【计算机专业文献翻译】信息系统分析

附录二

Information Systems Analysis and Design

This class reconstructs the classical computer science topics of "systems analysis and design" -- mapping information flows and data modeling -- within a framework derived from industrial design. Compared with the traditional approach, our focus of attention will shift from systems to services, mainframes to networks, the desktop to the street, organizational workplaces to institutionally organized relationships, cognition to physical activity, and individual users to communities of practice. The class will be organized around presentations by interdisciplinary teams, with minimal lecturing and written work. We will attend closely to the design process, and the teams' own experiences will become raw material for their projects.

Two books are required: David G. Messerschmitt, Networked Applications: A Guide to the New Computing Infrastructure, Morgan Kaufman, 1999. This is an outstanding plain-language introduction to the structure of modern information systems.

Donald A. Norman, The Invisible Computer, MIT Press, 1999. This is a polemic against the personal computer and in favor of a new generation of diverse and specialized computing devices.

Another book is recommended:

Jeffrey L. Whitten and Lonnie D. Bentley, Systems Analysis and Design Methods, fourth edition, Irwin McGraw-Hill, 1998. This is a thorough introduction to the conventional practice of systems analysis and design. If you are going to work with people who have the conventional training then it will be useful reference book. But as I say, I regard this material as out-of-date.

Here are summaries of the group projects from week to week: Assignment for week 2: Team-Building Exercise.Everyone writes down their skill set and gets copies of everyone else's. Class members then form themselves into teams. Each team's members discuss their past and future, and how they complement one another. They draw a diagram that gives clear form to the conclusions they have reached, and they design a presentation around it.

Assignment for week 3: Seeing information happen. Each team gets a distinct assignment, all of which involve going out in the world and watching information happen. Bring back what you've observed and show us. If you use what you've learned in other classes about information seeking then that's great. But we really want you to be observant and name things, and learn how to show what you've seen in a way that changes how other people see the world.

Assignment for week 4: Growth of the technology.Each team again gets a distinct assignment, this time involving library work on the state of information technology ten years from now. Because of Moore's Law and related phenomena, we can predict reasonably well the quantitative properties of computing. Processors, for example, will be 100 times faster. What about mass storage, memory chips, wireline and wireless bandwidths, penetration rates of the technologies both domestically and globally, and so on? What important standards will be widely deployed by then? Show us what you've found.

Assignment for week 5: Layering.Building on last week, we will do an exercise about the concept of a platform: a service upon which a diversity of other services can be built. The hard part is figuring out what belongs in the generic service, and what the interface should look like between the platform and the services that are built on it. This is going to be a central concept for design in the future. By this time we will have discussed several examples of platforms.

Assignment for week 6: Show us your collaboration patterns.All the while you've been documenting your team's work process. This might mean keeping notes,