BUS 465 (3)- Business Systems Development

COURSE: BUS 465 (3 units) INSTRUCTOR: Dr. Amin Milani Fard

Location: SFU - Burnaby campus E-MAIL: milanifard@sfu.ca

Does Digital Technology excite you? Do you see it disrupting the business domain you want to specialize in (MIS, Finance, Operations, Marketing, Accounting, Entrepreneurship & HR)? Are you interested in learning how to digitize business processes using software? Many BBA graduates, irrespective of their specializations, are entering the technology sector workforce after their graduation. However, graduates trained in both business disciplines and having technical skills are best positioned to become successful in technology careers. This course fills an important gap by enhancing technical skills and comfort with business software projects.

Students in this course will be trained in:

• Developing business software applications

• Assessing business requirements for software

• Assessing the quality of business software applications

• Learning to collaborate on business software development

Learning Objectives

This course will deliver skills in development of applications for Internet-enabled businesses. Most business processes are now supported or transformed using software technology, which is developed and implemented by teams of business and systems analysts and systems developers. A critical stage of Information Systems (IS) development is to create software prototypes of business applications, and to test them before using them in real time business processes. Software prototypes allow IS professionals to test the feasibility of their system design ideas. Creating business software prototypes also develops critical thinking skills that lead to better design of the software itself, and the processes that it will support.

Students completing this course should be able to:

• Develop business software applications

• Assess business requirements and the quality of the software

• Collaborate successfully on business software development

• Implement a simple web application using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PhP, and MySQL

Prerequisites:

60 units. Recommend BUS 362/464/CMPT 354

Textbooks

Slides and notes provided by the instructor should be sufficient for students to learn fundamentals, however, the following books are recommended:

• A. Dennis, B. H. Wixom, R. M. Roth, Systems Analysis and Design - Wiley

• J. N. Robbins. Learning Web Design: A Beginner's Guide to HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Web Graphics - O'Reilly Media

• L. Welling, L. Thomson, PHP and MySQL Web Development - Addison-Wesley

• R. Nixon, Learning PHP, MySQL & JavaScript - O'Reilly Media

• E. Matthes, Python Crash Course: A Hands-On, Project-Based Introduction to Programming

• D. Crockford, JavaScript: The Good Parts - O'Reilly Media / Yahoo Press

Evaluation

The course is conducted as a workshop. Students are expected to build a software prototype based on their preliminary analysis of a set of functional requirements for a business application. Ideally, this preliminary analysis will be the one they focused on in their Term Project report in BUS 362, or its variation. This conceptual analysis essentially defines the software functionality of the working prototype. The course will assume a basic IT platform including machines equipped with an operating system, a diagram design tool, a web browser, a text editor (e.g. Sublime or Notepad++), PhP, MySQL, and a web server. The course will train students to install this environment on their personal machines. Each week’s workshop will commence with a discussion of the software programming constructs that can be used to convert some part of their Conceptual Analysis as a software component. The final deliverable of the course is a working prototype. Assessment will be done based on the various dimensions of the quality of the software defined by the instructor at the beginning of the course. Some quality criteria include correctness of system analysis and design, matching between the design and the implementation, and correctness of the developed prototype.

Course components are as follows:

Lab assignments 20%

Midterm exam 20%

Final exam 30%

Group Project 30%

Weekly Topic coverage

1

• Software development methodologies

• Software analysis, use case, process modeling, and data modeling + Assignment 1

2

• System design, architecture, and intro to web and mobile apps

• System implementation, testing, code review, version control + Lab Assignment 2

3

• The Internet, World Wide Web, and web design

• HTML, elements, and forms + Lab Assignment 3

4

• CSS and HTML + Lab Assignment 4

5

• Midterm exam review

• Server-side development, Introduction to PHP (Not for the midterm) + Lab Assignment 5

6

• Midterm exam

• Introduction to PHP programming + Lab Assignment 6

7

• Using MySQL database in web design + Lab Assignment 7

8

• Developing a PHP web application + Lab Assignment 8

9

• Introduction to JavaScript programming + Lab Assignment 9

10

• Practicing JavaScript, MySQL, and PHP + Lab Assignment 10

11

• Ajax and dynamic pages + final exam quick review + Lab Assignment 11

12

• Introduction to cloud-based deployment

• Introduction to NoSQL

• Introduction to Python (time permitting, but not for the exam)

13

• Team project presentations