Master of Information Technology and Systems

• IT Project Management (MITS5001)

  This unit covers essential IT project management techniques for managing medium to large scale IT projects such as enterprise software solutions project, IT infrastructure implementation project, IT outsourcing projects etc. The unit discusses process groups such as initiation, planning, execution, monitoring, control and closure.

  The unit introduces ten knowledge areas in IT project management such as scope management, time management, stakeholder management, quality management, costing, integration, resource management, communication, procurement processes and risk management.

• Software Engineering Methodology (MITS5002)

  This unit provides the concepts and methodologies required for the construction of software solutions. It discusses the nature, categories and the different software life cycle models used in contemporary software engineering. Key emphasis is placed on systematic approaches that would ensure robust, reusable and secure software solutions that would be scalable and maintainable. The unit elaborates various aspects of software engineering such as requirements engineering, formal specification, validation, design, construction and verification. This unit delves into the processes of both object-oriented analysis and object-oriented design using UML as the notation language.

• Wireless Networks and Communication (MITS5003)

  This unit will introduce students to the advanced theory pertaining to wireless propagation environment and wireless communication systems. It covers planning, architecture, protocols and design of small to large-size WLANs, including installing, configuring, operating, and troubleshooting operations. The unit further discusses cellular systems including their multiple access and interference management issues. The course will focus is on the design, the analysis, and the fundamental limits of wireless transmission systems and capacity of wireless channels. The course also explores multi-user capacity and opportunistic communication paradigms.

• IT Security (MITS5004)

  This unit will provide an in-depth understanding of major IT security issues, technologies and approaches. The unit covers wide range of security topics such as IT security foundations, cryptography, network security and software security. The unit explains how to apply knowledge of security properties, concerns, policies, models, cryptography, PKI, firewalls and security evaluation on real-life security case studies.

• Software Quality, Change Management and Testing (MITS5501)

  This unit provides the necessary theory and practices for effective implementation of a software quality assurance program. It provides the methods and tools for quality assurance and testing for each stage of the software development lifecycle. Software quality management concepts such as total quality management, quality plan and required documentation are discussed. The unit elaborates on the validation and verification practices such as peer review, software testing activities, use case design, test case design and test coverage criteria. The unit also elaborates on improving quality through software configuration management activities such as library process, configuration items identification, baselines, control, versioning, reporting and audits.

• Developing Enterprise Systems (MITS5502)

  The unit provides the knowledge and skills required to design and develop enterprise systems using state-of-the-art computing principles and practices. The unit teaches important software engineering patterns with an emphasis on the critical analysis of their applicability to large enterprise systems using popular development platform such as Java or .NET at the server side and complemented with client side scripting tools such as PHP, JavaScript or mobile apps. By exploring the various challenges in real-life enterprise situations and business process perspectives, the unit would prepare students to devise novel approaches of problem solving for implementing reusable software components.

• Mobile Computing (MITS5503)

  This unit provides key mobile computing knowledge from three perspectives: mobile technology, application development, and user interaction. The unit introduces various mobile technologies and wireless communication and subsequently details on common paradigms in mobile application development such as low power computing, computing in an environment with limited resources, fault tolerance, effective user interfaces and persistence. In addition, the unit teaches implementation details of software development using one popular mobile platform as such as Android or iOS.

• Interaction Design and Usability (MITS5504)

  The unit discusses human-machine interaction components and covers essential design thinking practices to enhance the user experience. It provides an in depth coverage on the methods, concepts and techniques necessary to make user experience design an integral part of developing information interfaces. The unit takes an inter-disciplinary approach drawing upon product design, information architecture, cognitive psychology and prototyping to design an effective user interface design keeping in view the business benefits and requirements.

• Knowledge Management (MITS5505)

  This unit describes in detail the various knowledge management strategies and the driving forces behind them.

  The unit discusses the key elements of data, information, tacit and factual knowledge using SECI knowledge creation model. The unit elaborates various KM solutions and details how to appraise suitability of these solutions. The unit provides practice based knowledge by discussing the essential practices in developing a knowledge management framework through industry case studies. The unit finally discusses various factors influencing the knowledge management solutions.

• Enterprise Application Integration (MITS5506)

  The unit establishes the need for enterprise integration as an essential part of enterprise collaboration. The unit examines a range of advanced concepts and technologies for enabling application integration in diverse distributed IT environments. The unit discusses relevant methodology for architecting integration solutions.

