Systems integration across platforms and companies grows more complex with time. In a case study from Florida in 2008, an electrical company realtime system detected a minor problem in the power grid and shut down the entire system, plunging over two million people into the dark. The system experts placed the blame on a substation software system that detected the minor fluctuation, but had the ability to immediately shut the entire system down. Although there may be times when such a rapid response is vital (such as the nuclear disasters in Chernobyl Ukraine and Three Mile Island), this was a case where such a response was not warranted.

QUESTIONS:
1. Since software controls substation operations, how might a systems analyst approach this problem as a systems project?
2. Are there special considerations that a systems analyst needs to think about when dealing with real-time systems?