I was supposed to attend the very last part of the Data Analysis and Visualization using Excel conducted at Azman Hashim International Business School but, this coincides with a meeting on capturing User Requirements for the Industry and Community Engagement Information Systems (ICES – Name is yet to be finalized).

Since UTM has intensively encourage Academia-Industry and Academia-Community linkages,  so many efforts have been taken to build up the linkages.  With this,  guess what?  Growth of data scattered across various units in UTM and the need for organised data management, analysis and analytics needs are on the rise.

Capturing user requirements is not as easy as seen on Systems Analysis and Design books 😆😅. It is actually a science and also an art if doing things.  It is actually complex especially when it involves various parties/units and also various data sources and systems.

Our Research Officers not only do research on the business processes involved for managing these industrial and community linkages, but also act as the systems analyst.

Along our way in developing 3 major systems for units under the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research and Innovation)  office, we learnt that it is a big challenge to translate the requirements of users.  Having users with some ICT background helps a lot to speed up the requirements capture process.  In addition, usage of tools such as Balsamiq for the initial interface design helps to speed up the confirmation and revision of the needed requirements.

We will kick off this project in February for Phase 1 of the ICES which we plan to complete by end of June,  inshaa Allah.