analyze current system

- [Instructor] The next step is to analyze the current system. In analyzing the current system, you need to take a look at what they're currently using to manage their data. Now this information may very well be paper based, something that they have written forms and reports that they're using to pass information about and store it, or it could be computerized, or a combination of the two. You may find that they're using spreadsheets and word processing documents in email to pass information around with the written reports, and all this is being filed and stored in a system that, of course, is not as quick and searchable as a proper computerized database would be.

When you're analyzing the system, this is the time to go back, further interview the people you've been speaking with, by the way you may need to interview the same person two, three, four times before you get a grasp of the information that they're really using, and users are kind of funny. They're not going to tell you everything right up front because they really haven't broken it down and analyzed it for themselves. So as you continue working through each step of this process you may go back and interview the same person over and over again asking them more questions and asking them to define more information.

What's important is that you don't get them halfway through the process coming up with new functionality that never existed in the previous system. Once you've established what you're trying to capture, you got to stick with that. If you keep working in new functionality and at halfway through, you'll constantly be going back and breaking down your foundation, and you will run into problems, so take a look at their current system, take a look at the forms and reports that are being used currently, whether they're paper based or computer based, and that will also give you a nice way to emulate the system that they have in the views that you're going to create inside of Access which will decrease the learning curve and help people break into your database.