A Professional's Guide to Systems Analysis

This book is intended as a reference work for beginning systems analyst. It provides an overview of the topics, and concepts and a survey of the tools and techniques that an analyst should be familiar with. The treatment of any given topic is by necessity rather shallow, but hopefully the coverage is broad enough so that the reader will gain an understanding of and an appreciation of the activities involved in systems analysis.

A Complete introduction to the tools and techniques real businesses need to improve real systems The new edition of this best-selling guide offers you a solid introduction to the concepts, tools, and techniques required for systems analysis in the real-word workplace. Extensively updated, the book now addresses the changes created by distributed computing, client/server systems, reengineering, and other trends affecting systems analysis today. Written in a nontechnical, jargon free style, this practical reference tool will take you through project life cycle, project planning, the data dictionary, data analysis, controls and auditing, security analysis, and much more. The Second Edition features: Detailed coverage of all major system types and the appropriate analysis methods; Entirely new chapters on the analysis phase of the life cycle, the effects of prior automation, and examining the results of the data gathering phase; Discussions of the impact of JAD, what-if games, rightsizing, distributed databasing, reuse models, operating system software, E-mail, GUIs, expert systems, LANs and WANs on the analysis process. The revised edition of this essential sourcebook also contains a wealth of new illustrations, examples, and case studies that reflect the latest business environments.