Design

This is the most important and crucial stage of the Systems Life Cycle.

To produce a really high standard of design, you have to have a very clear idea of what your system is supposed to do, and what input the system needs to produce the outputs that you have stated.

Once again, the exam board marking scheme can be helpful. Sections in bold are taken from the actual marking scheme.

Mark allocation 1-4 (out of 20)

Listed systems, tools and or techniques. Produced a limited design of the solution showing some stages.

Mark allocation 5-8 (out of 20)

Stated an information requirement and has listed a choice of systems, tools an or techniques.

Outlined a design of the solution and has described various plans of the solution with some attempt at linking them.

Described some testing they will carry out, with partial planning.

Mark allocation 9-12 (out of 20)

Once again, this middle mark band should be the very lowest mark that you consider.

Identified some information required and has listed some reasons for a choice of systems, tools and or techniques used.

You should have listed some "information" that your system will need in order to produce an output. Just as the outcome of a system is actually the "output", the "information requirement" is the data that acts as an input to trigger your system into actually doing something.

At the design stage, you must give more detailed reasons for your choice of software and the methods that you have chosen.

Developed a design for the solution and has described, using some appropriate terminology, the relationship between some part of the solution.

This means that you have to use the correct lingo, do you savvy? Unfortunately this often means that students try to baffle the examiner with baloni, so try to keep it to sensible, but complex language.

Produced some testing plans of their design.

Since we mention the dreaded "T" word, lets see how we should be developing a testing plan.
Your system should be able to cope with a normal input with nor problem at all. This typical data should be handled normally and produce the expected output.
Your system should also work just as effectively with extreme data. Extreme data is data that lies on the absolute limits of being accepted. An example might be when a system needs a person's height as an essential input. It is safe to assume that the height should be less than 2.0m, so you might like to try that as an example of extreme data.
The third type of data is erroneous data. Erroneous data should be rejected by your system because it will produce a meaningless result. Your system might be designed so that it will display a helpful message to inform the user that there is a problem, and suggest what might have been wrong.

A testing plan will have several pieces of each kind of data, and you should predict what the system will do when the data has been input.

Mark allocation 13-16 (out of 20)

Correctly identified the information requirements and has chosen with some justification appropriate systems, tools and/or techniques to solve the problem.

The key word here is "correctly". Your suggested information requirement must be correct!

Developed a planned design for the solution and has described, using appropriate terminology, the relationship between the essential parts of the solution.

Once again, this mark allocation is asking for a more structured and carefully thought out attempt.

Produced a reasonable testing plan of their design.

This implies that the testing plan is more comprehensive.

Mark Allocation 17-20 (out of 20)

Of course this is where we all want your marks to lie, so read on...

Correctly identified the information requirements and has chosen with clear justification appropriate systems tools and/or techniques to solve the problem.

The wording of this statement is very clear and unambiguous. Your choice of system must be clearly justified and it must be obvious why you have chosen the tools that you have.

Developed a good planned and creative design for the solution and has clearly described, using appropriate terminology, the relationship between all the various parts of the solution.

Sometimes it is hard to work out what "creative" means but the exam. board means that you have used your imagination to resolve possible problems and add some features that make the system easy to use.

Produced clear, detailed, and full testing plans of their design.

Your testing plan must anticipate any problems (by suggesting appropriate erroneous data), as you should have clearly predicted how your system should react to all the data that you try in your testing plan.

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