The Stehle SMT Examination
What to expect
The examination for the BCS Professional Certification in System Modelling Techniques is offered by Stehle Associates alongside the examinations in Business Analysis Practice, Requirements Engineering, Modelling Business Processes and Data Management Essentials.
The System Modelling Techniques syllabus says that there are two versions of this exam - Structured and UML. Our examinations fall into the structured category and cover the following techniques:
- Entity-Relationship Models
- Enquiry Access Paths
- Process Models (as per Modelling Business Processes)
- CRUD matrixes
- State Transition Diagrams
As with all of our examinations the notation that you may use to answer each question is not prescribed. You may, therefore, use any industry standard notation (with the emphasis here being on the 'industry standard' you cannot make up your own notation).
In our courses we use the ORACLE/SSADM/Ellis-Barker notation for Entity Relationship Models and for Process Models we use standard swim-lane diagrams.
There is a wealth of material available on the world-wide web for each of these techniques but our recommended reading list is as follows:
Process Models:
- Skidmore S., Eva M. (2004), Introducing Systems Development, Palgrave Macmillan
- Sharp A., McDermott P. (2009), Workflow Modeling, Artech House
- Paul D., Yeates D., Cadle J. (eds) (2010), Business Analysis, Second Edition, BCS
- Cadle J., Paul D., Turner P. (2010), Business Analysis Techniques, BCS
Entity-Relationship Models:
- Barker R. (1990), CASE*Method Entity Relationship Modelling, Addison Wesley
- Gordon K. (2007), Principles of Data Management: Facilitating Information Sharing, BCS
- Hay D.C. (1996), Data Model Patterns: Conventions of Thought, Dorset House
- Hay D.C. (2003), Requirements Analysis: From Business Views to Architecture, Prentice Hall
- Cadle J., Paul D., Turner P. (2010), Business Analysis Techniques, BCS (but note that they include ER modelling but do not name relationships, which is a very bad failing!)
- Skidmore S., Eva M. (2004), Introducing Systems Development, Palgrave Macmillan (they also include ER modelling but do not name relationships!)
Enquiry Access Paths:
- Skidmore S., Eva M. (2004), Introducing Systems Development, Palgrave Macmillan (although they call them "Update Process Models")
CRUD matrices:
- Cadle J., Paul D., Turner P. (2010), Business Analysis Techniques, BCS
State Transition Diagrams:
- Hay D.C. (2003), Requirements Analysis: From Business Views to Architecture, Prentice Hall
- Barker R., Longman C. (1992), CASE*Method Function and Process Modelling, Addison Wesley