The course is conducted in Chinese but uses English textbook。

Systems analysis and design (SA&D) deal with planning and managing the development of information systems through understanding and specifying what a system should do and how the components of the systems should be implemented. System analysts solve business problems by analyzing information systems' requirements and designing such systems by applying analysis and design techniques. This course deals with system analysts' concepts, skills, methodologies, techniques, tools, and perspectives.

This course covers critical concepts and tools for SA&D, including ‧ Introducing agile and plan-driven approaches for system development. ‧ Understanding key business opportunities via visioning and business-process modeling using UML activity diagrams. ‧ Deriving a domain model using entity-relationship diagrams. ‧ Introducing the creation of user stories and initial user interface modeling using mockups in the context of the stories. ‧ Understanding how to select project approaches. ‧ Exploring the issues of selecting a construction versus configuration approach. ‧ Explaining how to construct, manage, and evaluate construction iterations (springs) via burndown charts, retrospectives, and status reports.

This course emphasizes heavily on student participation. About 40% of the weekly course meeting time will be group-based in-class activities. Students must actively participate in these activities to gain hands-on experiences for essential concepts and tools. Students must also participate in a term project that includes the final presentations and submission of selected documents at the end of the semester.