BCS - Systems Development Essentials

Curriculum

The Systems Development Essentials Certification covers the following topics:

• 1. System Development roles and responsibilities
• 1.1 Identify the Actors/Roles and Responsibilities within system development and implementation (for example, analysts, designers, developers, testers and technical architects)
• 1.2 Characteristics of these roles
• 1.3 Team structure
• 2. Architecture
• 2.1 Different levels of architecture – Enterprise, Business, Solution, Infrastructure (networks, databases)
• 2.2 Inputs at Enterprise level
• 2.3 Inputs at Solution and Infrastructure level
• 2.4 Impacts of design decisions
• 3. Systems Development Lifecycles
• 3.1 Waterfall
• 3.2 V Model
• 3.3 Incremental or phased delivery
• 3.4 Spiral or iterative
• 3.5 Advantages and disadvantages of each approach
• 3.6 Selection of an appropriate approach on defined characteristics
• 4. Development Practices
• 4.1 Bespoke development
• 4.2 Evolutionary / Agile
• 4.3 Prototyping
• 4.4 Component based development
• 4.5 Software Package solutions (COTS Commercial off-the-shelf)
• 5. Methods
• 5.1 Structure and content of a chosen representative method
• 5.2 Describe and interpret three representation models from the method, showing at least:
• Process perspective
• Data perspective
• Event perspective
• 5.3 Explain how these models can be used to depict the logical and physical aspects of a system
• 5.4 Roles and team structures within the chosen method
• 5.5 Products within a chosen method
• 6 Systems Investigation
• 6.1 Fact finding approaches:
• Workshops
• Prototyping
• Interviewing
• Questionnaires (for usability or package selection for example)
• Scenario analysis
• 6.2 Functional requirements definition
• 6.3 Non-functional requirements definition
• 6.4 Documenting system requirements
• 6.5 Human aspects of systems investigation and introducing change
• 7 System Design, Deployment and Maintenance
• 7.1 Controls and security
• 7.2 Verification and validation
• 7.3 Interface design
• 7.4 Design principles and constraints (legal, ethical, financial)
• 7.5 Different types of implementation
• 7.6 Sign off and deployment
• 7.7 Post implementation reviews
• 7.8 Different types of maintenance and support
• 8 Quality Assurance
• 8.1 Definitions of quality
• 8.2 Requirements driven testing
• 8.3 Types of walkthrough and inspection
• 8.4 Post Project Reviews
• 8.5 Service Level Agreements
• 9 CASE, CAST, Application Lifecycle Management tools
• 9.1 Software support for systems development
• 9.2 Features of CASE and CAST tools
• 9.3 Features of Application Lifecycle Management
• 9.4 Lifecycle coverage
• 9.5 Configuration and version control