FIT2001 week 1: beware gorillas!
This week has been learning about what a Systems Analyst is, how to think about systems, and to be very aware of gorillas.
Gorillas?
There is a problem with simply asking how the company wants you to solve their problem, or even what they think the problem is. It’s called situational blindness, and it means that people see what they want to see. When we design systems to solve problems, we need to be very careful that we observe how the company works, what the actual problem is, and the best way to solve it. It’s good to take input from the client, but we still need to be aware that they might be suggesting something that won’t actually fix the real problem they have. You’ll have to watch the lecture 1 from Caulfield to work out what I mean about the gorillas.
An analyst doesn’t need to be an expert in every kind of technology, but it helps to be aware of what is out there. The most important skill an analyst has is observation, and then using those observations to solve problems. It’s good to develop a few solutions to be able to pick the best one to solve the problem.
In the tutorial, we started to play with analysing a system. I remember getting frustrated with this exercise last year, but this year it has been easier to generalise the system into an object oriented sort of system. We were assigned the water system, at Clayton we are looking at the super system as well as the different parts of each system. I think we might get some more practical experience looking at a specific part of the system in more detail, but looking at the overview makes sense also. It has been good to look at the Characteristics, State, and Actions/Activities of each object in the system. I’m looking forward to next week to see how we can do better at analysing the system.
As a side note, using Google Docs was a great way for all of us in the group to collaboratively develop the document as we went, instead of having a “secretary”.
I must admit that the 2 hour slab of lecture is difficult for me. I find the Caulfield lectures fun to listen to, but after 1 hour I get restless and wonder if I could be using my homework time more efficiently. The Clayton lecture explained things a bit differently, and since POD is the head examiner I reckon it’s important to get the Caulfield perspective as well. I’ll be listening to the mp3s, maybe when I’m transiting. I’ve had success in the past of speeding up recorded lectures to 1.5x speed, (2x is often garbled) to get through the recordings in 2/3rds of the time, we’ll see how this goes.
The Quiz
I found the quiz very easy, I got a lot of the questions right without having to review the material. I was stuck in programmer mode however when I said false to “system construction is the last system development life cycle” – it is true that there is maintenance and testing needing to be done afterwards, but those processes involve a different life cycle and often a different part of the company. (Probably because I’m doing Project Management (FIT3086) this year also.)
Case stands for Computer-aided system engineering.
ERP is Enterprise Resource Planning, where a company commits to a set of software packages to deal with their systems of information.
I also found it amusing that there was an odd thumbs down icon in the quiz- I think it’s because the question was A/n (for A or An).
I like turtles
Great post – thanks for blogging. I also find 1.5x is OK, and 2x too fast. I used to do the building of the video (with slides) manually and listened to myself at 1.5 to get it done. It does kind of work.
Great to have you back in 2001!, looking forward to reading your blog all semester.
POD
One thing I found when listening to online lectures (having done a lot of Open Uni I know this), there are a few strategies in surviving watching lectures at home:
1. You gotta pay attention, you can’t multitask otherwise your attention just drifts.
2. Take breaks, its natural your attention goes elsewhere after an hour, its why they have breaks on campus after an hour.
3. Take notes while your watching to keep your interest up high.
I don’t know if this is any good for you or not, I just found it worked for me