The world can be seen as a vast number of systems.
We have systems of work, telecommunication systems, billing systems, legal systems, and financial systems to name a few. They exist to bring order to a complex world and make it more manageable. In order to get the best from these systems, we need to understand them.
We need systems analyis to help us understand systems. Much of that complexity is thrust upon us and the better we undertand it and can work with it the easier our lives are.
We need detailed and accurate knowledge on how systems work, their scope, limitations and interconnections with other systems. Determining the latter is the role of the systems analysis.
The systems analyst studies for example, how a business functions, what drives it, how it works, what problems make it stop working and the internal interactions between systems. Equipped with an excellent understanding of these mechanisms, the systems analyst is then for example able to inform programmers of what they must do to improve a system. In fact, starting a software project without this key information is largely a waste of customers money.
An organisation struggles to ship its products quickly. A systems analyst is hired and researches the problem, and discovers that the address database is stored on a single computer, used by a single person, who is not available all the time shipments need to be made.
The systems analyst, suggests exporting the address database to a web based database, where all staff can access it 24/7 from anywhere in the world. The database has the additional advantage of printing address labels, and emailing finance to tell them the product has shipped.
At Meadowlark we have twenty five years of experience of systems analysis. We passionately believe that this stage of software development (the first stage) is the most important in a software development project. Sound systems analysis allows us to see the outlying issues of a project, the potential stumbling blocks, and opportunities for improved competitive advantage. In short it means we write better quality software, that better models a business current business practices and desired business practices.
1. Smaller faster, cheaper, lighter computers for the desktop. They will be no larger than a DVD drive. They will be silent, and run free software, and much of this will be web based. They will use solid state disks, and large quantities of cheap memory.
2. More powerful mobile phones will largely replace traditional PCs. The screens of mobiles will occupy as much of the phone as physicallly possible. "Soft buttons will have largely replaced mechanical buttons in top of the range phones.
3. Sophisticated screen display technology will be available that will allow us to use bigger computer monitors in smaller less likely workplaces.
4. Micro-factories: places of work no bigger than a loft
extension, where budding entrepreneurs labour in their free time
"printing" products with 3D printers and selling their wares
by the internet.