M&IS 44044 Fall 2008 Ngniatedema

KENT STATE UNIVERSITY

College of Business Administration

MIS 44044: Systems Analysis and Design

Fall 2008

Classroom: 205 BSA

Class Time: Monday 6:15pm -8:55pm

Instructor: Thomas Ngniatedema, Teaching Fellow, M&IS Department.

E-mail: tngniate@kent.edu (fastest way to contact me and get responses to quick questions)

Office: 402 A BSA Building

Phone: (330) 672-1164 

Department phone: (330) 672-1140                                        Fax: (330) 672-2953 

Administrative Assistance: Silliman, Pamela (330-672-1140, psillima@kent.edu)

Office Hours: Monday and Friday: 10:00 am-12:30 pm & by appointment

Course Prerequisites: MIS 24070 and MIS 24060

Required Course Materials: None, due to the extensive knowledge you have learned in the foundation courses.

The optional texts are:

·         Valacich, J. S., George, J. F., & Hoffer, J. A., 2006. Essentials of Systems Analysis & Design, 3rd edition. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ. ISBN: 0132196530

·         Systems Analysis and Design, 3rd Edition
by Alan Dennis, Barbara Haley Wixom and Roberta M. Roth,
published by John Wiley's & Sons Inc., 2006. ISBN: 047172257X

Course Syllabus, Schedule and Assignments:

All the handouts, announcements, and deliverables for this course be available on-line

http://www.personal.kent.edu/~tngniate/MIS44044.html.

Most of the materials generated for this course are copyrighted. This includes but is not limited to syllabi, and in-class materials. Please do not copy or distribute course materials unless you are expressly granted permission.

Course Description

This project-oriented course is designed to help students develop a real operating business information system that will be on public display. Consequently, the success in this course requires not only skills in systems methodologies and techniques, but also in the management of people and projects. Thus students will draw from their analytical, communication, organizational and technical skills.

Course Objectives

Students will apply methodologies learned in the foundation courses to develop a working business information system that will be made available to the public.

To meet the course objectives, the class will be divided into two teams. Each team will chose a specific research topic. Some project ideas will be provided.

Students will analyze a business' need for information and will develop an appropriate strategy to solve the problem and provide the required information service.

They will apply various information gathering techniques for eliciting user information requirements and system expectations.

Students will develop and interpret a variety of system description documents, including data flow diagrams (DFD), Entity-Relationship (E-R), models, as well as Unified Modeling language (UML) diagrams.

They will develop written presentations of system specifications that are clear and persuasive by following the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC).

Students will develop a “prototype” for complete information system that includes:

• Project Management document
• Requirement Specifications
• Design Specification
• Testing procedures
• Prototype GUI, report designs and  complete user manual

Computing Resources

The computer lab in room A 224, 226 and 230 in the BSA building have a number of workstations with Visual Student.Net and Microsoft Access installed on them. Students can also have access to a server in the M&IS department with IIS and an Oracle database installed or download MySQL server. They can be used for ASP.Net or PHP web-application development respectively. Depending on the type of application students want to build and the programming environment, they can use:

• Windows application in C#.Net or VB.Net with Microsoft Access as the database.
• ASP.Net web application with Oracle as the database
• PHP web application with MySQL as the database.

Making Backups

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

Students’ Copy of Visual Studio.Net 2005

Students can obtain a personal copy of Microsoft Visual Studio.Net 2005 that can be used for educational purposes provided they are registered to an M&IS course that is using this software. The instructions for obtaining a personal copy of the software are at the following web site:

http://www.personal.kent.edu/~gthomas/vsnet2005.html

Evaluation: 

 Due to the project-oriented nature of this course, the course grade will be based mostly on each student’s performance on the project assignment.

