COIT20251 | Assessment 1 | Information Technology

Objective

• Understand the core competences of a Business Analyst
• Understand the skills that should be developed
• Identify the need for external and internal environment analysis
• Explore tools and techniques for requirements elicitation and reporting

Learning outcomes Assessed

• Devise an appropriate and comprehensive knowledge audit plan to support business analysis requirements.
• Use appropriate modelling tools to interpret and analyse the business context for enterprise systems.
• Critically review approaches to the implementation of enterprise systems within an organisation and any issues that may arise.
• Appraise the ethical and professional issues relevant to a business analyst.

This assessment task is also designed to assess your ability to develop the required graduate attributes of knowledge, communication skills, cognitive skills, research, self-management, and ethical and professional responsibility, stipulated in the unit profile. Therefore, you should

• reflect on the topics you read
• research and get additional readings as required
• rite clearly using correct grammar, structure, and formatting
• follow the requirements and submit in time
• avoid plagiarism

Assessment Task

Mahara keeps track of work each postgraduate student performs in various units within a postgraduate course. Upon graduation, a student can easily export all such assessment contents showcasing achievement work for future use.

In this assessment, you have to create an e-journal using a software tool named Mahara. You need to hit the Mahara printer image at bottom of your Mahara webpage to obtain a pdf file for submission and marking purposes.

From the related weekly sections provided in the unit Moodle website, complete readings in the weekly sections Week 1 and Week 2 for tasks 1, 2, 3 and 4, and Week 3 and Week 4 for topics 5, 6 and 7. Complete the readings suggested for these 7 tasks as outlined below, before developing your journal entry in each related week into your e-journal in Mahara. In your reading, you need to analyse the issues involved. Try to jot down key points when reading through a concept. Using your learned concepts, your prior knowledge and related work experience, write down what you have found as missing or doubtful in the topic discussions, e.g. which idea discussed in a specific topic reading was not OK or is currently weak that needs improvement in your opinion. You also write why, what and how you see it need to improve, when going through each reading.

                                                                                                                                      

1. The core competences (according to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK)) that a business analyst should have;
2. The critical skills that organisations need a business analyst to possess in order to successfully design and develop a new technology or for technological redevelopment;
3. The models that can be used for strategy formulation analysing the external and internal environment; and
4. Relationship between organisational strategy and knowledge audit plan.
5. Leadership and Team building skills required by a Business Analyst
6. Key processes involved in understanding the business context
7. Briefly describe the suitability and appropriateness of four of the investigation techniques in requirement elicitation.

Organisation of e-journal

Develop on ONE Mahara webpage (i.e. whatever directly visible will be marked). The single webpage must contain all your answers (as different entries) for 7 different topics.

Please NEVER attempt to use ‘Tab’s or ‘Hyperlink’s (not fit for marking). Organise your e-journal in a way that for each topic heading clearly presented, you present visible sub-headings as synopsis, reflection, and critique. For each sub-heading, you do as instructed below:

1. Synopsis: Here you provide a summary of each topic in journal entry.
2. Reflection: You display your deeper understanding of each of the topics. Please link the topics as they logically follow in the business analysis process. Compare and identify the differences. Show your in-depth understanding of each topic. Use examples or cases to explain your points further. Explain as logical-thinking discussions which you may or may not refer to your examples or cases.
3. Critique: Here you critically analyse the practical application of the knowledge and understanding that you have gained in the professional practice of a Business Analyst or yourself. Discuss what is lacking, what is not good enough, and ways to improve them. Explain why one or more things in a reading need to be questioned.

Assignment Submission

Having created your e-journals in Mahara within the word limit, you make it private to provide a secret URL, should it will requested during the marking process.

This assessment item must strictly follow the guidelines below.

• For this assessment item, you will initially prepare an e-journal with all needed journal entries (i.e. your answer to each task item is a journal entry) using the software tool Mahara.
• All contents of your e-journal must be produced on a single Mahara web page, i.e. surely without any use of tabs, embedded URL links and words/images with hyperlinks in all the entries. Any variations means your marker will only mark whatever he/she can see at the time of marking. All students are warned to avoid losing marks by not strictly following this guideline.
• To prepare work for submission, you hit the Printer (print) button located at the bottom on your Mahara web page, which will generate a PDF file for your submission.
• You need to upload this PDF file generated from your Mahara for your online submission.
• This assignment must be submitted by strictly following all guidelines above. Otherwise, you will receive a ZERO mark

A submission not as an expected PDF file having followed the guidelines above will be awarded a ZERO mark outright