1. Roles in systems development

• The 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+)

2. Systems architecture

• Enterprise, systems and infrastructure levels of architecture
• Inputs at an enterprise level
• Inputs at system and infrastructure level
• Impacts of design decisions

3. 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

4. Systems development lifecycles

• Waterfall model
• V model
• Incremental model
• Spiral model
• Advantages and disadvantages of each approach
• Selection of an appropriate approach

5. Methodologies

• Agile Development
• 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

6. 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

7. Systems design, implementation and maintenance

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

8. Quality Assurance

• Definitions of software quality
• Requirements-driven testing
• Types of walkthrough and inspection
• Post-project reviews
• Service Level Agreements

9. CASE tools

• Features
• Life-cycle coverage
• Requirements traceability
• Advantages and disadvantages