Week 5

This week’s lecture.. *checks lecture slides* taught us about event tables, and how to represent processes diagrammatically. Kinda confusing though.. all those diagrams.. It all made sense to me in the lecture though. I’ll have to read the textbook to get a better understanding. I’m sure the examples there would further aid my understanding.

In tutorial we had some hands-on practice with event tables. We were supposed to ‘describe the operation of a lift’. All I can say is: who knew elevators were such complicated things?? Our job was to find the various events that can occur and the trigger, source, activity, response and destination associated with it. Seems easy enough at first (“Filling in the table? No probbbblem!”) but once the thinking caps actually came on we found that it wasn’t all so easy after all. To be fair, both our tutor and lecturer warned us it wasn’t going to be that easy!

Once we were done with the event tables we proceeded to answer the question from the textbook. Hmm.. also not very easy. Quote from Mr Ramesh: “The second question is not very hard so you should be able to finish it fairly quickly.” Well.. true, but the time-consuming part, for our group, was in understanding the question :P Once we had a good idea of what was being asked it wasn’t so bad after all.. providing of course, that our interpretation of the question was correct..

Week 4

Wow what a day.. . . As I mentioned last week, in this week’s tutorial we were supposed to conduct our interview. What’s astounding is the number of times we’ve misinterpreted our task! Initially (last week at the end of class) we thought we were supposed to come up with interview questions based on the Gladwell video i.e. questions about the Aeron chair and Pepsi and Coca-Cola.. But somehow that task did not seem to make sense to us (or.. me rather) because what questions were there to ask when Gladwell has already analysed the answers and presented the solutions? So after further attempts at re-clarification, from our understanding, we were supposed to choose a product – any product – and come up with a set of questions (like researchers did for Coca-Cola and the Aeron chair) and come up with a ‘better’ product.. or one that was ideal for our client. So that’s exactly what we did the following day.. Select a product to interview our client about. We eventually decided on shoes (other ideas included Rejoice and Gillette, which I thought would’ve been way more fun and amusing :P) We sat on those comfortable bean-bags in the library and came up with questions that would help us find our client’s ideal shoes. After covering practically every aspect of a shoe from ‘laces or slip-ons’ to the insoles, we thought , “Done! All that’s left now is the interview.” But then we got the email.. the email from our lecturer informing us that the assignment case study has been released and that we were to base our interviews on that.. Ready for another misinterpretation? That’s exactly what happened. I don’t know.. maybe it has something to do with the fact that most subjects have their tutorials a week after the lecture or something.. or perhaps we simply didn’t want to think about having to come up with a new set of questions (we discovered this email right after “Yay, we’re done.. for now” by the way), but bottom line: we thought the email was referring to the next tutorial i.e. week 5.

So it wasn’t until this morning’s lecture, when the lecturer reminded us of this, that we realised we had to come up with a new set of questions relating to the interview. We proceeded to do that after a one hour (breakfast/brunch) break at the end of the lecture. We managed to come up with only a few questions because most of them have already been clarified in the audio. Only... we came into our tutorial class to find that we would be interviewing based on Gladwell’s video! Our FIRST interpretation!! Infuriating or plain mind-boggling?? I haven’t decided yet.. Funny twist though I’ll admit ;)

So yeah, that’s what we did in today’s tutorial: interview our client regarding the Gladwell podcast. Thankfully we were given half an hour to discuss our questions in our groups. Once that was done we went through the Additional Tutorial questions.

This morning’s lecture.. . . it was okay. Nothing out of the ordinary. The lecture, entitled: Beginning Analysis, focused on models and modelling and how they are used in the analysis and design stages. We also went through Events: defining the various types - external, temporal and state, how they relate to transactions (I really enjoyed the comic strips :D) and understanding event tables. The lecture then went on to defining Things and how “relationships naturally occur between things”. Also related are cardinality, attributes, values, data entities and objects.Class Diagrams are also important; they model classes of objects instead of data entities. This led to the discussion of Generalisation/Specialisation Hierarchies and Unified Modelling Language.

Week 3

*sigh* I don’t know what’s wrong with me today. This morning my brain felt like it’s been overworked. It felt so full and was just plain exhausted! And it’s only Monday morning!! And at times like that, I know the only thing I can do is just listen to some good music, stare out into nothingness and think of nothing; clear my mind a bit.

