About ITEC 630
[http://auapps.american.edu/~alberto/itec630/syllabus.html]

Business Analysis and Data Design

Working with consulting firms and real organizations to develop practical experience on business analysis and IT consulting!!

Students of this course work all semester on consulting projects involving business applications for real companies. Examples:

  • America Online (Spring 2005 - local city search - click here)
  • US Postal Service (Spring 2005 - vehicle fleet procurement management)
  • Deloitte Consulting (Fall 2005 - consulting personnel resource management; Spring 2006 - restaurant chain management application; Fall 2006 - distributed workforce scheduling; and Spring 2007 - audit process and document management application; Fall 2007 air passenger luggage tracking system; Spring 2008 airport security equipment tracking)
  • Intel Corporation (Spring 2006 - distributed collaboration and document annotation application for decision making, problem solving and discussions)
  • Technoserve Inc. (Spring 2006 -- wire transfer tracking application for funds sent to field offices), a non-for-profit international development organization.
  • Booz Allen Hamilon (Fall 2006 -- auto supplier order review and management; Fall 2007 checklist management for ERP implementations; Fall 2008 equipment maintenance management)
  • SRA Touchstone (Fall 2006 -- personnel and intellectual capital management for pre-bid and post-bid support)
  • Women in Information Technology (Fall 2007 - membership and event management)
  • Time card tracking for a small construction firm (Fall 2005)
  • Vehicle dealership application (Fall 2005)
  • Fund raising campaign manager for a startup company that provides fund raising services to not-for profit organizations (Spring 2006)

The course often features speakers and special events to bring the students closer to the IT consulting practice, including: on-site presentations at companies; requirements workshops with project; IT consulting workshops and panels; consulting firm training on requirements and client interview methods.

The large majority of business process re-design and strategy implementations require some form of IT-enabled solutions. Business needs and IT solutions in this day and age need to be tightly aligned. This course helps you understand this alignment and is very useful for both IT and non-IT MBA students:

Non-IT students learn how to analyze business process needs and document them in formal specifications that can be used to implement IT-enabled solutions.

Consulting track students learn how to interact with consulting clients to gather accurate requirements and data needs to deliver effective solutions to their problems.

IT consulting students learn how to prepare formal requirements, specifications and data designs that can be used by IT staff to implement effective IT solutions for their clients.

The objectives of the course are to provide students with the skills, methods and vocabulary necessary to: (1) discover and document business processes and related application requirements; (2) conceptualize IT solutions for these requirements; and (3) develop an understanding of the basic data requirements for these solutions.

The course is designed to give students hands-on experience on these skills and methods. It has the following componentss:

(1) A team consulting project in which students work throughout the semester with a real organizational client, often a consulting firm, providing them with real work experience and an excellent networking opportunity.

(2) Class discussions are focused on key practical concepts applicable to most popular IT consulting practices- e.g., iterative requirements processes, use cases, data models, and database design and queries.

(3) All grading components in the course are hands-on, resembling mini-consulting projects..

For more information on the course, please refer to the current syllabus, class materials and schedule. The course is taught by Prof. J. Alberto Espinosa (alberto@american.edu x1958) who is an experienced professional with over 18 years of work experience as an IT professional and senior manager in international organizations and an experienced academic researcher in this field. He completed his Ph.D. in Information Systems from Carnegie Mellon University