Question

The Case Opens

On a warm, sunny day in late October, Chip Puller parks his car and walks into his office at Central Pacific University. It feels good to be starting as a systems analyst, and he is looking forward to meeting the other staff. In the office, Anna Liszt introduces herself. “We’ve been assigned to work as a team on a new project. Why don’t I fill you in with the details, and then we can take a tour of the facilities?” “That sounds good to me,” Chip replies. “How long have you been working here?” “About five years,” answers Anna. “I started as a programmer analyst, but the last few years have been dedicated to analysis and design. I’m hoping we’ll find some ways to increase our productivity,” Anna continues. “Tell me about the new project,” Chip says. “Well,” Anna replies, “like so many other organizations, we have a large number of microcomputers with different software packages installed on them. From what I understand, in the 1980s there were few personal computers and a scattered collection of software. This expanded rapidly in the 1990s, and now everyone uses computers. Some faculty members use more than one computer. The current system that is used to maintain software and hardware, which was originally quite useful, is now very outdated and quite overwhelmed.” “What about the users? Who should I know? Who do you think will be important in helping us with the new system?” Chip asks. “You’ll meet everyone, but there are key people I’ve recently met, and I’ll tell you what I’ve learned so you’ll remember them when you meet them. “Dot Matricks is manager of all microcomputer systems at Central Pacific. We seem to be able to work together well. She’s very competent. She’d really like to be able to improve communication among users and analysts.” “It will be a pleasure to meet her,” Chip speculates. “Then there’s Mike Crowe, computer maintenance expert. He really seems to be the nicest guy, but way too busy. We need to help lighten his load. The software counterpart to Mike is Cher Ware. She’s a free spirit, but don’t get me wrong, she knows her job,” Anna says. “She could be fun to work with,” Chip muses. “Could be,” Anna agrees. “You’ll meet the financial analyst, Paige Prynter, too. I haven’t figured her out yet.” “Maybe I can help,” Chip says. “Last, you should—I mean, you will—meet Hy Perteks, who does a great job running the Information Center. He’d like to see us be able to integrate our life cycle activities.” “It sounds promising,” Chip says. “I think I’m going to like it here.

” Exercise E-1.

From the introductory conversation Chip and Anna shared, which elements mentioned might suggest the use of CASE tools?

Answer 1

ANSWER :

What is CASE?
CASE stands for Computer-Aided Software Engineering and CASE tool is a generic term used to mention any automated form of software development and implementation.

General phases in CASE Tools:

1. Requirement : Systems requirement document.
2. Design : Software architecture
3. Implementation : Actual Software part.
4. Verification : Testing and validation.
5. Maintenance : Support of the product post deploying it in production.

Further Sub categorization of CASE Tools:

A) UPPER CASE :

1. Planning.
2. Analysis.
3. Design.

B) LOWER CASE :

1. Implementation.
2. Testing.
3. Maintenance.

Now from above formal definition and conversation between Anna and Chip, we can see some elements where CASE Tools could have been used or has the potential to do so:

"Dot Matricks is the manager of all microcomputer systems at Central Pacific. We seem to be able to work together well. She’s very competent. She’d really like to be able to improve communication among users and analysts."

Miss Matricks seems to be the department head and the person responsible for the proper planning and designing and gathering the requirements from different departments.

"Then there’s Mike Crowe, computer maintenance expert. He really seems to be the nicest guy, but way too busy. We need to help lighten his load. The software counterpart to Mike is Cher Ware..."

Here we can see that Mike Crowe is a computer maintenance expert who works with Cher Ware, a software engineer. Here Mike is handling the part of requirement and design workloads whereas Cher is looking after the implementation of the maintenance division.

Clearly they are/could be using CASE Tool to streamline their daily workload.
  
"Last, you should-I mean, you will—meet Hy Perteks, who does a great job running the Information Center. He’d like to see us be able to integrate our life cycle activities."

As we can see here Mr. Perteks is a senior who is responsible for managing the implementation phase of product development by integrating the software development life cycles.
  

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