Rating: 
Summary: You Can't Give No Stars ?
Review: How bad is this book, this book is so bad that I got so frustrated that I closed the book, created an Amazon account (Quite easy Amazon is not bad) just so I could voice my negitive opinion of the book.After reading this I have relized that Software Engineering should be called Software Buracracy, This book contains 704 pages of information that could be voiced in 100, the boring and long examples plus repitition makes this book an annoying book to read. You may be thinking it will be good for a reference book, alas I personly find it faster and more effective to use the internet as a reference then this extremly large and badly written book. Perhaps im unresonable but the price is a bit steep for firewood I hope this review helped you.
Rating:
Summary: A crummy book
Review: I agreed to teach Systems Analysis and accepted this text as it was the one already selected when I arrived on campus. Later I was told by the person who selected this text, "Your problem is that you believe what you read. I choose books to teach against." In other words, the person who originally selected this book thought that it was full of bunk and planned to use it as a foil for his wit and wisdom. Personally, I see no reason to force students to buy a book that you disagree with. Unfortunately, his assessment that the book is full of bunk is largely correct. If the book was mearly full of drivel it would be a better book than it is. Alas, it also overly long and confuses students. I would not recommend using this book. I will certainly never use it again.
Rating:
Summary: Let's try to be as unclear as possible
Review: I am currently a student in this author's class. The aforementioned book is one of the worst books I have ever had the misfortune of studying out of. This is not just a rant against this book. If you try to read it, it purposely makes simple concepts fuzzy and more cerebral than necessary. Why? The point of a book is to make difficult terms simpler to learn; instead this book just uses confusing language and unclear definitions to render the text useless. Many of the definitions in the book reiterate the same words in the concept being defined, and most of the students in his class think the book is more difficult to use than is helpful. The examples used to define concepts are horribly related. I cannot complain enough. It would be a sin to your students to force them to spend their valuable money on this book. As someone who works in the industry, I find it offensive when an instructor tries hard to make already difficult concepts even harder. What is the point of this book? If you are an instructor with self-esteem problems, or if you dislike giving opportunities to students to do well in your course, perhaps this is the book for you. But it should be known that any students who actually see through words like paradigm, synergy, methodology, and iteration, will know how deficient you really are. If you are someone hoping to learn on your own, stay away from this book. Save your money for something more worthwhile...
Rating: 
Summary: It's a Great Book for future IT Project Managers
Review: I have read the book, have been working out in the field for a little over a couple years now, and everything in the book is true. Looking over the reviews, it becomes very clear that their expectations were incorrect to begin with. Let me explain what you will not get:
-You will not get a book on Object Oriented programming. That's why there are java and .Net books out there.
-You will not get a database programming book. In short, you will get a book that deals with a number of issues that Systems Analysts deal with every day. Therefore, it deals with more 'soft skills', teaching one how to deal with IT problems from a technical manager's perspective. It's like a tool set for the analyst. In the end, it complements a technical book very well (since it fills in the holes left with a technical book.)
Rating:
Summary: For Systems Analysis of Object Oriented and Component-Based
Review: I have worked as a systems analysis and project manager for over 26 years with the last 15 working with object oriented techniques and component-based systems. When asked by systems engineers which book to recommend, I always recommended Ivar Jacobson's "Object-Oriented Software Engineering, A Use Case Driven Approach" but now I am recommending John W. Satzinger, Robert Jackson, Stephen D. Burd's "Systems Analysis and Design in a Changing World." When project managers facing object oriented projects asked, I recommended Steve McConnell's "Rapid Development, Taming Wild Software Schedules", now I am recommending "Systems Analysis and Design in a Changing World." My only concern in that the title does not represent the level of object oriented and component-based systems engineering with all of the supporting topics that systems analysts and project managers need to be successful that are addressed from a systems development perspective. The diagrams are the most accurate that I have found in any object oriented or component book of late. From a systems engineering perspective this is the first book that adequately covers the differences between traditional methods and object orient with component methods. Sections like "The Traditional Approach to Requirements" are followed by chapters like "The Object-Oriented Approach to Requirements." This also illustrates how this book would do well for seasoned systems analysts and project managers who are trying to cover the depth of what they now need to learn to make the transition to object oriented and component-based systems analysis and design. After all of the object oriented methods books written that claimed to be from a systems analysts perspective but contained coding examples it is refreshing to find one that contains business examples instead. "Systems Analysis and Design in a Changing World" is truly from a systems perspective. While some topics like knowledge management are not addressed directly, the material necessary to do the object oriented analysis and design work for deployments like data marts is indirectly addressed. In addition to my engineering degree, I have an MBA, "Systems Analysis and Design in a Changing World" contains many case studies that would fit well into a master's level course while providing the analysis and design support that makes the lessons learned from these stories accessible to all. Of late, I have been teaching a lot of graduate level courses (http://oorad.com, my university support homepage) and I am going to work this into my classes on object oriented systems engineering and project management as a must.
