Topic 9 - AQA INFO3 ICT

• Interviews, questionnaires, observation and inspection of documentation, competitor research.

Business process modelling tools

• Information flow diagram - documents the main flows of infromation around the organisation and is useful to analysts. Oval symbols are entities, boxes processes and lines information flow. 
• Business process modelling notation - flowcharting technique. 
• Work flow diagram - are useful in showing top level procedures and the operation of various departments. 

Data modelling tools

• Data flow diagrams - describes the data flows within a system. A system may be broken down into DFDs. 
• Entity relationship diagrams - helps organise project data into entities and define the relationships between various entities. The main components are entity, relationship and data attribute. 

• Test harness - a collection of software and test data configured to test a program unit by running it under varying conditions and monitoring its outputs. Test harness automates testing and generates test documentation and reports. The benefits of it is that it can increase productivity due to automation, can increase the probability that testing will occur and increase quality of software components and application.
• Volume testing - based on a group of non-functional tests and refers to the process of testing a software application to ensure it works with a certain data volume or number of transactions. 
• Scalability testing - identifies major workloads and lessens bottlenecks that can impede the increasing workload for an application. 
• Prototype testing - corrects problems as they materialise.
• Multi-platform testing - tests to see if the software can run on different platforms. 
• Use of simulated environments