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College of Business

BA378 Syllabus

Spring 2006

BA378 Group Assignments
Each Group is responsible for two major assignments: Balancing the demands of these two assignments, managing the workload of various team members, and ensuring a quality result is difficult. But, it is just the kind of experience you will have when working on Information System projects. These experiences are highly reccomended for students by accounting firms.

Deliverables

Due Date Topic Points AIS Points Assignment
 Thursday, April 6   RequiredGroup member list with topic preferences
 Thursday, April 13   Required Initial work plan
 Thursday, April 20   50 AIS1
 Thursday, April 27   * Individual UML diagram
 Thursday, May 4   75 AIS2
  50 AIS3
 Thursday, May 11 Required   Topic draft
 Thursday, May 18   50 AIS4
  50 AIS5
  50 AIS6
 Thursday, May 25   RequiredGroup Member Evaluations
 Tuesday, June 6   175AIS7 (Final Draft of AIS)
 May 25 - June 1 110  Topic Presentation
 June 1 - June 8 140  Topic Report
Due one week after your presentation.
Total 250
10% of course		 500
20% of course		 Late Deliverables

* Individual UML diagram is graded pass/fail for effort. Failing to turn it in will reduce your final course grade by 2%.

When preparing your final project and your topic report, please review these pointers.

Group members list with topic preferences:

Please review the list of available topics.
Send in an email listing:
  - Your team members (last name, first name) with their email addresses
  - A first, second, third, and fourth choice for a presentation topic
Email this to the instructor by Thursday April 6
Get your selection in early: first come, first served.

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Initial Work Plan


The group work required in this class is extensive. It is everyone's responsibility to ensure that group work is well done and turned in on time.
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Business Documents

A few things to keep in mind:
  • Format requirements:

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    AIS1

    From Chapter 2, Jones and Rama, page 57-58, complete all 4 questions (DB2.1, DB2.2, DB2.3, and DB2.4).
    This part asks you to create a business scenario and describe a business process. Grading Criteria (out of 50 pts):
    1) How good is the writing? (20)
    2) Is the scenario reasonable? (10)
    3) Do the process descriptions (DB2.2, 3, & 4) contain enough material to relate to several important AIS concepts? (10)
    4) Does the tables reflect good analysis? (10)

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    AIS2

    From Chapter 3, Jones and Rama, page 102, complete all 4 questions. Turn in DB3.1, DB3.3, and DB3.4. This part asks you to create UML Activity diagrams for the business processes. Please create at least two detail diagrams in addition to the overview diagram.
    Each student is to attempt questions DB3.1 and DB3.2 for themselves first before you meet as a group to hammer out an answer.
    The AIS1 narratives are bound to be inadequate so each student will need to make some assumptions. Hopefully, you will have different ideas which are resolved in a collaborative process. Previously submitted individual student diagrams are graded only as pass/fail with any reasonable attempt receiving a pass. Failing will result in a 2% reduction in the student’s final course grade.
    At this point you should begin preparing your draft revisions. As you do each new part of the project, you will need to go back and expand or change the previous documents. In your "draft revisions" document, write a brief paragraph describing the needed changes and include the relevant portions of the updated documents.
    Grading Criteria (out of 75 pts):
    1) Annotated copy of the narrative from DB2.2 (15)
    2) Overview Activity Diagram (30)
    3) Detailed Activity Diagrams (30)
    Diagrams are scored for: Presentation (1/4), Correctness (1/2), Relevance to AIS (1/4)

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    AIS3

    From Chapter 4, Jones and Rama, page 151, complete all 5 questions.
    This part asks you to consider controls and risks for your AIS.
    Revise AIS1 and AIS2 as appropriate. If you have created a scenario or selected a process which does not significantly involve controls, you will likely get a poor overall grade unless you adapt your scenario now.
    Grading Criteria (50 pts): 10 for each question, analysis quality (6) and writing (4)

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    AIS4

    From Chapter 5, Jones and Rama, page 199, complete both questions.
    This part asks you to create a class diagram. Identify the appropriate primary keys and relationships. Write up a narrative description telling how those relationships relate to accounting controls (one or more paragraphs as needed).
    AIS4, AIS5, and AIS6 are all turned in toegether because they are closely related. However, I encourage you to prepare AIS4 in advance and show me and advance copy. A few project teams are likely to expereince difficulties as they attempt to create an appropriate set of tables. If the table structure is not correct, it will be very difficult to prepare high-quality reports and forms in AIS5 and AIS6.
    Grading Criteria (50 pts):
    - UML Diagram (20),
    - Entities/Attribute list(20), and
    - write up quality (10).
    For the diagrams and tables I will consider
    - accuracy (did you sensibly and consistently organize the items),
    - coverage (have you included enough entities to meet the needs of the system), and
    - completeness (have all the needed attributes).
    For the write up, I will consider analysis quality (2/3) and writing quality (1/3).

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    AIS5

    From Chapter 6, Jones and Rama, page 258, complete all questions. Design exemplary reports.
    Grading Criteria (50 pts): I will consider conceptual understanding (did you correctly understand the types of reports 1/3), completeness (do your reports include the right data 1/3), and formatting (professional and well-organized 1/3).

