Course motivation and overview

This course is meant to give students an understanding and appreciation of the process of analyzing an existing system, determining client requirements for a new system, and modeling and designing the new target system.

The course also involves study of the relevant areas of project planning and management, risk assessment and management, and the long term life cycle of software systems.

The course is a mix of theory and practice, and the assessment includes a substantial term project (with presentations, design reviews, and demonstrations) and a final exam.

Contact information, materials

• Lecturer: Dave Wessels, 753-3245 ext 2436, david.wessels@viu.ca

• Office hours: (in Bldg 315, Rm 222) Mon/Wed 10:30-11:30, Fri 11:30-12:30
  If you need to see me outside office hours please send me an email (david.wessels@viu.ca) to arrange a suitable time.
  

• Textbook: none
  We'll focus on online resources for the most part this semester, but nearly any textbook with a title along the lines of "Systems analysis and design" would be a useful additional resource if you're looking for one.

• Web material: online material will include supplementary lecture notes, exams, project requirements, sample exam questions, etc, accessible through http://csci.viu.ca/~wesselsd/courses/csci375/

Timetable and assessment

• Lectures: Mon/Wed 11:30-1pm, Bldg. 200 Rm. 106
• Lab: Bldg. 315 Rm. 115; Mon 1:30-2:30 or 4-5pm.
  (used for project presentations, demonstrations, and review exercises)

• Assessment:
  50% Team project (You must pass the project to pass the course)
  50% Final exam (You must pass the final exam to pass the course)

All students will be required to fully participate in the completion of a team project. This means attending all course labs, attending team meetings, participating in demonstrations and presentations for the client(s), and completing a fair share of the planning, analysis, design, development, and documentation work necessary for your team's project.

For full marks, all project deliverables must be received at or before the appropriate due date and time.

Submissions which are at most one working day late will be accepted at a penalty of 25% of the total possible mark. Submissions which are more than one working day late will receive a mark of 0.

There will be a set of core demonstrations and presentations for the team projects. These must be completed and presented to pass the project.

Topics

The planned topic set for the course is shown below, the specific order will be determined as the semester progresses, and some changes in topics may take place during the semester.

• Project life cycles
  - waterfall, spiral, and agile models
• Business analysis and project proposals
  - identifying and evaluating opportunities for improvement
  - business process automation, improvement, and re-engineering
  - project proposals, feasability analysis, and cost benefit analysis
• Project planning and management
  - project staffing and roles
  - timelines, task scheduling, cost and time estimation
  - project metrics, collection, and analysis
  - project timelines, milestones, and reviews
  - risk analysis and risk management (monitoring, preventing, mitigation, and responding)
  - quality control, reviews and inspections
  - people management and conflict resolution
  - project closeout
• Deployment and support
  - rollout, user training and preparation
  - long term maintenance and support
• Requirements gathering and documentation
  - requirements gathering techniques (interviews, jad sessions, surveys, document and interface analysis, reverse engineering)
  - functional and non-functional requirements
  - reviewing requirements and resolving ambiguities
  - use case scenarios, viewpoint analysis
  - relationship to testing
• Modeling techniques
  - interface modeling: mockups and walk throughs, prototyping
  - data modeling: data flow diagrams, data dictionaries
  - process modeling: state diagrams, activity diagrams, sequence diagrams
• Design levels and categories
  - architectural, interface, data, user guidance
• Case studies in design
  - specific cases considered on an ad hoc basis, time permitting