Business Analysis
and
Data Design
ITEC-630 Fall 2008
Mondays 5:30 - 8:00pm
Professor: J. Alberto Espinosa
Last updated 8/18/08
Requirements | Objectives
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Academic Integrity
Grading
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Exam |
Homework |
Final Project |
Attendance
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Re-grade
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Students need to be familiar with this syllabus and the related Class Schedule. This class has a few sessions and demos schedules in the Kogod Lab and the Anderson Lab. Please check the class schedule regularly to make sure that you are aware of any changes in meeting venues or assignments. All assignments and class events will be posted in this Class Schedule.
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Similarly, students need to check all announcements posted on Blackboard before each class.
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Students are required to check their American University e-mail regularly for class announcements. Students who do not use their AU e-mail regularly need to either forward their AU e-mail to their personal e-mail accounts or change their e-mail address in Blackboard.
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Students are required, per University policy, to be familiar with AU's Academic Integrity Policy. Please read carefully the policies and read the Academic Integrity Policy section below. These policies will be strictly enforced in this course.
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Students read all assigned material prior to class, participate actively in class discussion, and take a proactive role to maximize their learning from this class and in helping others benefit from the course.
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A good portion of the class lectures will come from sources other than the textbooks. Therefore, this class requires regular attendance and consistent week-to-week commitment on the part of the student. The material in this course is sequential in nature, so missing a lecture will not only affect the student's learning on the missed lecture, but also on subsequent material covered.
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The objective of this course is to provide business students with the basic skills to understand fundamental concepts about system development. More specifically, the course focuses on two separate but interrelated aspects: (1) system requirements and (2) system design.
The system requirements aspect of the course is designed to provide the student with the skills to: (1) understand basic system development processes and methods; (2) develop a vision of systems that provide value to business stakeholders; (3) gather and analyze user requirements for the work that the system will automate; (4) model those requirements using the use case and object methodologies; and (5) prepare formal requirements specifications that can be used for system design.
The system design aspect of the course builds on the system requirements part of the course and is designed to help to provide business students with the basic skills to: (1) understand the basic concepts and use of databases and database management systems; (2) understand the relational database model; (3) construct database queries to manipulate and access data stored in databases; (4) build data models and do relational database design; (5) understand some sound principles of database design, like entity integrity, referential integrity and normalization; (6) get exposed to some current and more advanced database topics like transactions, concurrency, database administration, object oriented databases, data warehouses, client-server databases and web databases; and (7) learn other basic aspects of system design.
The course includes three key components: (1) reading assignments and lectures - to provide students with the basic fundamentals of systems analysis; (2) in-class exercises and homework - to illustrate the application of the concepts discussed in class; and (3) lab sessions and final project - to provide the student with hands-on experience of how to conduct systems analysis and how to design and query databases for in real applications using popular system requirement methods, data modeling tools and database management systems software.
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Academic integrity, the body of ethical standards, practice, and behavior, is paramount in higher education and essential to effective teaching and learning. As a professional school, the Kogod School of Business is committed to preparing our students and graduates to value the notion of integrity.
Standards of academic conduct are governed by the University’s Academic Integrity Code. By enrolling in the School and registering for this course, you acknowledge your familiarity with the Code and pledge to abide by it. All suspected violations of the Code will be immediately referred to the Office of the Dean and disciplinary action including failure for the course, suspension, or dismissal may result.
Additional information about the Code (i.e. acceptable forms of collaboration, definitions of plagiarism, use of sources including the Internet, and the adjudication process) can be found in a number of places including the University’s Academic Regulations, Student Handbook, and website at www.american.edu/academics/integrity. If you have any questions about academic integrity or standards of conduct in this course, please discuss them with your instructor.
Homework assignments (not the final project) and the exam are individual. While helping peers and getting help from others is encouraged, students MUST complete their homework assignment INDIVIDUALLY and turn in your own work. Students cannot copy any part of the homework from other students. Similarly, the exam is also individual.
Violations of the code
include, but are not limited to: cheating in exams, copying parts of another
student's homework, re-using papers presented in other courses, using any
material prepared by others and submitting it as the student's own work, and
using verbatim text materials from sources without quotes and appropriate
citation references.
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2 Exams (individual), 20% each |
40% |
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2 Homework (individual), 8% each |
16% |
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Final Project (in teams) |
34% |
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Attendance and participation (individual) |
10% |
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Total |
100% |
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Exams: There will two exams during the semester, which will include all material covered in class, lab sessions and homework assignments. One exam will cover system requirements and the other one will cover database and system design. Exams will be open book and open notes. Exams are individual and no cooperation of any sort is permitted during exams.
Makeup Policy: Makeup exams are discouraged. In general, makeup exams are not allowed, except with PRIOR approval from the instructor before the exam, and for a valid and documented reason. Students who obtain approval to take a makeup exam must take it before graded exams are returned. The option to take a makeup exam will expire once graded exams have been returned to students (generally within one week of the original exam).
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Homework: The purpose of the individual homework assignments is to give you hands-on experience with system analysis and modeling methods and tools. Generally, students tend to help each other with homework assignments. While helping peers and getting help from others is permitted and encouraged, students are only allowed to give or obtain tips: (1) how to apply analysis and modeling methods; (2) how to use modeling software tools; and (3) with interpretation of homework instructions. Students are not allowed to help or get help with the homework itself. Any work that is copied from others, all or in part, will receive a grade of 0 in the assignment and face possible further consequences, as described in AU's Academic Integrity Policy.
IMPORTANT: Assignments MUST be turned in at the beginning of class on the day they are due. The penalty for submitting after this time is 10 points off for each day (weekday or weekend day) it is late. All homework assignments will be turned in electronically by posting your work on your web sites.
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Final Project: The objective of this project is to help you put in practice what you have learned in the course by conducting a systems requirements and database design for a real application. At the beginning of the course, your team will select a company, preferably a real one but it could also be a fictitious company or a startup, and suggest a system that will provide business value to that company. Throughout the course, you will apply the methods described in class to produce a full requirements specification and database design for this system. This project is not supposed to be carried out at the end of the semester, but it is supposed to be carried out as we move sequentially through the system development and requirements process steps as the course progresses. As such, you will need to apply what you learned in a given week during the following week and show your progress to the instructor the following week.[Top]
Attendance and Participation: Attendance is important for this course because of the sequential nature of the material (i.e., the sequence of the class topics and lecture materials roughly follows widely used system analysis process steps). Your final attendance and participation grade will be based on attendance (which will not be strictly taken, but will be observed) and quality (more than quantity) participation during class. Important notes: (1) some students don't participate during class but stay actively engaged during the course -- proactive communication with the instructor about course content via e-mails or in person can makeup lack of participation during class; (2) points may be subtracted for negative participation (e.g., late arrivals, leaving the room during class, taking cell phone calls, disruptive conversations while class discussion or presentations are in progress, etc.).
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