Read Dennis, Wixom, Tegarden Chapter 5: Minicase 1. Work through it and answer the questions.
West Star Marinas is a chain of twelve 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 use-case diagram of the current system. This model has been carefully checked. Last week, the team invited a number of system users to role-play the various use cases, and the use cases were refined to the user’s satisfaction. Right now, the project manager feels confident that the as-is system has been adequately represented in the use-case diagram.
The director of operations for West Star is the sponsor of this project. He sat in on the role-playing of the use cases 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 use cases 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 you are following, however, specifies that the team should now turn its attention to developing the structural models 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 structural modeling?
(c) Is there any benefit to developing a structural model of the current system at all?
(d) How do the uses cases and use-case diagram help us develop the structural model?
