THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
SCHOOL OF INFORMATION

LIS 387.5
SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION
R. E. Wyllys

Course Description, Fall 2002

SUMMARY

OBJECTIVES

• You will develop an understanding of the overall process of developing a system--the process known as the system-development cycle--and of the rôles of the analysis, design, production, implementation, and operation phases of that cycle.
• You will develop an understanding of the business-reengineering process and its similarities to and differences from the system-development cycle.
• You will become acquainted with a variety of techniques used in the development, evaluation, and reengineering of systems, and you will acquire an elementary level of skill in employing these techniques.
• You will develop an understanding of the importance of these techniques as tools for managers of libraries and other information systems.
• You will gain experience both in system development and in working as part of a team, through participation in one or more system teams, groups that work together to deal with portions of the system-development and business-reengineering processes.

COURSE FOCUS

The principal focus of the course is a project (sometimes more than one) consisting of a real-world problem facing a organization that is seeking assistance in achieving a solution to the problem. After acquiring a background in the methods of systems analysis and business-process improvement, students in the course form themselves into a team and work collaboratively, in cooperation with the organization in question, to analyze the problem in detail and develop recommendations for a solution. Thus the organization gains a recommended solution to its problem, and the students gain valuable, real-world experience in working as a team to investigate and solve a problem.

The class project is new and different each semester. It is usually determined shortly before the beginning of the semester, so that it will represent an up-to-date problem and challenge for the students in that semester. The course homepage, Guide to Course Materials for LIS 387.5, displays the topics of most of the course projects during the past decade, with hyperlinks to many of the reports.

TEXTS

• Hammer, Michael. Beyond Reengineering: How the Process-Centered Organization is Changing Our Work and Our Lives. New York, NY: HarperBusiness; 1997. 304 p. ISBN:0-88730-880-5.
• Harrington, H. James. Business Process Improvement: The Breakthrough Strategy for Total Quality, Productivity, and Competitiveness. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill; 1991. 274 p. ISBN:0-07-026768-5.

• Amelio, Gilbert F.; Simon, William L. On the Firing Line: My 500 Days at Apple. New York, NY: HarperBusiness; 1998. 298 p. ISBN:0-88730-918-6. [A personal view of one man's efforts to apply the ideas of business re-engineering at Apple Computer, Inc. Egocentric but informative.]
• Augustine, Norman; Adelman, Kenneth. Shakespeare in Charge: The Bard's Guide to Leading and Succeeding on the Business Stage. New York, NY: Hyperion; 1999. 219 p. ISBN:0-7868-6601-2. [Important principles of management, delightfully and meaningfully illustrated through references to plays by William Shakespeare.]
• Hammer, Michael. The Agenda: What Every Business Must Do to Dominate the Decade. New York, NY: Crown Business; 2001. 288 p. ISBN: 0-609-60966-1
  
• Hammer, Michael; Champy, James. Reengineering the Corporation. New York, NY: HarperBusiness; 1993. ISBN:0-88730-687-X.
• Harrington, H. James; Esseling, Erik K.; van Nimwegen, Harm. Business Process Improvement Workbook: Documentation, Analysis, Design, and Management of Business Process Improvement. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill; 1997. 314 p. ISBN0-07-026779-0.
• Mitroff, Ian. Smart Thinking for Crazy Times: The Art of Solving the Right Problems. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler; 1998. 169 p. ISBN:1-57675-020-5. [How to think about the right problems and avoid wasting time on the wrong problems.]
• Morris, Daniel C.; Brandon, Joel S. Re-Engineering Your Business. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill; 1993. 247 p. ISBN:0-07-043179-5.

Special Mention (not required, but strongly recommended)

• Deming, W. E. Out of the Crisis: Quality, Productivity and Competitive Position. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press; 1982. 507 p. ISBN:0-911379-01-0. [A classic presentation, by Dr. Deming himself, of his ideas on how to manage organizations so as to achieve high quality of goods and services and high levels of customer satisfaction. Published when the author was 82, this book is a culmination of his then 50+ years of the study and practice of statistical quality control and the management of quality. Following the book's publication, Deming spent another 10 years as an internationally renowned and active consultant on management.]
  

STUDENT PARTICIPATION

The course will include lectures by the instructor, but the primary emphasis will be on participation in systems-analysis and -design teams. You are expected to work, in small-group teams and individually, on parts of the overall project or projects for the class; to present interim and final oral and/or written reports on the tasks accomplished; and to share in the compiling, writing, editing, and production of the final report(s) on the project(s). Though the final report will be the product of the team as a whole, the responsibility of the individual team members for the various parts of the report must be made clear.

Your team's final report is to be provided in hard-copy form, in the form of a Microsoft Word document (a ".doc") file, and in the form of a single Portable Document Format (.pdf) file suitable for being posted on the World-Wide Web. The Portable Document Format file must contain all the material that the team feels is appropriate for its final report. This file must be edited and formatted so as to present an attractive, professional appearance and so as to present all materials, including spreadsheets, in portrait (not landscape) layout. The title-page of the report must include identification of the report as being a product of course LIS 387.5, in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, of The University of Texas at Austin. The preparation of this report in Portable Document Format form requires the use of Adobe Acrobat, copies of which are available for student use in the GSLIS Information Technology Laboratory. Please see Style Notes for Writing a Systems-Analysis Report for LIS 387.5 for further instructions on preparing your team's final report.

In order to facilitate communication among the students and between the students and the instructor, you must have an email account.

COURSE GRADE

All written and oral presentations will be graded not only on content but also on style. With respect to oral presentations, by style I mean the quality of your delivery, the quality of your organization of the material, and the appropriate use of handouts and visual aids. With respect to written work, by style I mean general appearance, spelling, sentence construction, and the quality of the organization of your material. Specifically, the grade for presentations will be derived from two component letter grades: one grade on the basis of the content, and a second grade on the basis of style. The overall grade for each presentation will be an adjusted average of these two component grades.

SCHEDULE AND LOCATION

In Fall 2002, the course will meet in SZB 464, 8:30 - 11:30 a.m. Tuesdays, with unique number 45920.

Go to Guide to Course Materials for LIS 387.5
Go to Course Discussion Board.
Go to Wyllys Course Epitomes Webpage.
Go to Wyllys Webpage.
Go to Wyllys Faculty Page.
Go to I-School Webpage.

Last revised 2002 Sep 2