  The unit explains possible architectural options for a variety of design scenarios, and assess their relative advantages and disadvantages to determine the suitability of a given business scenario. An in depth coverage of Service Oriented Architecture as a means for enterprise wide integration is provided.

• Business Process Modelling & Management (MITS5507)

  The unit provides comprehensive coverage related to analysing and modelling of business processes. The unit introduces frameworks for understanding the design, control and improvement of business processes.

  Implementation details are discussed using modelling tools and analytical frameworks. Case studies are used to reinforce the general principles for managing business processes, illustrate topics such as identification of information-bearing events and to understand how to assess and improve process efficiency. It also discusses the interactions between human behaviour and process design.

• Agile Methodology (MITS5508)

  This unit provides the concepts required for the construction of software solutions using agile methodologies.

  It discusses the nature, categories and the different software life cycle models used in agile software engineering. The unit elaborates various agile aspects in phases such as requirements engineering, management, design, modelling development, testing and continuous delivery. The unit discusses ‘Agile’ engineering practices to foster collaboration, feedback, and continuous improvement for producing business value.

• Intelligent Systems for Analytics (MITS5509)

  This unit provides the students an in-depth understanding of intelligent business systems that can represent, reason about and interpret data. Students would learn about modern day business systems that go beyond traditional data processing by incorporating intelligent features such as: algorithms for learning about the structure of the data, analysing the data to extract patterns and meaning, deriving new information, and suggesting strategies to act on the results of its analysis. This unit prepares the students in understanding the core principles of building Business Intelligence System that solves problems related to data analytics discipline.

• Machine Learning (MITS5514/MDSC5002)

  The goal of machine learning is to program computers to use example data or experience to solve a given problem. Many successful applications of machine learning exist already, including systems that analyse past sales data to predict customer behaviour, optimize robot behaviour so that a task can be completed using minimum resources, and extract knowledge from bioinformatics data. This unit covers a broad range of topics including supervised learning; Bayesian decision theory; parametric, semi-parametric, and nonparametric methods; multivariate analysis; hidden Markov models; reinforcement learning; kernel machines; graphical models; Bayesian estimation; and statistical testing.

• Distributed Systems and Block Chain Technologies Applications Development (MITS5513)

  This unit provides comprehensive coverage on various computing paradigms and block chain technologies. The unit provides an overview of distributed computing paradigms and in-depth concepts and knowledge of technologies used in construction block chains. Various applications of block chain technologies such as, but not limited to, Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are critically discussed and evaluated. Federated systems and a complete block chain system, along with its various entities, are explored. Block chain application development of business use cases and its applicability to broad application domains utilising distributed ledgers, is critically analysed by comparing with its traditional counterparts.

• Cloud Computing (MITS6001)

  This unit provides a comprehensive coverage of Cloud concepts and capabilities across the various cloud service provisioning models including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and Business Process as a Service (BPaaS). The unit discusses various practical aspects of cloud computing service such as business models, typical stakeholder concerns, multi-tenancy, public/private deployment options, reference architecture, offerings and related engineering aspects of above mentioned service provisioning model.

• Business Analytics (MITS6002)

  The focus of this unit is to introduce foundations of business analytic techniques. The unit will discuss basic descriptive statistics and decision modelling techniques. The unit introduces segmentation analytics, decision models and regression models. Unit covers statistical analyses such as hypothesis testing, correlation analysis, control groups versus test groups. The unit discusses the various stages of analysis starting from the preparation of raw data, exploratory data analysis, descriptive analysis, statistical analysis to predictive analysis.

• Enterprise and IT Solutions Architecture (MITS6003)

  This unit provides enterprise architecture as an approach for designing, planning, implementing and governing an enterprise information technology architecture. This unit also discusses robust, scalable and maintainable software architectures. The key topics of focus are architectural concepts, software qualities such as availability, performance and security and reusing of architectural patterns. This unit examines the process transition from architecture to design of solutions discussing the various choices made along the way.

• Enterprise Resources Planning (MITS6004)

  This unit provides an overview of ERP systems and supply chain business processes. The unit details the critical factors and implementation strategies that ensure successful enterprise systems. The unit provides an indepth discussion on the informational, knowledge, and decision-making capabilities of enterprise systems.

  Case studies on implementation, configuration, operational and reporting functionalities offered by typical enterprise systems modules like materials management (MM), supply chain management (SCM), customer relationship management (CRM), financials, projects and human resource management (HRM) are discussed.

