As a leader in the game development field, Game Technology has many customers. The company wants to add a customer contact management feature to the sales system, and you will assist the IT team on this project. One of your first tasks is to interview users to find out what functions they want. When you have this information, you can construct a functional decomposition diagram (FDD) to list and organize the functions.
Before you talk to the users, you decide to practice your interviewing skills. Specifically, you want to use open-ended, closed-ended, and range-of-response questions. To test yourself, you ask a team member to develop the following sample questions for you to identify:
 Do you foresee any problems with this system?
 On a scale of one to five (high), how important is the project?
 Do you maintain current e-mail addresses for customers?
 Who is responsible for entering these records?
 What would be some benefits of the new feature?
During the interviews, you learned that most users want to start with an opening screen that allows them to look up a customer, add a customer, edit a customer, delete a customer, or get help. The Help option should allow them to search a knowledge base or contact the IT Help Desk. If they select the knowledge base option, they want to search by keyword or by topic. If they select the IT Help Desk, they want to have an e-mail or a telephone call-back option.
Practice Tasks
1. For each question asked, enter a code that correctly identifies the question.
2. Draw an FDD that follows the guidelines in the textbook.
Challenge Tasks
After you complete the Practice Tasks, you learn about new developments at Game Technology. Although the interviews were successful, you need more detail. Specifically, you want more feedback about the user interface, built-in error checking, and reports that could be generated for users. Using these topics, or others you think would be relevant, prepare two samples of each type of question.
Also, your FDD was good, but users want you to add a Reports function to the opening screen. That option would allow users to list reports by name or by type. Users also would be
Critical Thinking Challenge: Tasks Page
able to view or print a report. If they select the Print option, they should be able to print the full report, the current page, or selected pages.
Task 1. For each topic, prepare two sample questions, and indicate the type of question.
Task 2. Draw an FDD that shows the Reports function and subfunctions.