CS4351 - Winter 1999
Management of Information Systems Methodologies
Instructors:
Mike
McCracken - mike@cc.gatech.edu,
Temporarily relocated to 205 CoC, (404) 894-6172
Allison Elliott Tew - allison@cc.gatech.edu, 113 CoC
Teaching Assistants
Idris Hsi - idris@cc.gatech.edu
Aparna Pappu - aparna@cc.gatech.edu
Office Hours by appointment
Contents
Course Objectives
Students will:
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Develop skills in designing information systems using a subset of the available
techniques and methods currently in practice, including the ability to
select the appropriate technique/method for a particular application type.
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Develop group interaction skills including effective communication skills.
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Develop project planning and management skills at the level of managing
a small group project.
-
Develop general software engineering skills at the level of producing correct
and complete artifacts for a small project.
Rules of the Road
Unexcused absences from the mid-term, or final, and not showing up for
the project presentations will result in an F for the course.
The other rule is have a good time. If you aren't having
a good time with this class, I suggest you look for another career.
Lecture Schedule and Project Deliverables
Evaluation Criteria
Basic Breakdown
-
(10%) A mid-term exam, that will cover the first half of the course
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(15%) A final exam, that will cover the total course.
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(75%) The project. This evaluation will include your contributions
to the projects, your knowledge gained through the projects, and your ability
to convey those results and knowledge
Deliverables
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Project Reports : Three project reports are required to be produced
for the project. The project reports are the main basis of evaluation
of the projects. The reports cover requirements, design, and a description
of the prototype. The students have to describe the process that
they apply in each phase of their project assignment as well as the actual
product of that phase.
-
Presentations : A formal presentation at the midpoint and completion
of the project will be given by each group and graded by the instructors.
The grade given on the presentation will be based on the ability
to effectively convey the results obtained from their work and on the content
of the presentation itself.
-
Student evaluation by team members : Individual students are asked
to evaluate the contributions of their team mates at the completion of
each project phase. The evaluation is used to adjust the individual
grades of a student who is not contributing to the project.
-
Examinations : Two examinations will be held over the quarter; the
midterm counts as 10% of the grade and a comprehensive final exam
counts as 15% of the course grade.
Project Grading
The grading
criteria has been established by the instructors for each milestone.
The criteria is used to establish the minimum requirements for the project
document for each phase of the project. The graded documents will
be returned to the students at the next class meeting.
The document that the team turns in is required
to include refinements made to the previous part of the project, and the
team is expected to correct any errors noted by the instructors.
Although not much credit is specifically assigned to this refinement, ignoring
the corrections is penalized heavily due to the project's nature of building
on previous work.
Examinations
The examinations test the students on concepts and understanding
of fundamental principles rather than regurgitation of facts given in the
text book. The exams are open book and open-notes, as the emphasis
is on analysis of a problem and less on the student's retention.
The questions are designed so that a student who has done a fair share
of work in the project and has understood the process will do well on the
examination. A typical question on the exam describes a problem scenario
and asks the student to present and validate a possible solution.
While the questions are not classified as either simple or difficult, they
are definitely intended to be thought-provoking.
Project Description
Summary
To develop an on-line specialty bookstore for an antique dealer
Customer
David Rago Auctions, Inc.
Submit questions for the customer to Mike McCracken (mike@cc.gatech.edu)
who will gather the information for you.
Overall Goals of the System
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Complete catalog of approved books
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Allow users to browse the catalog and order books
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Provide link to book reviews, excerpts, etc.
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Owners of the system will use it for order entry and inventory control
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Owners should be able to do basic statistical analysis against demographic
data
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System should have an off-line, batch version that would allow them to
use the system to sell books at shows
Notes
This project description is meant only as a basic introduction to the type
of system you are developing. It is in no way intended to be a complete
outline of everything that should be considered in order to succeed.
As a start the areas that you should be investigating to gather information
for this project include: electronic commerce, domain of bookstores, and
basic statistical analysis.
Business Practices of Rago
Rago uses two catalogs to publish information about the books they have
as well as how to order etc. Here is a Microsoft word version on their catalog. Each book is associated with a unique identifier
(of type A 54 - where A may represent Architecture and 54 is the number
associated with that Architecture book). You are given a phone number as
well as address to use to contact Rago in order to make a purchase.The
sales model at Rago has five different transaction types currently supported.
Each type is described below.
-
Telephone - whereby you simple pick up the phone and give them the required
information about the book and your payment type is your credit card
-
Mail - whereby book information is sent either via mail or on the phone
but the payment is mailed in the form of a cheque or money order
-
Email - here the book information is sent via email and payment is done
via a credit card but you may or may not choose to send credit card info
in the email (due to security reasons) - choosing to call them instead
to convey your credit card number.
-
Direct purchase - where you actually go in person to the shop and complete
the transaction either by cheque or credit card or cash
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Book Fairs/ Exhibitions - here the company lugs some number of books to
a fair and sells them there. They will accept credit card, cheques
or cash. If the book is not available they accept an order and will either
encash your cheque or complete the credit card transaction only after they
have shipped it to you.
To the above you will have to support sales via the web. In addition to
the web you will have to support existing practises and interface them
to your system somehow. At a book fair assume that you have no access to
the internet and therefore will have to batch these orders and download
them to your system at a later point in order to update inventory,
update account information, create back order forms etc, authenticate their
credit card information etc etc - its like batch processing basically.
Any questions? Bring them to the PBL sessions or seek an appointment
with Mike.