Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 4th Edition

PREFACE

PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK

Systems Analysis and Design (SAD) is an exciting, active field in which analysts continually learn new techniques and approaches to develop systems more effectively and efficiently. However there is a core set of skills that all analysts need to know—no matter what approach or methodology is used. All information systems projects move through the four phases of planning, analysis, design, and implementation; all projects require analysts to gather requirements, model the business needs, and create blueprints for how the system should be built; and all projects require an understanding of organizational behavior concepts like change management and team building. Today, the cost of developing modern software is composed primarily of the cost associated with the developers themselves and not the computers. As such, object-oriented approaches to developing information systems hold much promise in controlling these costs.

Today, the most exciting change to systems analysis and design is the move to object-oriented techniques, which view a system as a collection of self-contained objects that have both data and processes. This change has been accelerated through the creation of the Unified Modeling Language (UML). UML provides a common vocabulary of object-oriented terms and diagramming techniques that is rich enough to model any systems development project from analysis through implementation.

This book captures the dynamic aspects of the field by keeping ...