Project Introduction
First thing you need to understand is, that in most cases, you're either analyzing or designing. The combination of the two can be overwhelming. I completed a project that started from idea and progressed to development.
Systems Analysis
The beginning of the project was brainstorming. What could we do that would be functional and useful? Also, practical? We came up with a simple parking application. You know, how to find and mange parking on a college campus. It wasn't that complicated, so it was prefect for learning how to use tools to properly and efficiently complete such a task. Tools like Microsoft Projects, Visio, Rational Rose, and more.
After digging through Projects I quickly discovered that it made a lot of since that some people's sole responsibility is project management. Considering all of the necessary time-tables, assets, resources, and personel, was challenging enough with our little project, I could only envision a team completing such tasks for a large-scale project.
Before too long I had something that resembled an efficient time-table laid out, and was ready to move forward with my design.
Systems Design
Whatever misgivings I had about Projects I soon realized were trivial to the dunting program we call Rational Rose.
If you've never seen the program, then you don't understand the truly massive levels that exist inside of it. What is it? Rational Rose is an object-oriented Unified Modeling Language (UML). Yes, that sounds complicated. Simply, it's a workbench with tools of all kinds, that deliver a visual platform, heavy enough for enterprise level software design.
And that's what we did. We moved through the process of designing our application. Everything was involved: ER diagrams, Use-case and Misuse-case scenarios, database generation, and forward code engineering. Forms and reports were produced, and to say that Actors were involved would be an understatement.
In the end, I got an A for the project, of course, and learned just how much I enjoy the development process. I can say, with complete absence of doubt, that it is not something I'd like to do by myself. I am all for the team.