Note that project status reports will be requested at various times during the term as announced in class. The purpose of a status report is to document accomplishments and delays from the planned schedule, and to indicate changes in project expectations. A status report contains a section for the overall project (written by the project leader) and a one-page memo from each team member outlining his/her status on current and just completed responsibilities. The reports from individuals are written to the project leader, and appended to the leader's overall project status report given to me. The purpose of these reports is to keep me informed about group progress (much like a Director of Systems Development might oversee ongoing projects). Use the status report to indicate progress against the baseline project plan, and to raise questions for the instructor.

Each deliverable will be reviewed for grammar and spelling, professional appearance, quality of executive summary, organization, and content. However, the most important deliverable is the final one and will carry the most weight. The point of the project being piecemeal is to keep giving you feedback to help you refine your work. Since most of your grade is based on the final deliverable, each of these prior steps are just meant to give you milestones to reach, just like a real project is supposed to be done in steady pieces that lead to the end goal.

Peer evaluations are a very important part of the grading and emphasize the importance of trust, cooperation, responsibility, and team-work in group projects. Failure to do your work and make a good contribution to your team could result in you losing a significant amount of project points if your teammates rate you poorly. Thus, peer evaluations are meant to be honest and constructive, and are treated as real elements of grading by the instructor.

Grades for the project will be evaluated according to the following two areas: professional quality and scale. Quality will be judged by characteristics like clarity, professionalism, and following standard procedures for diagramming and building forms and reports. Scale will be the size of the project, which will be measured with such means as number of data flow processes modeled and supported by the required other modeling techniques (such as data dictionary, logical modeling, etc.). I will also try to evaluate the relative time put in by each person and use number of hours put in by the group to support my judgment about scale. Of these two measures, Quality is the most important, then scale. But both are important. I will rank order the groups according to each of the two and then come up with my grade. And then based on teammate evaluations and based on my evaluation of the contribution of each individual (which sections were worked on by them; how much did they seem to know during meetings; etc.) I will move individual scores up or down accordingly. In extreme cases the amount taken off of one person’s grade will exceed the amount added to the other group members.

Note that each individual is responsible for knowing how to do each step in the project and will be tested during the group meeting with the instructor. Make sure that each person in your group knows how to make and explain such methods and diagramming techniques as the DFDs and logical process models (pseudo code and decision tables) included in your deliverables. If asked, everyone should be able to read these things (and make them)

 Grades will be based on the following weightage scheme:

Grading will be based on a standard scale:

 (90 - 100%: A, 80 - 89%: B, 70 - 79%: C, 60 – 69%: D, below 60 %: F)

Tentative Course Schedule, MIS 44044    Fall 2008

Class                Topic                                                                   Deliverables   Due

Class  1            Introduction to the Course      

Class  2            Introduction to Databases        Chapter 1 & 2

Class  3            Types of Database Models      Chapter 1 & 2

Class  4            Relational Database Models     Chapter 3                                

Class  5            Relational Database Models     Chapter 3                     Start     Asg 1

Class  6            Introduction to Modeling         Chapter 4                                 Asg 1

Class  7            E-R Modeling                          Chapter 4                     In         Asg 1

Class  8            E-R Modeling                          Chapter 4                                

Class  9            EXAM I

Class10            Normalization                          Chapter 5                     Start     Asg 2

Class11            Normalization                          Chapter 5                                 Asg 2

Class12            DB Design                               Chapter 5&8                In         Asg 2

Class13            DB Design                               Chapter 5&8

Class14            DB Implementation                 Chapter 5&8

Class15            DB Implementation                                                                            

Class16            Presentations                                                                            Project

The Following Kent State University Policies Apply to All Students

A. Students attending the course who do not have the proper prerequisite risk being deregistered from the class. 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 9, 2007 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.

B. Academic Honesty: 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 the 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 receiving a failing grade (0 points) for the work or course. Repeat offenses may result in dismissal from the University.

C. Course Withdrawal: For Fall 2008, the course withdrawal deadline is October x.

D. 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).

FINAL NOTES

• While I do not have a specific attendance policy for this course, it is expected that students will not miss any class.  The material discussed in class is important for the project development process.  If unforeseen circumstances prevent you from attending class, please inform me in advance.