Rating:
Summary: You Can't Give No Stars ?
Review: Most of the other textbooks are outdated. The logical structure flow of the book is very good. I use it in my course, taught at the College level. Students have no problem following the book. Examples are good and exercises are clear. The only bad point, the treatment of databases, is light. It will be better if Oracle, SAP, DB2, Siebel, PeopleSoft, Baan, Sybase ... can be included in details. I would recommend to all my colleagues and students.
Rating: 
Summary: Better than most System Analysis Design texts
Review: Most of the other textbooks are outdated. The logical structure flow of the book is very good. I use it in my course, taught at the College level. Students have no problem following the book. Examples are good and exercises are clear. The only bad point, the treatment of databases, is light. It will be better if Oracle, SAP, DB2, Siebel, PeopleSoft, Baan, Sybase ... can be included in details. I would recommend to all my colleagues and students.
Rating: 
Summary: Systems Analysis and Design Rendered Incomprehensible
Review: Speaking as an undergraduate, _Systems Analysis and Design in a Changing World_ is not an easy read, and I found some parts (e.g., OO statechart diagrams) almost inaccessible despite my persistent and conscientious efforts to grasp the material given my little but solid background in OO programming. The authors know their field well, and it is evident they put much effort into writing this book. Yet the model-making approach they presented (notably in chapters 5, 6, 7, and 9) obscured rather than improved my understanding of software development. Perhaps I tend to be averse to graphical models of this kind. In any case, a good introductory object-oriented programming textbook covering Java or C++ is a better place to start to learn these ideas because without actually implementing program code, the models seem like "floating" abstractions. I have two recommendations to the authors that might improve the average student's ability to understand the content, especially the treatment on modeling: 1. Make the writing style less academic and more conversational. A good example of an accessible and engaging presentation of otherwise "mundane" content is David Kelley's _The Art of Reasoning_ (I know it's a book on informal logic and not systems analysis and design, but there are many parallels between the subjects). 2. After a new concept is introduced, immediately provide exercises *with* ideal solutions at the back of the book. There are no solutions in this textbook and no student solution manual is available. Most students need to start out with many easy but progressively more challenging problems and build on that foundation in order to gain confidence in the discipline. Again, see the "Practice Quizzes" in David Kelley's _The Art of Reasoning_ as an example of a textbook that helps the student comprehend the material. After every significant section, Kelley includes many small exercises (with solutions) in order to test the student's understanding of the concepts or principles and to ensure the student has thoroughly absorbed the information before moving on to more complex knowledge. I stress that I am not recommending that the content be "dumbed down." What I am saying is that since systems analysis and design is difficult and requires much practice to master, it is the job of the teacher to build a bridge between the challenging but potentially graspable ideas and the students who fall short of brilliant. In other words, this book is in desperate need of many smaller, easier problems that progressively build up to the kind of arduous case studies that *are* included at the end of the chapters. This is a good book if you have the aptitude and appetite for graphical model-making and some experience in programming. Yet I highly suspect there are better books out there on this topic for introductory students.
Rating:
Summary: Systems Analysis and Design Rendered Incomprehensible
Review: The manner of presentation in "Systems Analysis and Design in a Changing World" always starts in mid-stream, assuming far too much previous specialized business and technical knowledge on the part of the student. Concepts appear at the beginning of chapters like thunderbolts out of the blue, with little context to help the student understand the actual meaning or significance of the ideas. Instead of presenting the evidence and steps of reasoning that led up to the concepts and principles in a clear and simple way, the student is given a succession of unmanageable assertions encoded in jargon-filled terminology, to be retained as frozen dogma. The style and flavor of the writing is extremely artificial and pedantic (at times I found myself asking whether the book was written by a human or generated by a computer). Consequently, most students end up trying to memorize the content without understanding what it actually means or how it applies. The only positive quality I can attribute to this book is that it presents the phases of systems analysis and design in logical sequence. What it fails to do is explain how each of the principles was discovered by reasoning from observation in a clear, comprehensible and conversational way.
Rating:
Summary: Systems Analysis and Design Rendered Incomprehensible
Review: The manner of presentation in "Systems Analysis and Design in a Changing World" always starts in mid-stream, assuming far too much previous specialized business and technical knowledge on the part of the student. Concepts appear at the beginning of chapters like thunderbolts out of the blue, with little context to help the student understand the actual meaning or significance of the ideas. Instead of presenting the evidence and steps of reasoning that led up to the concepts and principles in a clear and simple way, the student is given a succession of unmanageable assertions encoded in jargon-filled terminology, to be retained as frozen dogma. The style and flavor of the writing is extremely artificial and pedantic (at times I found myself asking whether the book was written by a human or generated by a computer). Consequently, most students end up trying to memorize the content without understanding what it actually means or how it applies. The only positive quality I can attribute to this book is that it presents the phases of systems analysis and design in logical sequence. What it fails to do is explain how each of the principles was discovered by reasoning from observation in a clear, comprehensible and conversational way.
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