Unit 2 Learning Outcome 3: Explain concept of IPO cycle

LO 3: Explain the concept of Input-Process-Output (IPO) Cycle

Input-Process-Output (IPO) model is a widely used approach in systems analysis and software engineering for describing the structure of the information processing program or other process. Input is anything we wish to embed in a system for some type of use. A variety of sources are used to input such as keyboard, scanner, microphone and mouse. Processing takes place in the internal parts of the computer. It is the act of taking inputted data and converting it to something usable. What we typically see on the screen in today’s computer world is the result of our input being processed by some program so we can have usable output such as an English paper, an edited photograph and video. An output device is any peripheral that receives data from a computer, usually for display, projection, or physical. Sometimes our output is short-term, such as printing a photo, and sometimes what we work on needs to be kept around for a while. Storage is the term used to indicate we will be saving data for a period of time. There are several mediums on which we can keep output and processed data such as a hard disk, a USB drive and a CD.