In this course, I had to learn firsthand one of the most important lessons in the IT world: Information Technology and Business are partners. Never mind the fact that businesses are so integral from the narrative of the world, but similar to how calculus and physics are twins, so too are IT and business. This course taught me more than just how to think from the perspective of systems approach and the SDLC (software development life cycle), but it gave me fresh perspective that everything in the IT world isn't just about knowing one particular aspect. In essence, becoming more well-rounded instead of specializing in only one area is far more valuable to companies, organizations, and in the workplace in general.

This course taught me how to flourish well in teams by communicating with the members of my team properly. I was the database and network team member of the group that had to give weekly deliverables based on my role. However, those roles did not stop me from staying engaged with other members of my group. For example, if someone in my group needed help with the website or the financials, I would contribute and lend my assistance to them. Systems analysis & design also taught me about scrum, agile development, deployment tactics, use cases, component diagrams, activity flow diagrams, CRUD, testing, training, and many other important higher learning business models. Our team project involved observing a specific business of our choice and developing a system that would be profitable to them. In our project we chose to work on a brick and mortar store known as Lawrence Pharmacy, located in Brooklyn, NY. My team and I quickly realized that Lawrence Pharmacy didn't have a web presence so we set certain goals of creating a website for them that would link to a database that could recognize customer login information. We modeled a POS (point of sale) system for Lawrence Pharmacy, which logs information into that database that links to their website. Additionally, in order to better ascertain the scope of what the primary stakeholder wanted- the manager- we developed interview questions that would be designed to have open-ended responses. The purpose of these questions was to truly magnetize the thoughts of the manager so that we could understand the depths of what he wanted done in the POS system. Our project used Square as the basis of our POS system and the design for it was tailored on usability so that even employees with little experience could intuitively use the tablets and registers that would host this POS system.

Overall, this course was incredibly important in opening my eyes to exactly what I should be expecting from the workplace. It's all about teamwork, communication, time management, and hard work. I can say confidently that I am far more marketable now than I've even been before. I just didn't understand what it took and I didn't have the correct mindset to be in this field. That's no longer the case because I've adopted a far more successful mindset.