Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Speaking as an undergraduate, _Systems Analysis and Design in a Changing World_ is not an easy read, and I found some parts (e.g., OO statechart diagrams) almost inaccessible despite my persistent and conscientious efforts to grasp the material given my little but solid background in OO programming. The authors know their field well, and it is evident they put much effort into writing this book. Yet the model-making approach they presented (notably in chapters 5, 6, 7, and 9) obscured rather than improved my understanding of software development. Perhaps I tend to be averse to graphical models of this kind. In any case, a good introductory object-oriented programming textbook covering Java or C++ is a better place to start to learn these ideas because without actually implementing program code, the models seem like "floating" abstractions.
I have two recommendations to the authors that might improve the average student's ability to understand the content, especially the treatment on modeling:
1. Make the writing style less academic and more conversational. A good example of an accessible and engaging presentation of otherwise "mundane" content is David Kelley's _The Art of Reasoning_ (I know it's a book on informal logic and not systems analysis and design, but there are many parallels between the subjects).
2. After a new concept is introduced, immediately provide exercises *with* ideal solutions at the back of the book. There are no solutions in this textbook and no student solution manual is available. Most students need to start out with many easy but progressively more challenging problems and build on that foundation in order to gain confidence in the discipline. Again, see the "Practice Quizzes" in David Kelley's _The Art of Reasoning_ as an example of a textbook that helps the student comprehend the material. After every significant section, Kelley includes many small exercises (with solutions) in order to test the student's understanding of the concepts or principles and to ensure the student has thoroughly absorbed the information before moving on to more complex knowledge. I stress that I am not recommending that the content be "dumbed down." What I am saying is that since systems analysis and design is difficult and requires much practice to master, it is the job of the teacher to build a bridge between the challenging but potentially graspable ideas and the students who fall short of brilliant. In other words, this book is in desperate need of many smaller, easier problems that progressively build up to the kind of arduous case studies that *are* included at the end of the chapters.
This is a good book if you have the aptitude and appetite for graphical model-making and some experience in programming. Yet I highly suspect there are better books out there on this topic for introductory students.
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SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND DESIGN IN A CHANGING WORLD teaches the conceptual technical and managerial foundations for systems analysis design and implementation, as well as project management principles for systems development projects. The fifth edition continues the book's popular format of teaching both approaches to systems analysis and design: the traditional (structured) and the object-oriented (OO). This new edition offers expanded coverage of the object-oriented approach to design in two newly formed chapters, with Chapter 11 concentrating on principles and Chapter 12 covering use case realizations in depth. New and enhanced coverage of project management also teaches important issues related to adaptive projects as well as the traditional predictive approach to projects. Added perspective is provided for students via the running case studies and "Best Practices" feature.
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