André Leclerc informatics consultant

Information system deliverables

This page identifies and defines the deliverables typically produced during the course of a project whose purpose is to develop and implement an information system.

Let us firstly define what we mean by information system.

An information system is a collection of interrelated components that input, process, store and output information needed to complete some tasks or achieve some goals.

As long as it inputs data, does something with that data and generates some new data, it is an information system.

Any system, whether it is an information system or a transportation system such as an automobile, is used by people to accomplish certain tasks, in various ways, while satisfying or abiding by certain needs or requirements of those people or of the environments in which they operate.

Those environments, in which information systems are used, can vary greatly from one system to another, in terms of their respective scope.  That scope can, for example, cover an entire organization, or a specific department or service of an organization, or a single business task such as the processing of claims.

Here, then, are those deliverables:

  1. The first deliverable to be produced is a model of the information system’s business domain.   That model is independent from the information technology as it only depicts the business components of the information system, and not the technical components.   Those business components’ properties, behaviours, associations and rules are also described as part of that business model.   And so are the information system’s use cases.   A use case is a series of interactions between an information system and its users for the purpose of achieving certain goals or of producing certain results.   Use cases usually take the form of scenarios in which actors having certain roles and responsibilities perform certain actions in order to achieve those goals or produce those results.   Use cases are all about business functionality and, hence, are part of the information system’s business domain.
  2. The second deliverable to be produced is the specification of the requirements to be satisfied, or at least addressed, by the information system.   Those requirements fall into three (3) categories, depending on whether they are problems to be solved, opportunities to be seized, or constraints to abide by.   They also can be further classified into one of seven (7) additional categories, depending on whether they are functional requirements, data requirements, operational requirements, technical requirements, financial requirements, timing requirements, or other special requirements such as human-related ones.   Functional and data requirements are completely defined in the information system’s business model.   Performance, security and information privacy requirements are considered to be operational requirements.
  3. The third deliverable to be produced is one or many prototypes of the information system’s user interface components, such as menus, screens, forms, messages and reports.   The prototypes produced can exhibit varying degrees of realism, interaction and usage possibilities.
  4. The fourth deliverable to be produced is the documentation accompanying the information system.   That documentation includes reference manuals for the users and for the administrators of the information system, the user guide, the system administration guide, tutorials and other training material, and online documentation such as online help.
  5. The fifth deliverable to be produced is the information system per se.   It is usually delivered in an iterative fashion in multiple consecutive releases.

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