Week12

1. What are the skills and knowledge that a good systems analyst requires?

A good analyst should be a person who basically can analyse the problems, design and implement solutions for the problems. Analyst should be capable of communicating with customers, technical staff such as programmers, and management. This implies a good system analyst should have a good understanding of technical and business details and good communication skills.

1. How has your answer to question 1 this week changed from your post in response to this same question when it was asked in Week 2?

When answering this in week 2, the answer is written directly from the text book, where as in week 12, it’s just an understanding.

1. How well did your actual study for the course this term match the study schedule outlined in the Gantt chart you prepared in week 3?

Too many assignments in this subject and other subject, other common distractions for a normal foreign student didn’t allow me to follow the study schedule according to the plan after week 5. Basically I never recap the lectures after week 5 at all.

1. If you were in charge of this course next term, what changes would you make to improve the course? Why?

If I am a course coordinator to this course I would have reduce some of the theory part of the subject and concentrate more on the concepts like DFD and ERD, and give more realistic examples and more time for these concepts.

Week11

1. What were the most important concepts you learnt from this course?

Lot of analysis and design techniques have been taught in this cause. Two of the important concepts are, DFD, and ERD. Both ERD and DFD are visual representation of an Information System. While DFD address the data flow between the external entities, processes and data storage, and the possible processes in the system, ERD address the design of the data. Both techniques help system analyst to understand and represent the information system effectively.

1. Why do you think those concepts are important?

When we become system analysts or project managers understanding these techniques are important. Business or system analyst will use these techniques to solve the problems raised by the customer and the project manager need to understand what other technical staff trying to express using these techniques or concepts. These concepts help to design the system error prone, since the model of the system has been created and analysed before the actual system is build.

1. What concepts from this course are still causing you the greatest problems?

Identifying the external entities in DFD sometimes cause me problems. In assignment 1, it create lot of problems to me.

1. How might the problems you are having be solved?

            I think I have some understanding on this at the moment, practise might solve the problem. I thing if I have to use these techniques again in future, I will practise some more and get more idea about that, otherwise what I learned is enough.

Since this subject is an overview and many things to cover for the term, there was no time to practise or tryout many key concepts more.

Week10

Q: As you are learning in this course there are a range of different development methodologies. For example, Part B of Assignment 2 asks you to compare and contrast traditional systems development methodologies and agile systems development methodologies. Explain how you would compare and contrast traditional and agile system development methodologies? Describe why you would do it this way.

Ans: 

Initially I will explain briefly what are traditional development methodologies and what are Agile development methodologies. After the introduction about both methods, I will discuss about selected more popular traditional development methodologies and agile methodologies. In the discussion I will explain what are the similarities each traditional method and agile method have and in which way Agile method differ from the traditional method. This will give more understanding than just compare and contrast both traditional and Agile methods in general.