"Feeling more like Sherlock Holmes, minus the meerschaum pipe or the hunting cap, Systems Analysis and Design (SAD) allows us think outside the box. It allows our imagination to wander, limited and grounded with hard facts."
Common misconceptions of people, including us, regarding SAD is that it is a boring and tiresome activity, having to juggle all facts and come up with a solution to a problem- thinking that with all the problems one have to face, why would we waste our time with such activity? But through the activity we had, presenting the case of the ABC Church, it led us to discovering and appreciating more what is SAD and how it may help us.
When asked about whether Systems Analysis and Design is fun, we first want to define what is fun for us. Fun, for us, may be in a form of an activity or thing that at the end of the day, leave a smile on our faces. This smile pertains to that feeling of satisfaction or that feeling of delighted-ness we get from the activity or the thing. And in fact, SAD left a smile on our faces not because we felt satisfied with its concept but because it gave us a new meaning for what fun could be. Feeling more like Sherlock Holmes, minus the meerschaum pipe or the hunting cap, Systems Analysis and Design (SAD) allows us think outside the box. It allows our imagination to wander, limited and grounded with hard facts. It opened us to a new perspective that there is fun in a challenging activity, that feeling that you really get into the situation that you don't want to give up unless you were able to solve it and when you were able to find solutions, you are still eager to be more creative in presenting the solutions-these were some of our thoughts after the activity.
Like anything else, one cannot savor or find fun without having to face and overcome challenges. The challenge in SAD is providing the developers with a clear description of the services their customer needs and the specification of what the system needs to do to meet the requirements of end users. In addition, its process is also a challenge. One must be a keen observant to be able to clearly point out the problem. Second, it requires deeper analysis and this also entails a deeper analytical skill. Lastly, one must come up with the best solution to be able to fully develop the desired development. More than the process, there are other underlying challenges like how can the whole SAD, starting from identifying problem down to coming up with the best solution, be communicated to the end users. As a systems analyst, one must possess good communication skills because at the end of the day, it would definitely relay down to its end users/ clients. If one communicates like alien, ignoring the comprehension of an average client, who does not talk SAD, then all its efforts will just be out to waste.
One can learn while having fun and it is always nice to integrate fun with problems we face. Because of the activity, we were able to realize that regardless of how challenging an activity might seem, if we are optimistic about it and we have that drive to finish what we've started, then, we'll surely harvest the fruits of our hard work.
