A computer system includes:

Hardware
Software
Developers
Users
Immediate Environment

Updating /Implementing a new software may involve actions such as:

training new employees (e.g. Newton Teachers with the Google Classroom),
changing the physical location of the server and even firing employees that
the system has replaced.

Features to take in consideration while Planning a new

system:
Organizational Issues (state of disagreement caused by opposition of needs,
values and interests between people working in a system).

Lack of guiding organizational and business strategies (bad

investments and mismanagement of resources)
Lack of stakeholder and end-user participation
Lack of attention to required training e.g. (Teachers not trained
enough to use a new school software)
Lack of attention to design of tasks of job, allocation of information
system tasks, and the overall usability of the system. E.g. (Put a Math
teacher to teach English)
Feasibility:
Feasibility is the study that evaluates and analyses a project and its
potential, based on various technical, economical, legal, operational and
scheduling criteria. It is used to decide whether a project is worth
developing.
Types of Feasibility:
Operational feasibility is the study of how the system will be implement,
how the sytem works, how will it be implemented and how users will react
to the change.
Operational feasibility answers the following questions:
Process How do the end-users feel about a new process that may be
implemented?
Evaluation Whether or not the process within the organization will work
but also if it can work. Implementation Stakeholder, manager, and end-
user tasks.
Resistance Evaluate management, team, and individual resistance and
how that resistance will be handled.
In-House Strategies How will the work environment be affected? How
much will it change?
Adapt & Review Once change resistance is overcome, explain how the new
process will be implemented along with a review process to monitor the
process change.