ISEB Systems Development Essentials with Agile — A 3-Day Course

 Open Public Course Closed In-House Course

Course Synopsis

Systems Development Essentials is concerned with the fundamental skills of systems development in an Agile environment. It focuses on systems investigation and quality assurance as these underpin all successful system development work. Systems Development Essentials with Agile also introduces the candidate to how the systems development effort could be organised. The course distinguishes between generic lifecycle types, methods and approaches.

Whilst exploring the fundamental differences between object-oriented and structured systems development, the course also focuses on the basic principles of agile systems development and it recognises how a commitment to software package implementation changes the structure of the systems development approach.

Combined with Systems Modelling Techniques with UML this course provides delegates with a complete introduction to systems analysis and development.

Systems Development Essentials with Agile is delivered by trainers who bring their substantial experience of practical systems analysis projects to the programme. A comprehensive manual, containing detailed information about systems development techniques and providing references for further reading, is supplied as part of the course.

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 Solution Development and is also a specialist certificate in the ISEB Diploma in Business Analysis.

The exam is taken on the last day of the course, and the exam fee is included in the course cost.

Publicly scheduled dates, locations, and prices

Course Contents

Roles in systems development

• The purposes, objectives and tasks of systems development
• Roles and responsibilities in systems development
• Technical and interpersonal skills of the analysts
• The emergence of skills frameworks

Systems architecture

• Enterprise, systems and infrastructure levels of architecture
• Inputs at an enterprise level
• Inputs at system and infrastructure level
• Model Driven Architecture

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 solutions and other approaches
• Evolutionary prototyping

Systems development lifecycles

• Waterfall model
• V model
• Incremental model
• Spiral (evolutionary) model
• Advantages and disadvantages of each approach
• Selection of an appropriate development approach

Methodologies

• Traditional and structured approaches
• Iterative systems development using the DSDM Atern methodology
• Other agile development methodologies (The Unified Process (UP), SCRUM, eXtreme Programming)
• Models of the Unified Modeling Language (UML)
• Interpretation and principles of:
  • Use case diagram
  • Use case description
  • Class diagram
  • State machine diagram
• Validating models using a CRUD matrix

Systems investigation

• Fact finding approaches:
  • Workshops
  • Interviewing
  • Questionnaires
  • Scenario analysis, storyboarding & hot-housing
  • Model office & focus groups
  • Other approaches
• Functional requirements definition
• Non-functional requirements definition
• Documenting & prioritising requirements
• Human aspects of systems investigation and introducing change

Systems design, implementation and maintenance

• Design principles and constraints (legal, ethical, financial)
• Systems deployment and hand over
• Post-implementation reviews
• Different types of maintenance
• Estimation and development planning

Quality assurance

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

CASE and CAST tools

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