Week 3 of SAD

Requirements Gathering.. According to POD, "Gathering" isn't such a good term. I liked his analogy of that term bringing up images of wandering about in a field of requirements saying "ooh, lets have that one!" and "oh that's quite nice i'll gather that too"... that's not exactly the way he explained it, but i thought it was good.

We learned a fair bit about blogs and how useful they are for staying on top of goings on in the IT industry for when you're trying to create new solutions or something. I have to be honest though and say that the podcast we listened to for FORTY MINUTES (or so) during the tute was difficult. POD was telling us during the lecture that podcasts are great because you can go about your normal life while learning about things... during this tute though we were just sitting there. I found myself needing to do things and look at things, so started flicking through a magazine and researching ideas for one of my other subject assignments. I find it difficult to pay attention when there isn't anything to look at. It wasn't all lost on me though, Manoj helped us to conclude through class discussion that the main lesson we can gain from the podcast was to be positive :D shame that the dude near the back of the room refused to be positive and was adament that you can still achieve things with a negative attitude.... i truly believe that if he was a bit more positive he would achieve more.. but that's just me! i dont' even know if he wants to achieve anything... maybe i should leave the poor guy alone and just work on my own positivity :D
tchuss!

Week 2 of SAD - a Belated Reflection

So I've gotten behind with my blogs already. I think its creating a new habit that's the reason... we'll get there!

So week two was entitled The Context of Systems Analysis and Design. We went over the SDLC which we covered and memorised in great detail in first year. In fact the whole topic rather reminded me of IT in Organizations, a first semester of first year subject. It was one of my better subjects so I'm feeling a bit more confident about SAD.

I thoroughly enjoyed the tutorial as I got to draw pretty pictures on the whiteboard (there's a supressed artist under this nerdy exterior!) and it seems I will be the designated drawer each time we do analysis of a system. This time we were analysing the consumer element of the "food chain" system. Our diagram covered the supermarkets selling the food products to the customer, the customer cooking them and doing a quality check, then the customer and their family eating the food again checking for quality, then the customer giving feedback to the supermarket and the standards board, then the standards board reporting back to the supermarket. The best bit was the excellent representation of all these steps - stick figures, facial expressions, kitchens and supermarket checkouts... quality.

Week 1 of SAD

FIT2001 - Systems Analysis and Design - SAD. A catchy name! Much like POD.. who came up with it first though? Apple or Peter? The questions one asks after the first lecture of SAD...
I found POD to be a very engaging lecturer, i was laughing a fair bit and paying attention for almost the whole time. The subject itself seems difficult, but it will be easy to keep up with because of the delivery. It will also be good to learn because of its relevance to my work, i can see what we learn in action around me.
I found out that a work mate of mine - a project manager, who was at uni a good 16 years ago also had POD as a lecturer, and also one of her friends had him for their masters. Renowned for being entertaining I hear. I really appreciate the effort and I think it will make a big difference to my achievements in SAD.
I'm looking forward to this one!

-Alex