Week 7

Like every lecture nowadays i find it confusing and too brief. Once again i ended up reading the study guide during lecture to understand what was being taught this week. In the middle of my reading i was also involved in a conversation with my classmate as boredom and sleepiness was creeping into me.

I just felt SUPER ... Relieved after submitting my Assignment 1a, it was only 5% but the thought and time that went it to doing it was just like an Assignment worth 10% or 15%. I wonder how Assignment 1b would be.... anyways still got a little time to do it.... ;)..... For now i just need to focus on what needs to be learned this week.

Our lecture title was "Finishing Analysis"..... Initially i thought we actually finished the analysis part and were going to start design from next week onwards and i was right.

Finished Analysis basically tells about the last 3 activities of analysis
1) Prioritize system requirements
2) Generate and evaluate alternatives
3) Review Recommendation with management

Prioritizing requirements is based on scope and level of automation. While implementation alternatives are generated and evaluated on key criterias such as: strategic plan, economic feasibility, schedule and resource feasibility, technology feasibility and operational, organizational and cultural feasibility. They also include building system in-house, or buying packaged solution or contracting with a vendor. Take note that while choosing a vendor a trial version of the software solution is installed , observed and benchmarked before deciding on having a contract with the vendor.

Once the alternatives have been selected the last stage is done which is to compile and organize a professional document or report which has an introduction & background on company, states all types of requirements (general, functional, and technical), details for submitting proposal, evaluation criteria & process and requested provider and project information that would be submitted to the executive steering committee or senior management for approval.

One more thing i forgot that this week's lecture was too brief so some parts of week 6 were revised mainly the use case diagram since we were going to do it in tutorial class later. Last week, we did not have the books so we did not start on class diagrams and use cases yet. Hopefully today would be a good exercise in tutorial.

THREE HOURS LATER.........

Time for tutorial class.... our tutor smartly printed the questions for tutorial because like last week some students bring their books..... luckily i brought my book so i could refer to topics that i was not sure about. So i had my first hands-on experience of making class diagrams and use cases and i felt it was "do-able." As i progressed towards the next questions of the tutorial the degree level for making the diagrams was getting harder which is in a way a good practice but it meant more time to do it and sadly i ended up not finishing it during the allocated tutorial time.

On the whole, the day started with relief and ended with relief so a happy day for me. The lecture started off as a blurry concept but the study guide helped understand that this material helps me do my Assignment1b which is about making a report stating the system requirements of CyberRoo and making the diagrams which were taught in the tutorial.

Now a feedback from my lecturer and tutor to know about my progress on Assignment1a awaits me next week and i hope i made good progress.... so i can work on Assignment1b as soon as possible.....

........... LOTS TO DO!.... in LESS TIME....

............OMG! .... week 9 is not far away....

Experience of Assignment 1a

A pleasant Hello! to all those who are following my blog. This section of my blog deals with my personal insights and suggestions on Assignment 1a.

The whole purpose of the exercise in Assignment 1a was basically to be able to understand the system that CyberRoo wants by knowing what are their main requirements. Then an event table is constructed to show those requirements in a logical order using key elements of the event table i.e. Event name, trigger, source, use case, response and destination. Mastering or having an in-depth understanding of the event table and its elements is a skill needed for System Analysts to extract main requirements and system functional specifications from their clients.

Basically while doing this assignment i figured out that there are many ways to interpret system requirements and i decided to take a safer option by including as much possibilities as possible in my event table so unintentionally i don't neglect the main requirements. So in the process i ended up with 28 events as oppose to 18, 20, 22, or 24, that most of my fellow colleagues had for their event tables. Once again emphasising that there are many ways to interpret things and being a successful System analyst means getting your interpretation and judgement correct most of the times which obviously comes with experience and skills that you develop with time as you work with different systems.

I would like to give some suggestions for this particular unit and assignment is that there should be more practice exercises for event tables because at most times while doing the assignment i was not sure about what i was doing. That mainly goes to the lack of practice and lack of feedback on the exercises i did before. So i would like the Fit2001 organizers to look into this matter that more practice with soultions should be given before an actual assignment is actually told to be done. Another reason being that as an IT student i got only one shot to do this subject so i expect to master a particular knowledge or skill that i learn from this unit rather than just partially knowing about it.

At this point, i would like to appreciate the Forums and Blogs facilites of this unit which helped me tremendously in making clear some of the doubts that i had for this assignment and to my one close friend who helped me to make the transcript of the CyberRoo audio. These materials also gave me the start up direction for the assignment and a study group helps all the time to discuss and clear doubts on topics that we face as we do our assignments.

Overall, it was a mixed experience which had its bad moments and good moments. The bad part was that the assignment was full of ambiguities adding up to the stress i already had for other assignments . The good part was that i would've not learned much about this unit if it were not for this assignment. Now the link of event tables, class diagrams and use cases are beginning to make sense and their purpose is becoming even more visible.

In short these last two quotes sums up my Assignment 1a experience,

"A day not learning anything, is a day wasted in your life"

"No pain.... No Gain"

Thanks for patiently reading my blog.

Week 6 - A hectic week

My week 6 began with the strong realization that i need to submit 3 assignments by the end of this week and System Analysis Assignment 1a was one of them. As usual, week 6 of the semester happens to be the peak time for being busy with all assignments and i have not done much reading lately so i was expecting to be lost in the lecture. And it was sadly TRUE!!.... The day we had lecture and tutorial happened to be my birthday and i was getting bored with all the diagrams that were not making much sense.. All those diagrams felt like a repetition of week 4 & week 5 lecture. Basically these diagrams were about Use Cases that we would need to draw in our Assignement 1b so it was imperative that i understood how to make them and how they actually work.

Then after a while i decided to go through the study guide and i found it extremely useful. It was descriptive and in point form explaining the things in a proper order. Like the study started with a definition of use diagrams, some examples and then a step-by-step process to draw a case diagram. That instantly changed my mood as my doubts were getting slowly cleared by the content of the study guide. I wish the lectures would have more detail and less diagram so students can understand the topic well because what i think is that too much diagrams just don't seem to be meaningful and would create more doubts.

The only thing i found important or useful in week 6 lecture was some guidance and handy information from the lecturer on how to do the assignment which is due in a few days. Like always whenever i do not understand fully the lecture I look forward to the tutorial to help me clear my doubts and understand the topic better.

To my amazement, i found the lecturer in the first hour of the tutorial explaining us how to construct Context Diagram and Data Flow Diagrams(DFD). I don't know how but somehow it slipped out of my mind that Yeap Boon Han was coming....hmmm... must've been the stress of 3 assignments to submit in a few days.... He helped us step by step in making the diagram and i was able to understand the concept behind making a context diagram and a DFD. But i have to still admit these are complex diagrams and require solid understanding to be able to construct them properly.

Sadly due to lack of time the lecturer could not help us create the event table for week 6 tutorial. I was very disappointed since i wanted to enhance my understanding on creating event tables and understanding their elements in detail to help me do my assignment 1a but now i have to do everything on my own.... :(

Once the first hour ended the tutor was reinforcing what the lecturer had discussed about earlier and i was patiently now waiting for the class to end since it felt like a really long day.
Class ends........... Work on Assignment 1a beginzzzzzz.........