FIT2001 Systems Analysis and Design

Week 13 in FIT2001

2007-06-07T07:04:00.000-07:00

OK for the lucky ones who have visited my blog..

Here are the complete solutions for all the multiple choice questions that will form the first part of the exam.

The multiple choice questions are taken from the text books online tutorial and I actually had to do the questions myself till i got them all correct. It was good practice for me to understand all the questions and it will be a good reference guide for the last minute study panic people.

Multiple Choice Solutions are located at here

You will need to download the zip file and open the documents in office 2007. If you are using an older version of office you will need to download the compatibility add on to open 2007 file.. you will find the add on download here.

Good luck with the exams...

Week 12 in FIT2001

2007-06-06T22:54:00.000-07:00

OK It's study time and I'd like to wish all the FIT2001 students good luck on the exams. I dint realize that I won the week 12 blog.. woohoo..

Well as promised, here are the photos of my trip to Palo Alto a few weeks ago.

Here is a photo of the main quad at Stanford University.

This is me in front of the Hoover Tower, one of the iconic fixtures at Stanford University.

This is the main entrance to the Ames NASA Research Center in Mountain View, CA (not far from the Googleplex,) and the funny thing is that this is a town of its own. The many thousands of scientists and engineers that work here actually live here. They have their own town church, shopping and even a McDonalds, which i sat in to have my lunch. Mind you the security is tight, this is after the gates where you get anal probed before they let you in..This is the main hanger and was first built to house the huge Air Ship balloon they were using for tests during the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions.. This building is huge, the photo doesn't do it justice.

Here is the actual scaled models they used to test the flying dynamics of the Space Shuttle. These were used in the wind tunnel tests and was last used after the Discovery Disaster to redesign the heat shields.
This is wht i'd be flying around the world in if i were a multi-gazillionare.. Its the X-36 XPlane flying a supersonic speed using the new ramjet technologies.. one day, one day.
This is an actual moon rock that was brought back during the Apollo 15 mission. I offer $15 for it but they said No!.. I upped it to $20 but they still said No!, i gave up and said, fine! ill just have to go to the moon one day and get one myself!

Here I am with my space suit on. Doesn't every kid grow up dreaming of being an astronaut one day.?. I know i did.. who knows maybe one day.. there's still time
This is what the Mars Pioneers will be wearing when man first walks on the surface of Mars.
This is what they wore on the Mercury and Gemini missions. Not the most advanced suits, but it did the job. The shoes were actually just doctor martins spreayd over with silver spayed paid..
This is the actual Capsule that Al Sheppard came home in (al was the fist American in space).
Anyway, thats prob enough from me..

Good luck to all the Systems Analysis & Design students.. See you again soon..

Ohh but befor i go, i cant leave without the final video.. Here is Darth Vader being a Jerk.. i love this..

Week 11 in FIT2001

2007-05-27T11:02:00.000-07:00

OK, its 4am and I'm just finishing up submitting my Assignment 2. One thing for sure is that I have a problem with perfection. Its a good thing but its also a bad thing, I've been at this assignment since i got back form the USA on Tuesday and I've been working on this assignment day and night ever since to meet this deadline in 5 hours time. I could have done it within a few days but I couldn't help myself and I have to design the whole thing. My report came out to be 203 pages mostly full of Interface designs for every possible page in the system. Its a full on system and does everything.. My reason for doing it this way was because i wanted to treat this as if it was a real project and wanted to take the opportunity to see how well i can do it i.e. how in depth I could go to design a system to get it developed and working perfectly. i think I mastered the user functionality of it. I really got into the mind of the golfer who just want to go online and book something in 2 seconds flat without getting confused on how to use the web application and how to navigate within it. I used many of the techniques described in our text book, which i find very usefull by the way.

I'm actually writitng this while im waiting form my assignment to be uploaded onto rapidshare since its too big to be submitted via MUSO since MUSO only takes 5M of files at a time. I separated the zip versions but sometime they go wrong and so i gave the markers a second option to get the file if the first fails.

right now, I'm going a bit nuts because i haven't slept for about 28 hours and I've been at this full on for the last 5 days. I NEED SLEEP... heheh.. one thing that makes me get in a good mood is Stewie form the family guy.. so here he is.. ill see you all at the exams (if you're in Sydney) and good luck with it to all the FIT2001 students..