• Big Data (MITS6005)

  The rapid expansions in technologies and devices and advent of social networking, internet of things has resulted in extensive generation of data whose volume goes beyond the capabilities of storage and processing within traditional databases and are now formally called Big Data. There exists a strong need for the business world to take advantage of these large datasets as a source for new economic value and innovation.

  This unit provides students a detailed and in-depth understanding of Big Data Solutions on a distributed computing platform (cloud hosted or otherwise). Through advanced technical knowledge on various aspects of Big Data such as distributed systems, distributed file systems, NoSQL technology, resilient distributed data or tuple spaces and practical training on tools related to the tuple storage, processing, loose coupling analysis and visualization, this unit prepares the student comprehensively on Big Data Engineering. Through a variety of case studies such as email spam filters, search keyword suggestions, profile matching based on numeric attributes and autocorrect facilities influence our day-to-day activities as well as extensive business data generated through network of interconnected systems and devices.

Each student is required to complete one of the two Advanced Research Topics (either MITS6011 or MITS6012) along with the Capstone Project.

• Advanced Research Topics in Information Technology (MITS6011)

  The unit is designed for graduate level students to enhance their scholarship through research based study on an advanced topic in information technology. The unit initially provides the core essentials of research methodology directed towards technical research, which consists of elements such as literature survey, defining research question, experimental design etc. After introducing these elements, the student applies these to carry out a research activity on a topic in an emerging area of IT.

  Possible research areas are algorithms, artificial intelligence, bio-computation, database & information systems, distributed systems/ubiquitous computing, geometric computation, graphics, architecture, user experience design, internet systems & infrastructure, knowledge representation & reasoning, machine learning, natural language & speech processing, networking, operating systems, programming languages & compilers, robotics, vision & physical modelling, scientific computing, security and privacy, software engineering and design, and systems reliability and dependability.

• Advanced Research Topics in Information Management (MITS6012)

  The unit is designed for graduate level students to enhance their scholarship through research based study on an advanced topic in information management. The unit initially provides the core essentials of research methodology focussing on managerial and survey based research which consists of elements such as data collection, survey design, sampling, statistical analysis etc. After introducing these element, the student applies these to carry out a research activity on a topic in an emerging area of Information management.

  Possible research areas are organizational processes, managing technology & innovation, resources management & sustainable development, social entrepreneurship, corporate responsibility, ethics & accountability, accounting & finance, knowledge management, operations management supply chain management, project management and SME.

• Capstone Project (MITS6500)

  The Capstone Project provides an opportunity for students to apply knowledge acquired during the MITS course to a sizeable real-life project. During the project, students engage in the entire process of a typical IT project which could be either of infrastructure nature or software development. This provides them a wellrounded experience on the end-to-end process in a chosen area in IT.

  The Capstone Project provides an opportunity for students to apply knowledge acquired during the MITS course to a sizeable IT project. During the project, students engage in the entire process of a typical IT project which could be either of infrastructure nature, analytics or software development. This provides them a wellrounded experience on the end-to-end process in a chosen area in IT.

  A typical project in the software engineering domain may involve software development addressing full lifecycle development consisting of requirements gathering, project management, systems analysis, software design, programming, testing, release and documentation.

  A typical project in the architecture domain may involve architectural requirement gathering in terms of IT, software & data capabilities, conducting gap analysis by extensively studying the current system while taking into account the existing IT infrastructure, technology platforms, applications and data resources; this is followed by proposal of the new generation architecture model as a blueprint including identified architectural principles, paradigms, hierarchy, distribution, elasticity, messaging, on-demand cloud deployments, measurements, security, performance and interaction patterns amongst others. Selected portions of the new proposal can be demonstrated via prototypes as deemed necessary.

  A typical project in the analytics domain may involve management of the complete large scale distributed data set lifecycle stages including well-defined business case evaluation, meaningful data sources identification, data acquisition and filtering, data extraction, data validation & cleansing, choice of representation, data analysis and data visualization. Data analysis usually involves aggregation modelling (such as descriptive or diagnostic analytics), mathematical & intelligent processing (such as prescriptive or predictive analytics) and result utilization (such as outcome based analytics) that help businesses make well-informed decision.

  Depending on the nature and scope of project it may be either individual (default) or small team based with significant identifiable individual tasks, roles and deliverables.