CASE STUDY: PETRIE ELECTRONICS (page 217)

1. Are the DFDs in PE Figures 6-1 and 6-2 balanced? Show that they are, or are
not. If they are not balanced, how can they be fixed?

Both DFD’s in Petrie Electronics case in Figure 6-1 and Figure 6-2 are not balanced
correctly. The figure 6-1 diagram misses the process of how the company maintains
the promotions for the customer and the 6-2 diagram has way too many steps and is
kind of confusing and hard to understand. Because the figure shows multiple inputs
from multiple sources it makes it somewhat difficult to read. In order for the two diagram
to be balanced, we will need to show the additional sources and their inputs into the
system and when the 6-1 and 6-2 diagrams have the same sources-inputs-outputs,
the diagrams will be balanced.

2. Decompose each of the core processes in PE Figure 6-2 and draw a new DFD
for each core process.

 Customer makes purchases through the company with or without a coupon that
then is fed to the customer database which sends promotions to the tailored
customer
 The Marketing Database will also send promotions to target specific tailored
customers as well
 The customer activity report that is generated based on the consumer’s activities
generates the coupons that is send to the customer
 The product database then feeds information to generate reports of consumer
behaviour and also send the consumers coupons based on their trend buys
 1.2 CUSTOMER’S PURCHASE
STORE TRANSACTION
CUSTOMER
PURCHASE
ACTIVITIES

1.4
SEND ALL
TRANSACTIONS
TO RECORD
1.1 CUSTOMER PURCHASE
RECEIVE DETAIL
CUSTOMER
ACTIVITIES
CUSTOMER COUPON
UPDATE
USAGE DETAIL
CUSTOMER’S COUPON
USAGE TRANSACTION

COUPON PURCHASE
1.3 TRANSACTION
STORE
CUSTOMER
COUPON
ACTIVITIES

3. Has the team overlooked any core processes in the system that should be in
PE Table 6-1 and PE Figure 6-2? What would they be? Add them to PE Table 6-
1 and PE Figure 6-2.

One of these core processes is sending promotions using data gathered through the
transaction logging. Before promotions can be sent out, they first must be generated.
The marketing team needs to utilize the data collected from transaction logs and
determine what kinds of
4. Redesign PE Figures 6-1 and 6-2 so that they are clearer, more efficient, and
more comprehensive.

5. Why is it important for the team to create DFDs if they are not going to write
the actual system code themselves?

It is important for the team to create DFD’s because if will for them to think about the
system and how the process works, such as the sources of data, how the data is used,
and the information the process generate. It forces the team to know the process,
which is truly essential about the core processes in a system, the data they use, the
sources of that data, the information the processes generate, and where the
information goes. All of this information is essential in design and building of a system,
even if all of its components are purchased off-the-shelf.