rewrite

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?

It says in the case that Jim and the team collected information through interviews. These interviews would have been with key stakeholders in the company. It also says they collected information from loyal customers identified by the marketing department. Finally, Jim and his team collected information about existing systems.

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?

They could have gotten that information from several sources, including vendor brochures, sales information, industry trade publications, and company websites, as well as from current customers of such systems. Students would probably start with a Google search. They would know when they were done when they couldn’t come up with any new information about loyalty systems.

5. Why shouldn’t Petrie’s staff build their own unique system in-house?

They could build their own system from scratch, but the cost would be high, and it would take a long time to design, build, and implement the system. About the only reason such an approach would make sense would be if the company planned on licensing their system to other companies, helping to recoup the costs of building a system from scratch.

Chapter 6

1. Are the DFDs in Figures 6-1 and 6-2 balanced? Show that they are, or are not. If they are not balanced, how can they be fixed?

They are balanced. On both the Context Diagram and the Level-0 there are 2 inflows to the system from the source customer (purchases and coupons) and three outflows (reports, tailored promotions and coupons) from the system to the sink Customer.

5. Why is it important for the team to create DFDs if they are not going to write the actual system code themselves?

Creating DFDs force analysts (and students) to think about the core processes in a system, the data they use, the sources of that data, the information the processes generate, and where the information goes. All of this information is essential in design and building of a system, even if all of its components are purchased off-the-shelf.