ISEB Certificate in Systems Development Essentials (3 day)

Course Overview

This course provides a thorough grounding in the basic issues associated with systems development. By using a wealth of practical exercises, supported by relevant theoretical concepts, participants lean to apply the skills and techniques of analysis in a realistic project simulation. The programme considers the wide range of systems projects that are encountered and helps participants to evaluate the pros and cons of various approaches to providing business benefit through IT systems. This programme can be combined with Systems Modelling Techniques with UML to provide a complete course in basic systems analysis.

Skills Gained

At the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Identify the actors, tasks and disciplines required for systems development and implementation.
• Identify different architectural considerations
• Investigate a system
• Interpret business requirements and produce system requirements
• Quality assure the system requirements documentation
• Derive test cases from the systems requirements documentation
• Describe a range of systems development lifecycles
• Describe the principles, structure and activities of the Unified Process
• Describe, interpret and quality assure use case diagrams, use case descriptions, class diagrams and sequence diagrams
• Make effective use of different methods of interpersonal communications.
• Conduct an appropriate system review
• Explain how CASE and CAST tools might be used to support the Unified Process

Examinations

The course prepares participants to sit a one-hour, open book, examination leading to the certificate in Systems Development Essentials offered by the Information Systems Examinations Board (ISEB). This certificate is a core certificate in the ISEB diploma in Systems Development and is also an optional certificate in the ISEB diploma in Business Analysis.

Course Outline

Roles in systems development

• The purpose, objectives and tasks of systems development
• Roles and actors in systems development
• Technical and interpersonal skills of the analysts
• The emergence of skills frameworks (SFIA+)
• The Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI)

Systems architecture

• Enterprise, systems and infrastructure levels of architecture
• The Zachman Framework
• Inputs at an enterprise level (EAP)
• Inputs at system and infrastructure level
• Components of an EAP methodology

Development approaches

• Bespoke development
• Commercial off the shelf (COTS) software package solutions
• Configuring and customising COTS software package solutions
• Component-based systems development
• Service-based systems development

Systems development lifecycles

• Waterfall model
• V model
• Incremental model
• Spiral model
• Advantages and disadvantages of each approach
• Selection of an appropriate approach

Methodologies

• Traditional and structured approaches
• Agile Development / Rapid Application Development / eXtreme Programming
• The Unified Process (UP) and the Unified Modeling Language (UML)
• Models of the UML
• Interpretation of
• Use case diagram
• Use case description
• Class diagram
• Sequence diagram
• Phases of the Unified Process
• Workflows of the Unified Process

Systems Investigation

• Fact finding approaches:
• Workshops
• Prototyping
• Interviewing
• Questionnaires
• Scenario analysis
• Other approaches
• Functional requirements definition
• Non-functional requirements definition
• Documenting requirements
• Human aspects of systems investigation and introducing change

Systems design, implementation and maintenance

• Aspects of the production environment
• Design principles and constraints (legal, ethical, financial)
• The tasks of implementation
• Sign off and hand over
• Post-implementation reviews
• Different types of maintenance

Quality Assurance

• Definitions of software quality
• The V model
• Requirements-driven testing
• Static Testing: types of walkthrough and inspection
• Post-project reviews
• Service Level Agreements

CASE and CAST tools

• Features of Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) and Computer Aided Software Testing (CAST) tools
• Life-cycle coverage
• Requirements traceability
• Advantages and disadvantages