1. What do you think are the sources of the information Jim and his team collected? How do you think they collected all of that information?
Jim collected informations by having interviews inside the company with stakeholders. He also worked with the marketing department to get some information from loyal customers. Jim and his team gathered some information about the current system.
3. If you were looking for alternative approaches for Petrie’s customer loyalty program, where would you look for information? Where would you start? How would you know when you were done?
An alternative approach could be researching many different sources. If it were me I would do my research through the internet and compare what I find to the current system used by the customers. I guess the obvious reason to know when you are done is because you can’t find or come up with any new information about the loyalty systems.
5. Why shouldn’t Petrie’s staff build their own unique system in-house?
I think it would cost much more and will be much more time consuming. The better thing to do is use an outsource instead of building in-house, that way they are saving money and getting what they want a lot faster.
Petrie's Electronics Case, Chapter 6, Questions 1 and 5
1. Are the DFDs in PE Figures 6-1 and 6-2 balanced? Show that they are, or are not. If they are not balanced, how can they be fixed?
It looks like they are balanced because on both the diagrams there are 2 inflows to the customer (purchases & coupons) and 3 outflows from the system to sink customer (reports, tailored promotions, & coupons).
5. Why is it important for the team to create DFDs if they are not going to write the actual system code themselves?
It makes the analysts think about the data being used, the sources of the data, where the information comes from and goes.