Ans1. A systems analyst requires sound technical knowledge, strong oral and written communication skills, good analytical skills and an understanding of business operations and processes. Apart from these skills, systems analyst also needs to have good interpersonal skills for interaction with people at different levels, varying from operational staff to senior executives, including people outside the company, such as software and hardware vendors, customers and government officials.

2. 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?

Ans2. Very often, systems analyst leads an IT development team. To be a good team leader, an analyst should plan, estimate and manage the project and use his leadership and team-building skills to coach and motivate the team members.

3. 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?

Ans3. Everything was going fine till the 8^th week. The schedule outlined in the Gantt chart relates to my study pattern. Because of the assignments, i need  a systems analyst may have to lead an IT development team often. To be a good team leader, an analyst should be able to plan, estimate and manage the project and use his leadership and team-building skills to coach and motivate team members.

How has your answer to question 1 this studies from the 9^th week. After my submission of assignments i am on track again.

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

     Ans4. If i would have been in charge of this course next term, i would have done some more planning and research which would help the team members. I would do my best to my capabilities that will help the company by all means.

Ans1. A systems analyst requires sound technical knowledge, strong oral and written communication skills, good analytical skills and an understanding of business operations and processes. Apart from these skills, systems analyst also needs to have good interpersonal skills for interaction with people at different levels, varying from operational staff to senior executives, including people outside the company, such as software and hardware vendors, customers and government officials.

2. 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?

Ans2. Very often, systems analyst leads an IT development team. To be a good team leader, an analyst should plan, estimate and manage the project and use his leadership and team-building skills to coach and motivate the team members.

3. 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?

Ans3. Everything was going fine till the 8^th week. The schedule outlined in the Gantt chart relates to my study pattern. Because of the assignments, i need  a systems analyst may have to lead an IT development team often. To be a good team leader, an analyst should be able to plan, estimate and manage the project and use his leadership and team-building skills to coach and motivate team members.

Usually for higher-level positions, most companies require experienced people with a master’s degree or similar higher qualifications in Information Systems, Computer Science, Information Technology or similar fields. For mid-level or low-level positions too, most companies require that systems analysts have a college degree in information systems, computer science, business or a closely related field and sometimes even some IT experience as requirement.

              Apart from the above skills, systems analyst also needs to have good interpersonal skills for interaction with people at different levels, varying from operational staff to senior executives, including people outside the company, such as software and hardware vendors, customers and government officials.

How has your answer to question 1 this studies from the 9^th week. After my submission of assignments i am on track again.

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

     Ans4. If i would have been in charge of this course next term, i would have done some more planning and research which would help the team members. I would do my best to my capabilities that will help the company by all means.

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

Ans1.The most important concepts i learnt are the Entity-Relationship Diagrams, DFD’s, Data Relationships, SDLC, DBMS concepts and Normalization.

2. Why do you think those concepts are important?

Ans2. SDLC plans and manages the systems development process. Strategic planning is the process to identify long term organizational goals, strategies and resources. An Entity-Relationship diagram has cardinalities, relationship between entities and attributes. DBMS provides an interface between a database and the users who need to access the data. Normalization is a process for creating table designs by assigning specific fields or attributes to each table in the database.

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

     Ans3. DFD’s and ERD diagrams are causing me problems

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

      Ans4. By practicing doing ERD’s and DFD’s regularly my problems are getting solved.

Q. As you are learning in this course there are a range of different methodologies. For example, Part B of Assignment 2 asks you to compare and contrast traditional 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. McCauley (2001) argues that the underlying philosophy of process-oriented methods is that the requirements of the software project are completely locked in and frozen before the design and software development commences. There is a need for methods that are flexible, adaptable and agile, which allow the developers to make late changes in the specifications as this approach is not always feasible

             Unforgiving honesty of working code, effectiveness of people working together with goodwill, and focus on teamwork are the basic principles of agile methods. In traditional systems development methodologies, changes arrive into the project even at a very late phase.

             If a situation arises where the paradigm shift between the traditional way of software development and the agile software development is too large and at the same time the supporting adoption models and techniques are missing, then, it is most likely that organizations and developers are not keen in adopting agile methods into everyday use. Issues other than traditionally focused issues such as planning, preparation for the future, documentation, contract negotiation, along with processes and tools might be given importance during the paradigm shift.

           A cultural shift might be required at the middle and top management when adopting agile software practices. Traditional control mechanisms, such as periodic reporting, might be shifted towards producing working code. On one hand, this requires changing the way the organization is functioning and, more importantly, on the other hand, placing more trust on the ability and competence of the development team. On the other end of the spectrum, there is a risk associated with the change of development approach. All of the agile approaches propose the development of software features in small incremental cycles, only 2 to 6 weeks in duration. Therefore, the risk is minimized since, e.g., a schedule slippage will be visible in a few weeks time.

                  Studies reveal that traditional plan-driven software development methodologies are in fact, not used in practice and therefore, the traditional methodologies are too mechanistic to be used in detail. Thus, industrial software developers have become unsure of the new solutions that are difficult to grasp and are kept unused. On the other hand, agile methods claim to place more emphasis on people, interaction, working software, customer collaboration, and change, rather than on processes, tools, contracts and plans. A number of new methodologies are introduced that claim conformance to these agile principles, although, no systematic review of the agile methods has been attempted. Anecdotal evidence suggests that agile methods are effective and suitable for many situations and environments. Empirical studies are needed immediately for the evaluation and the effectiveness and the possibilities of using agile methods. Moreover, confusion may arise with the release of new agile methods frequently. The adoption or selection models have to be used by practitioners at the moment to meet the needs.

