Jeannine Strothers investments manager, has submitted numerous requests for a new investment tracking system. She needs to make quick decisions regarding possible investments and divestments. One hour can cost her thousands of dollars in profits for her company. She has finally given up on the IT Department for not giving her requests high enough priority to get service. Therefore, she goes to a computer store and buys a microcomputer along with spreadsheet, database, and word processing software. The computer store salesperson suggests that she build a database of her investments and options, subscribe to a computer investment databank, feed data from her database into the spreadsheet, play "what if" investment games on the spreadsheet, and then update the database to reflect her final decisions. The word processor will draw data from the database for form letters and mailing lists. After discussing her plans with Jeff, a systems analyst at another company, he suggests she take a systems analysis and design course before beginning to use the spreadsheet and database.

Jeannine did not take Jeff's advice. She built a prototype of the new system, but she can't get top management to allow her to use it and she's run into several problems. First, the financial comptroller has been reevaluating company investment strategies and policies. Jeannine wasn't aware of that, and her prototype system does not account for many of the policies that are being considered.

Additionally, her staff has rejected the investment and divestment orders generated by the system. She used Information Systems' existing file structure to design those orders, only to find out that her clerks had recently abandoned those files because they didn't include the data necessary to execute order transactions. Her staff is also critical of the design, saying that minor mistakes send them off into the "twilight zone" with no easy way to recover. Finally, some of her subordinate managers are insisting on graphic reports. She's not sure how to convert the database and spreadsheet data to a graphic format, and her boss is not sure that he wants to invest the money in a consultant to fix the problems.

Question

1. What parts of the system development life cycle planning phase did Jeannine skip? Explain your rationale?