The development of a computer-based information system includes a system analysis phase. This helps produce the data model, a precursor to creating or enhancing a database. There are a number of different approaches to system analysis. When a computer-based information system is developed, system analysis (according to the Waterfall model) would constitute the following steps:

• The development of a feasibility study: determining whether a project is economically, socially, technologically and organizationally feasible
• Fact-finding measures, designed to ascertain the requirements of the system’s end-users (typically involving interviews, questionnaires, or visual observations of work on the existing system)
• Gauging how the end-users would operate the system (in terms of general experience in using computer hardware or software), what the system would be used for and so on

Another view outlines a phased approach to the process. This approach breaks system analysis into 5 phases:

• Scope Definition: Clearly defined objectives and requirements necessary to meet a project’s requirements as defined by its stakeholders
• Problem analysis: the process of understanding problems and needs and arriving at solutions that meet them
• Requirements analysis: determining the conditions that need to be met
• Logical design: looking at the logical relationship among the objects
• Decision analysis: making a final decision

Use cases are widely used system analysis modeling tools for identifying and expressing the functional requirements of a system. Each use case is a business scenario or event for which the system must provide a defined response. Use cases evolved from object-oriented analysis.