So, sad to say, I wasn’t as focused on today’s lecture as I normally would be.. zoned out a few times.. Nevertheless I did pay enough attention to note that we started off the lecture with a brief recap of last week’s topic , followed by the remaining slides from Week 2 which we hadn’t manage to cover regarding Project Initiation and the Project Planning Phase. The second half of the lecture covered this week’s lecture titled ‘Requirements Gathering’ which focuses on the second stage of the SDLC (the Analysis Phase).

Oooh! And to those who missed today’s lecture, you missed out on Mr Yeap’s famous question! He was talking about the importance of understanding business standards, policies and procedures and was using Dell as an example: “Dell has a policy that guarantees the arrival of customer orders within a specific number of days. Do you know how many days?” Anyone? ;) This is a question I’ve heard three semesters in a row so the answer is practically imbedded in me.. Answer: “4 days” :)

Unfortunately the last few slides were slightly rushed because we had run out of time (time sure flies..) But then again we started the lecture a little late because the class before us had also finished late.

Tutorial!
We watched the Malcolm Gladwell podcast. There was a slight problem with the speakers which, as Mr Ramesh suggested, we could conveniently leave out of our reflective blogs :D Jokes aside, Gladwell’s presentation, while perhaps just a liiiiiiiiiiiiitle lengthy, was also fairly interesting. His analysis on human behaviour and perception reminded me that being a systems analyst is more than just understanding the problems and business procedures at hand. It also requires a certain amount of skills in psychology to aid understanding of why people do what they do. This helps us understand why business processes are conducted the way they currently are and whether they can be improved.

Next week, we’re told that we will practicing our skills in information gathering and will therefore need to come up with a set of questions to ask our tutor. We have yet to come up with perfect questions and therefore plan to meet up sometime this week to discuss this further. Looking forwards to it guys!

Week 2

My morning started off with reading the study guide.. Long! Longer than last week’s anyway (which totally makes sense as last week was just an introduction). Hang on.. .. I meant to say: it’s informative. Not ‘long’ :) It was like a revision of FIT1003, so that was good I guess.

This week’s lecture revolves around the Systems Development Life Cycle and the various types of methodologies. I found that several of my slides differed to that of the slideshow in front of me.. there were areas where I had several points missing. But in a way that's good; it kept me on my toes :) Plus it gave me a chance to practice my note-taking skills! :D

Tutorial.
There was a problem with the system that delayed the start of our class a little. Nevertheless, while waiting for that to get sorted, it gave those of us who hadn’t created our blogs (most of us, including yours truly) a chance to finally create them!

This week’s analysis exercise was about a Food Chain. Namely the fruits and vegetable chain. Our group was to analyse and discuss the relationship between standards authorities and the other parts of the food chain, then come up with an argument that showed the importance of this component. Once again our teamwork allowed us to come up with some good points. We concluded that standards authorities are important as it helps ensure good quality products. However this is only possible if the other components within the system comply with the standard set. Aside from our argumentative skills, today’s tutorial also gave us a chance to practice our presentation skills.

Flashback to Week 1

First day and first class of the semester: FIT2001 Systems Analysis and Design lecture. I remember arriving at the lecture theatre a few minutes early (thirst for knowledge!) only to find that there was still another class going on in there..
Despite that, it was still a fairly good start to the semester – and the course.

That first lecture was mainly an introduction to the unit: the objectives of this unit, the tutorial/lab sessions, the assignments involved and what is expected from us. Once we got that out of the way, the lecture progressed to what ‘Systems Analysis and Design’ is really about: the nature of systems, the job of an analyst (their approach to solving problems and the skills they require) and the importance of a good systems design.

The tutorial class – a mere few hours later – was a good chance for us to exercise us brains after that long holiday! The activity required us to work in groups as we analysed certain parts of the Water Supply System. My group members and I were to discuss the importance of and the processes involved in the disposal of the used water. While I found learning about the steps involved to be quite fascinating, the objective of this exercise was to be able to understand how the various components work as a unit and as a whole. Despite our rustiness in analysis exercises, our teamwork allowed us to come up with quite a few fair points :)

However, as always, practice makes perfect :) Or close to perfect anyway.. To achieving an excellent grade for this unit! :D Hopefully..