The Five W's of System Design

When designing an access control system, you need to ask:

• Who are the people we are managing?
• What are the people allowed to do?
• Where are the people allowed to go?
• When are they allowed to do these things or go these places?
• Why did someone do something or go somewhere?

The first 4 questions relate to system design, the last is about monitoring and reporting from the system once it is up and running. All are important to think about before you install or program your system.