Week 10 - FIT2001 Systems Anlysis & Design

2007-05-18T07:45:00.000-07:00

Although im in Palo Alto (Silicon Valley) at the moment, I have been doing my best to listen to POD lectures via podcast. I am falling a bit behind on my schedules for doing assignment 2 but will get right onto it as soon as I get back to oz.. In case you are wondering what am I doing in Palo Alto, well I had a meeting with a Law firm here that represent Google and also most of the big name start up companies that have sprouted form Silicon Valley in the past 10 years. I have been able to appoint them to act as my advisor's in a new project that I'm about to initiate (called the Manhattan Project - Top Secret). They will be representing and advising me when it comes time to raise funds from VCs and also to look after all the legal aspects of start ups in Silicon Valley, such as incorporations types, founders shareholders structures, IPs, NDAs and much more, but more importantly they will be providing advice and valuable networking inputs to get the Manhattan Project off the ground and happening. On the project, my next step is to build a Systems Analysis and Design of the Manhattan Project which will be added to my Business Plan along with a non-functional mock up of the system to demonstrate to the VCs. This is the reason why I am undertaking this subject and funny enough, assignment 1 and assignment 2 along with PODs great lectures and teaching ability has given me the confidence and know how to be able to put together a FSR professionally.. But that said, assignment 2 is due in a few weeks so I better get cracking.

Also whilst here, I had the opportunity to visit Stanford University and visited the birthplace of the internet. You will find the school of computer science here a very inspiring place, with the names on the building of William Gates, David Packard, and Mr Hewlett on the buildings, representing just a few of what influences this place has had on the IT industry and the world. I'll post some photos up as soon as i get my SD card out of my camera. The other reason form me being here is to apply for their MBA program.. I was fortunate to sit in some classes and meet with a few students here and one of them being a fellow Australian, so that was nice.

Ohh and for the Space fans out there.. Before I leave this extraordinary place I will be visiting the NASA Ames Space Research Center which is just a short drive from Palo Alto in Mountain View. I love anything to do with space and hopefully I can buy a moon rock or something form them to take home..

More later..

Week 9 in FIT2001

2007-05-07T13:07:00.000-07:00

Hey, its a little late but here is my week 9 blog.. Yes POD you were right, its silly season for uni assignment and its taken its toll on me too. Nevertheless i have pushed on and done my weekly readings and tasks and although a few days late I'm still on top of things.

OK now week 9 saw us looking into the Structured Design.

The following is a list of what we covered this week:

We described the steps involved in traditional approach to designing a software application.
Developed a system flowchart.
Looked at understanding the process of transaction analysis and transform analysis.
Looked at writing and using pseudocodes.
Explained how to use the three-layer design with the traditional approach.
Described the nature of structured design and how it is similar and
different to object design.

So far i like the structures method but will need to get a little more comfortable with the object way of thing weather i like it or not, being that its the industry standard and we will be expected to be masters of it when were out in industry.

The first time i design an application was using Microsoft Access and building a database program out if it for a small business i had, having no programming experience prior. The access way of doing things is very much like the structured method as you build tables first which will hold all the attributes and then you have an Entity Relation Diagram that you use to link the primary keys together (which now i see is just an unique identifier for an object instance). Anyway this has always stayed in my head whilst learning IT at Monash and i can somehow digest Structured methods more easily then the object method. I guess I' better be wide away when POD does the OO method in week 10..

Anyhow enough serious stuff, here is the best of Stewie form the Family Guy, i love this little critter.. :-)

Week 8 in FIT2001

2007-04-26T09:31:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-20T16:45:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-10T20:08:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-02T10:54:00.000-07:00

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.

Week 4 in FIT2001

2007-03-22T07:10:00.000-07:00

Well well well, its week 4 and what have we done this week?

We made some progress into the inner workings of analysis. We looked at the following:

Defining an event
Classifying external, temporal and state events
Created an event list to record gathered information
Distinguished an event from an activity
Looked at the concepts of objects, classes, attributes and methods.
Identified classes of objects and associations from an event list or a problem statement
Became familiar with the different ways object oriented SDLCs use models

But what are the things that stick in my head mostly:

One is the making of an event table. I think this is a cool tool to have in building a complete picture of an analysis that successfully sees the needs and happening of the system being analyzed.

I also like the way classes are modeled using a square table which includes the class title, the attributes and the methods. I can see how this form of structuring models will help paint the picture and define the road map in developing a great system.