                  Agile thinking is a people-centric view to software development. People-centered strategies have been argued for as an important source of competitive advantage, because, unlike technology, cost, or new product development, these human strategies are difficult to imitate. Agile software development methods provide a novel way of approaching software engineering problems, while also maintaining that the methods are by no means exhaustive or capable of solving all the problems.

(Pekka Abrahamsson, Outi Salo, Jussi Ronkainen, Juhani Warsta- Agile Software Development Methods)

Ans1. A systems analyst requires sound technical knowledge, strong oral and written communication skills, good analytical skills and an understanding of business operations and processes. Apart from these skills, systems analyst also needs to have good interpersonal skills for interaction with people at different levels, varying from operational staff to senior executives, including people outside the company, such as software and hardware vendors, customers and government officials.

2. 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?

Ans2. Very often, systems analyst leads an IT development team. To be a good team leader, an analyst should plan, estimate and manage the project and use his leadership and team-building skills to coach and motivate the team members.

3. 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?

Ans3. Everything was going fine till the 8^th week. The schedule outlined in the Gantt chart relates to my study pattern. Because of the assignments, i need  a systems analyst may have to lead an IT development team often. To be a good team leader, an analyst should be able to plan, estimate and manage the project and use his leadership and team-building skills to coach and motivate team members.

Usually for higher-level positions, most companies require experienced people with a master’s degree or similar higher qualifications in Information Systems, Computer Science, Information Technology or similar fields. For mid-level or low-level positions too, most companies require that systems analysts have a college degree in information systems, computer science, business or a closely related field and sometimes even some IT experience as requirement.

              Apart from the above skills, systems analyst also needs to have good interpersonal skills for interaction with people at different levels, varying from operational staff to senior executives, including people outside the company, such as software and hardware vendors, customers and government officials.

How has your answer to question 1 this studies from the 9^th week. After my submission of assignments i am on track again.

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

     Ans3. If i would have been in charge of this course next term, i would have done some more planning and research which would help the team members. I would do my best to my capabilities that will help the company by all means.

Ans1. The most important concepts you learnt this week are entity relationship diagrams (ERD), DBMS concepts and the data design concepts.

Q2. Why do you think those concepts are important?

Ans2. An Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) is a graphical model of the information system that depicts the relationships among system entities. The ERD are based on entities and data stores. There are three types of relationships naming one-to-one relationship, one-to-many relationship and many-to-many relationship. Associative entity has its own attributes and characteristics. Cardinality describes how instances of one entity relate to instances of another entity.

            DBMS is a collection of tools, features and interfaces that enable users to add, update, manage access and analyze data in a database. DBMS components include interface for users, database administrators and related systems, a data manipulation language, a schema and a physical data repository. The other techniques of data management include data warehousing, which stores data in an easily accessible form for user access, and data mining, which looks for meaningful patterns and relationships among data.

             DBMS designs are more powerful and flexible than traditional file oriented systems. The environmental database offers scalability, organizational support for wide access, economy of scale, sharing of data among user groups, balancing of conflicting user requirements, standard enforcements, controlled redundancy, effective security, flexibility, better programmer productivity and data independence (Systems Analysis and Design, 5^th edition, Pg.264,292-293).

Q3.What concepts from this week are causing you the greatest problems?

Ans3.The main concept that is causing me a problem is ERD diagrams.

Q4.How might the problems you are having be solved?

Ans4.By practicing and doing lots of examples in the text as well as in tutorial exercises my problem is getting solved. I am able to do it better.

Ans1. The most important concepts you learnt this week are entity relationship diagrams (ERD), DBMS concepts and the data design concepts.

Q2. Why do you think those concepts are important?

Ans2. An Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) is a graphical model of the information system that depicts the relationships among system entities. The ERD are based on entities and data stores. There are three types of relationships naming one-to-one relationship, one-to-many relationship and many-to-many relationship. Associative entity has its own attributes and characteristics. Cardinality describes how instances of one entity relate to instances of another entity.

            DBMS is a collection of tools, features and interfaces that enable users to add, update, manage access and analyze data in a database. DBMS components include interface for users, database administrators and related systems, a data manipulation language, a schema and a physical data repository. The other techniques of data management include data warehousing, which stores data in an easily accessible form for user access, and data mining, which looks for meaningful patterns and relationships among data.

             DBMS designs are more powerful and flexible than traditional file oriented systems. The environmental database offers scalability, organizational support for wide access, economy of scale, sharing of data among user groups, balancing of conflicting user requirements, standard enforcements, controlled redundancy, effective security, flexibility, better programmer productivity and data independence.

Q3. What concepts from this week are causing you the greatest problems?

Ans3.The main concept that is causing me a problem is ERD diagrams.

Q4.How might the problems you are having be solved?

Ans4.By practicing and doing lots of examples in the text as well as in tutorial exercises my problem is getting solved. I am able to do it better.