1b - Investigation Methods

1b - Investigation Methods

1. Observation

   • Useful if there are no documents involved in the system
   • Can spot inefficiencies in system
   • Can help identify persistent problems
   • Analyst can quickly understand what the system needs to do
   • Users can impart their experience of the system directly
   • Helps measure how long things take to do
   • People don't like being watched
   • Takes up a lot of time
   • Analyst may be in the way on a busy day
   • Not so efficient at capturing quantitative data
   • Helps measure how long things take to do

2. Questionnaire

   • Can get a lot of responses quickly
   • Gather lots of data for analysis
   • Everyone ansers the same questions - allowing comparisons to be made
   • Allows people to answer at a time convenient to them
   • Question can be planned ahead of time
   • If questions are poor, answers will most likely by poor as well
   • Can be difficult to ask the right questions
   • They are impersonal
   • The response rate may be poor - people may not return them
   • Most answers will be limited due to closed questions

3. Interview

   • Good for personal contact & understanding with the user
   • Extra detail can be drawn out on the spot
   • Opinions can be aired & considered by people in the group
   • Questions can be planned ahead of time by the analyst
   • Can take a lot of time
   • Must be well structured to be efficient
   • Only practical for limited amount of people
   • Less quantitative answers
   • People have to be available
   • People may be less honest than with a questionnaire

4. Examining Documents

   • Excellent for tracking data flow
   • Excellent for identifying data types/formats
   • Useful to identify inefficient data flows
   • There may be other important data that are not in the documents
   • Cannot capture efficiency of the process
   • Does not help with understanding of how people actually use the data