M&IS 44044 Fall 2006 Ghosh

Instructor: Suvankar Ghosh

Office: Business Administration, Room A422

Phone: 330-672-1149

Email: sghosh1@kent.edu

Office Hours: Tues 1-2pm and Wed 1-2pm or By Appointment

 

 

The primary goal of this project-oriented course is to apply what you have learned in previous theory courses on systems analysis in a collaborative project to develop a business information system. To be successful in this project, you will draw upon and sharpen a range of capabilities including your analytic, design, communication, organizational, and interpersonal skills.

The specific objectives of this course are the following:

 

·                To work as part of a 4-member team on a software development project to produce a working business information system that you will demonstrate to the instructor and the class at the end of the semester.

·                To apply the principles, models and methodologies of systems analysis and design including Data Flow Diagrams (DFD), Entity-Relationship (E-R) models, and Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams in the analysis and design of the business information system.

·                To follow the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) in doing your project, and to present the work of your team to the class in a set of professional presentations upon the completion of each major phase.

·                In addition to the demonstration of the software and the class presentations, to produce a high-quality set of documents at various stages of the SDLC. The required documents are:

 

1)      Project Plan

2)      Requirements Specification

3)      Design Specification

4)      Test Plan

5)      User’s Guide

Each team will decide on what kind of business information system it wants to build. You have an opportunity here to demonstrate your creativity in your choice of the information system. Some examples of typical business information systems that you could choose are:

 

·                Shopping Cart application

·                Help Desk system

The lab in room A320 in the BSA building has a number of workstations that have Visual Student.Net and Microsoft Access installed on them. In addition, we also have access to a server in the M&IS department with IIS and an Oracle database installed, which can be used for ASP.Net web-application development. Therefore, you have the following options for the type of application you want to build and the programming environment you use:

 

1)      Windows application in C#.Net or VB.Net with Microsoft Access as the  database

2)      ASP.Net web application with Oracle as the database

You are responsible for making backup copies of ALL the work you do, which includes code, SQL scripts, web pages, and other project files, to media that you keep in a safe place. Please remember that files are sometimes accidentally deleted, hard disks crash, and PC’s become unusable after an unexpected power surge. The only way you can continue to work on your project without a significant impact is to recover your work from backup media.

 

 

You can obtain your own copy of Microsoft Visual Studio.Net 2005 that you can use for educational purposes only while you are registered for an M&IS course that is using this software. The instructions for obtaining your own copy of the software are at the following web site:

 

There are two main prerequisites for this course:

 

·                You are expected to be familiar with the basic theory of systems analysis and development. This requirement can be met by having taken M&IS 24060 Systems Analysis I and M&IS 24070 Principles of Systems Development.

·                You are also expected to be able to develop software in at least one major programming environment of the 3 outlined above in the section on Computing Environment. Please be aware that this course is NOT designed to teach programming.

·                There is no required textbook for this course as students are expected to bring to this course a working knowledge of systems analysis and design. The optional textbook for this course is:

 

Valacich, J.S., George, J. F., and Hoffer, J. A., Essentials of Systems Analysis and Design, Pearson Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 2006, Third Edition.

 

·                Powerpoint files of the lectures will be made available. These lectures will review the concepts, techniques, models and methodologies of systems analysis and design.

 

Every week I will post my powerpoint lectures on the KSU WebCT Vista system and you can download them from there. The URL for the WebCT Vista system is:
> <br>

 

 

Click on the link for Kent State University and then log into the system with your Flashline username and password.

This is a project-oriented course and therefore the grades are given based on the performance of the team as a whole, i.e., each member of the team typically gets the same grade. There could be an exceptional situation where it becomes clear that a particular member of the team is simply not performing at the same level as the others. In such cases, it is possible that the members of the team may get different grades, but it is my expectation that this will not happen.

 

The grade will be determined as follows:

 

Attendance is required since a portion of the grade depends on class presentations made by the teams at various stages of the execution of the SDLC.

Students have responsibility to ensure they are properly enrolled in classes.  You are advised to review your official class schedule (using Web for Students) during the first two weeks of the semester to ensure you are properly enrolled in this class and section.  Should you find an error in your class schedule, you have until Sunday, September 10, 2006 to correct the error with your advising office.  If registration errors are not corrected by this date and you continue to attend and participate in classes for which you are not officially enrolled, you are advised now that you will not receive a grade at the conclusion of the semester for any class in which you are not properly registered.

 

In addition, students attending the course, who do not have the proper prerequisites, risk being deregistered from the class.

 

For Fall 2006, the course withdrawal deadline is Sunday, November 5, 2006.    Withdrawal before the deadline results in a "W" on the official transcript.  After the deadline a grade must be calculated and reported.

 

 

Cheating means to misrepresent the source, nature, or other conditions of your academic work (e.g. tests, papers, projects, assignments) so as to get undeserved credit. The use of intellectual property of others without giving them appropriate credit is a serious academic offense. It is the university’s policy that cheating or plagiarism result in a failing grade (0 points) for the work or course. Repeat offenses may result in dismissal from the University.

 

Students with disabilities:  University policy 3342-3-18 requires that students with disabilities be provided reasonable accommodations to ensure their equal access equal access course content.  If you have documented disability and require accommodations, please contact the instructor at the beginning of the semester to make arrangements for necessary classroom adjustments.  Please note, you must first verify your eligibility for these through the Student Disability Services (contact 330-672-3391 or visit www.kent.edu/sds for more information on registration procedures).