Course: ISEB Systems Development Essentials - 3 days

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

Systems Development Essentials explores the fundamental differences between object-oriented and structured systems development. It 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 basic systems analysis course.

Systems Development Essentials 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.

This course prepares candidates to sit the examination for the ISEB Certificate in Systems Development Essentials. This involves a one-hour, open book examination that may be taken at the end of the course or at a public examination session.

The exam fee is included within the course price.

The certificate in Systems Development Essentials is a core module for the ISEB Diploma in Systems Development and a specialist module for the ISEB Diploma in Business Analysis .

Roles in systems development
The purpose, objectives and tasks of systems development
Roles and actors in systems development
Technical and interpersonal skills of the analysts
The emergence of skills frameworks (SFIA+)
The Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI)

Systems architecture
Enterprise, systems and infrastructure levels of architecture
The Zachman Framework
Inputs at an enterprise level (EAP)
Inputs at system and infrastructure level
Components of an EAP methodology

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 systems development

Systems development lifecycles
Waterfall model
V model
Incremental model
Spiral model
Advantages and disadvantages of each approach
Selection of an appropriate approach

Methodologies
Traditional and structured approaches
Agile Development / Rapid Application Development / eXtreme Programming
The Unified Process (UP) and the Unified Modeling Language (UML)
Models of the UML
Interpretation of
Use case diagram
Use case description
Class diagram
Sequence diagram
Phases of the Unified Process
Workflows of the Unified Process

Systems Investigation
Fact finding approaches:
Workshops
Prototyping
Interviewing
Questionnaires
Scenario analysis
Other approaches
Functional requirements definition
Non-functional requirements definition
Documenting requirements
Human aspects of systems investigation and introducing change

Systems design, implementation and maintenance
Aspects of the production environment
Design principles and constraints (legal, ethical, financial)
The tasks of implementation
Sign off and hand over
Post-implementation reviews
Different types of maintenance

Quality Assurance
Definitions of software quality
The V model
Requirements-driven testing
Static Testing: types of walkthrough and inspection
Post-project reviews
Service Level Agreements

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