West Star Marinas is a chain of 12 marinas that offer lakeside service to boaters; service and repair of boats, motors, and marine equipment; and sales of boats, motors, and other marine accessories. The systems development project team at West Star Marinas has been hard at work on a project that eventually will link all the marina's facilities into one unified, networked system.
The project team has developed a logical process model of the current system. This model has been carefully checked for syntax errors. Last week, the team invited a number of system users to role-play the various data flow diagrams, and the diagrams were refined to the users' satisfaction. Right now, the project manager feels confident that the as-is system has been adequately represented in the process model.
The director of operations for West Star is the sponsor of this project. He sat in on the role-playing of the process model and was very pleased by the thorough job the team had done in developing the model.
He made it clear to you, the project manager, that he was anxious to see your team begin work on the process model for the to-be system. He was a little skeptical that it was necessary for your team to spend any time modeling the current system in the first place, but grudgingly admitted that the team really seemed to understand the business after going through that work.
The methodology that you are following, however, specifies that the team should now turn its attention to developing the logical data model for the as-is system.
When you stated this to the project sponsor, he seemed confused and a little irritated. "You are going to spend even more time looking at the current system? I thought you were done with that! Why is this necessary? I want to see some progress on the way things will work in the future!"
a. What is your response to the director of operations?
b. Why do we perform data modeling?
c. Is there any benefit to developing a data model of the current system at all?
d. How does the process model help us develop the data model?