Week 8 in FIT2001

Well its finally done. Assignment one is complete. Finishing at 10,800 words and 33 pages, its a big one but hopefully all the content in there is quality and not just quantity. I present a high level system analysis and decided to give the stakeholder the option of which features they would like included in the system. The key is that each level has a different pricing, going from level 1 being the cheapest to the highest level 3, being the dearest. That way Mr Divot can choose which best suits his budget and I know as an analyst that i presented the high level system with everything included as a possible solution before implementation. I think this is a better way to do things. As discussed in the lectures about using methods to choose the best system to put into production, i think analysed a high level system, break it up into lower levels then present all levels with different project pricing (obviously reflecting hardware,development .. etc considerations) and therefore the end user has the decision to make and ultimately has the options to choose which best fits them.

In most cases I think they will choose the higher level but then thats not a bad thing if the income from it is good.

Going into design is the fun part for me. I am a visionary and like to picture interfaces and the actual system in real life. I have an amazing ability to put myself into the mind of the end user and work out how things should be and word such that its simple to use and looks good and appealing and it does what it needs to do well. At present I'm working on a few projects designing web-applications for a couple of companies i co founded and getting into the design part of this course is really beneficial for me.

Anyway as usual i end on a funny note.. check out an office clerk loosing the plot with a printer.. how many time have you felt like doing this..


Sorry, couldn't help myself, you have to see this, this one is a huge laugh..

Week 7 in FIT2001

This is a good time to talk about the Assignment.

I'm about 85% complete.. I have done the DFDs or Context diagram which was a nightmare at first because I looked all over the software we were given Visual Paradigm to do it and funny enough it doesn't have the DFDs, (its like MS Office not having Word) so for a while i was trying to figure out what to do. I went on the VP web site and I saw a sample DFD there and was thinking "Am I missing something here?".. I looked in the VP software again for DFDs but again, couldn't find it... I even looked at all the different diagrams in VP just in case they had called it something else.. but no success... Then finally through some thorough searching on the VP web i found that another software in their Suite of software handles the DFDs.. Its called Business Process Visual Architecture (BPVA). So i downloaded it and again there is a hurdle. No license key to run it.. seems we only got a student key to run the standard edition of VP.. So to go around this I downloaded the 30 day trial version of BPVA and finally got to use it to make DFDs..

Now i want ot get familiar with UML tools and thats why I went crazy trying to do it with a UML tool, otherwise I could have simply done it in PowerPoint in much less time and to be honest PowerPoint seems so much easier and straight forward to use.. But then, nothing ventured, nothing gained, so at least now I have experience doing it in UML and hopefully ill get a better understanding in using the tool for future professional tasks...
Apart from that I haven't done my weekly task yet and would do it once this assignment is done.. I want to get it out of the way in the next few days so I can free up the Month of May where my workload gets a bit heavy.. At least ill be 2 weeks ahead with my assignment and be glad once its done.. So far I'm 10,300 words and 36 pages long and I'm 85% done.. just need to add my class diagrams and conclusions.. But its not all length and no quality.. I am really working this assignment as if its a real life project and Im acting as the SA&D on the project.. I want to develop the best system possible and one that will stand out as a simple yet powerful solution to the Booking problem..

To finish up , here is something really funny... you need to see this..

Week 6 in FIT2001

Well week six sees us getting right into the nerve center of Systems Analysis and Design.

We looked into the wonderful world of Object Oriented Methods and how to implement OO methodologies into the SA&D world.

Some of the items that we looked at are:

• Developing use case diagrams
• Writing use case and scenario descriptions
• Developing activity diagrams and system sequence diagrams
• Refining and enhancing the domain model class diagram
• Explaining how UML diagrams work together to define functional requirements for the object oriented approach

We addressed Object-Oriented Requirements

• Object-oriented modeling notation is Unified Modeling Language (UML)
• Object-oriented system requirements are specified and documented through process of building models
• Systems development process starts with identification of events and thing
• Events are business processes that new system must address
• Things are problem domain objects involved in business process

POD Says: If there is anything you should remeber about this course, its all this stuff. So I for one will make sure I master the stuff in week six.

Here is a diagram I like that helps put things in perspective.


We get a week holiday now, but I think its time to get cracking on the assignment.

Here is something to make all the Cyber Star Wars Nerds Laugh..

Week 5 in FIT2001

So welcome again to the blogger..

This is week 5 of Systems analysis and design.

It seems my bloggin address is still wrong in the FIR2001 MUSO link.. I have emailed twice for the link to be fixed and still nothing.. I hope they don't think im missing my bloggs.

Oh well if they do ill just have to email them this link and show them that I have been doing the bloggin..

OK Week 5 sees us looking at the traditional structured approach which is different to the object oriented approach. We mainly looked at the traditional approach so that we have a general idea of the concept and we visited the following parts:

• Explained how traditional and object-oriented methods approach the modeling of use cases
• Read and analyzed how the models created when traditional analysis methods are used including: data flow diagrams, and entity relationship models
• Developed context diagrams to show system scope

I guess this is so that in our professional career's if we come across some traditional structured type models we can understand it.

From here i guess the natural next step would be to make the Object-Oriented Approach. It will be interesting to see the difference in the modeling approaches.
So Ill see you in week 6.