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    AIS6

    From Chapter 7, Jones and Rama, page 306, all questions: DB7.1 - DB7.4.
    DB7.1 - DB7.3 should be straight forward. Don't list more than 10 forms in any case. And less may well be fine if your whole project is covered. This portion of the assignment requires relatively little work per form. Please note that DB7.2 requests a use case diagram not a use case description.

    For DB7.4 please choose only enough forms to meet the following: Please note that DB7.4 (unlike DB7.2) requires use case descriptions. Thus panels B,C, and D from Key Point 7.3 pg 266 should be provided in addition to a form layout.

    I don't think you should have any problems meeting these minimums. Naturally I hope you choose the more interesting (from a data and control perspective) parts of your system.
    I want you to demonstrate understanding and explore the material. I do not want you to spend hours pondering the details of every last part of your system.

    HINT: A form is a computer screen, not a printed document. Be sure and include command buttons, pulldown boxes, radio buttons etc. as appropriate in your form layout.

    Grading Criteria: (50 pts):
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    Final Draft Packaging

    The AIS project has four main parts: the narrative; the UML activity diagrams; the data, form, and report designs; and the final packaging. The final packaging requirements are extensive. Consistency between deliverables is an important grading criterion.

    Draft Revision Log: As you do the various exercises, expand and/or change the original scenario narrative and process descriptions. This is a way to help your team apply the concepts from class and to expose you to the system documentation process. A thoughtful and systematic draft revision log will enhance your learning as well as your grade. A good project will demonstrate many of the principles covered in the course. Don’t get caught saying "Our scenario didn’t involve any of that." Be positive, you chose your scenario and you can change it.
    1) Write an executive summary for your report.
    Executive summary means a one-page maximum description of the report. Pack in pertinent details where possible. The idea is that this one short section captures the essence of the project. A reader could read just this to learn the most important information and decide if the rest is worth reading. Here is an example:
    This report presents our design of the sales support process which is part of the revenue transaction cycle for Dunavant of California. Our narrative and diagrams break the process into 11 events which help Dunavant execute and monitor the delivery and hedging of cotton sales. Several control steps protect the company from inaccurate position information which could potentially cause significant losses. For example, the position report is monitored daily and a numeric sequence is used to avoid misplaced sales information. Sales and position data stores are needed to support the process. Our UML Class diagram lists the tables and attributes. The matching of sales to tradable futures is a key feature of the data design. Each sale is assigned a growth attribute and the delivery months are kept first in the sale and later in the booking files to support matching to appropriate cotton contracts on the futures market. Our use case diagram and the supporting reports and form documentation emphasize the key user interactions with the system. Notably, sales and trade entry forms include look ups, defaults, and range input controls to increase the accuracy of data entry. Our change log notes eight changes made to previous documents, providing insight into the development process. It includes our addition of the commercial invoice to the system description. This modification of the original project scope was important in providing a complete picture of the control environment. We learned a lot about business process modeling and would want to improve on our delegation and record keeping skills if asked to go through such an exercise again.

    2) Create a table of contents.

    3) Write a 1-2 page summary of the work you did. Include comments on the controls embedded in your system and key evaluation points to be considered in governing the information system you describe.
    This will certainly repeat information from the executive summary.
    4) Include a final revised version of all parts. (Do not include the individual UML diagrams or your original work plan).

    5) Include your draft revision log.

    6) Write a 2-3 page summary of the lessons you learned while doing this project. Be honest about things you could improve or could have done better.
    Even if only one of you learned something, you can put it in.

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    Group Member Evaluations:

    Being a good group member is important!
    Each group member is to complete 2 team member surveys: one after completing AIS4, and one at the end of the term. Each team member is to create their own survey labeled with their name and group name. Describe, in one sentence, the contribution of each group member (including yourself). Also, rank each member's contribution as: Failing to complete a required group member evaluation will result in a deduction of 2% against your final course grade. These confidential surveys will only be considered in the unlikely event that a team has a serious problem. I reserve the right to assign lower individual grades to under-performing students.
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    Late Deliverables

    Occasionally projects run late. A small amount of lateness can be overlooked (one class session at most) if 1) You tell me in advance you are running behind (keep me in the loop), 2) you have a good explanation, and 3) if you only turn in one or two parts late. Otherwise, you will be penalized 10% per week. Individual assignments for Part 2 will not be accepted late.
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    Topic Presentation Hints

    In addition to completing the "Build your own AIS" project, each group is asked to prepare a presentation and a paper on an important technology topic. As your career progresses you will need to learn about and talk about new technologies. Here's your chance to practice!

    Topic Draft

    The topic presentations are an important part of our course materials. To ensure the needed content will be presented, a draft topic paper is due a couple of weeks before the first presentation. Please see the course schedule. It should include:

    Topic Report Formatting


    Topic Descriptions

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    This page is maintained by Byron Marshall. Send E-mail to     (byron.marshall@bus.oregonstate.edu)