Also i like UML more and more and I'm looking forward in using it for the assignment which by the way is due in May. I haven't started it yet because i want to get more into the course and pick up on the tools available to me for a best attempt in tackling the assignment. Might get started in the fist week of April which will give me 4 weeks to finish it and improve it as best i can.

See you in week 5.

Week 3 in FIT2001

2007-03-16T06:27:00.000-07:00

OK so I made it to week 3.

Now what did we learn in week three. We'll ZeFrank is one funny dude, thats one thing i definitely remember.

But seriously we looked at the following:

Overview of analysis and requirements gathering

Stakeholders and their role

Techniques for information gathering

– Reviewing existing documents, interviews,
observation, prototyping, JAD

Validating system requirements

I guess in week three we have taken the first few steps in the Analysis Phase of SDLC. We got to see how analysts gather requirements to determine system needs. We saw how stakeholders such as clients, the users, technicalities all have input into the system and therefore need to be consulted to determine system requirements. we look at at the different techniques in information gathering such as looking at existing documents/forms/procedures within the company, interviewing stakeholders, observing operations directly in action, making mock ups to test drive the systems and JAD Joint Application Design, where all the players get in one room and brainstorm the application through.

We covered many things, but theres many more to come..

see you next week..

"Blog-on"

Week 2 in FIT2001

2007-03-09T20:24:00.000-08:00

OK Its week two and after reading chapters 2 and 3 I'm ready for a holiday.

Chapter two showed me the details of SDLC System Development Life Cycle which cover the life of a system development. It starts with the types of approaches to SDLC being predictive and adaptive and the text showed that its neve one or the other but a fusion of the both.

We looked at the waterfall approach to SDLC and then the spiral approach which i think is better since you have the opportunity to constantly improve.

We looked at the SDLC phases being Project Planning, Analysis, Design, Implementation and Support and then how these steps are constructed, managed and implemented..

We looked at some methadologies and how its made off models, tools and techniques.

We looked at some approaches to SDLC inc. OO, Info Engineering, Structured, Modern and traditional.

We looked at tools that can be used for SDCL such as visio, CASE tools, Rational XDE Professional... Actually i like using visio but now that i am using MS Studio .net i think ill be starting to use XDE as an add on to it. If it will save work time then I'm all for it.

In Chapter 3 we looked at the analyst as a project manager and how project management skills and techniques are used by the analyst to fulfill the system objectives and project needs.

We looked at project initiation, management and elements that contribute to successful and unsuccessful projects, which to me was great because it gives me clear direction to what i should do when i undertake projects of my own.

We looked at the fundamentals of projects such as Gantt charts, pert charts, tasks, activities and schedule brake down structures. We also looked at the costs and financial management side of projects.

Week 2 done... 8 more to go..

Week 1 in FIT2001

2007-03-09T20:20:00.000-08:00

So we are asked to express your expectations of this subject, and include a reflection on what has happened in the first week of FIT2001 and lessons learnt to date.

My expectations of this subject:

To learn how to analyze systems and build a suitable solution for it.
To learn and understand what techniques are used to do the above.
To get acquainted with the tools professional system designers use to build system designs.
I expect to be able to walk away form this course at the end and be able to better analyze, document and design system solutions to use in my businesses and/or ideas and help others.

What happened in the first week:

I took time to get to know how muso worked.
I spent time trying to figure out which course i was doing and got confused since they all had different titles in muso which made me think i was enrolled in the wrong courses (I'm enrolled as a Off-Campus Grad Dip in Comp) so being a virtual student it was tough trying to make sense of everything fist off.
I started downloading the materials and lecture notes and studied them.
I came across the podcast of the lectures inc FIT2001 and finally made sense of everything from it. I like! wish all lectures had podcasts, it a great way to learn.
I got my texts which were EXPENSIVE but at the end of the day they are very useful and im sure ill be using it professionally as a reference, besides its an investment in me..
I tried to make sense of what activities the OC students were supposed to do, since the podcast i realized we do the same activities inc, this blogger, which is pretty cool.

Lessons learnt to date:

First and most important lesson was to leant what systems analysis and design IS.
Learnt that there are two major ways of structuring programs, structured and OOP which effects system design.
I leanrt there is tools you can use to help in design and analysis.
I leanrt or made sense of how the OC learning works.

This was week one..

12 more to go..