Foundations of IT for Project Managers and Business Analysts

Identify how software runs across a chain of environments—from local development to dev, integration, testing, uat, staging, and production—each with increasing hardening and version control to manage changes.

Track changes with version control, commits and branches, with commit messages to log history. Resolve conflicts via pull requests, merge branches, and align environments from development to production.

Code is compiled to become a working application; deployment pipelines automate building, testing, installing, and validating software across environments, reducing human error.

Learn how APIs enable reliable, secure integration between systems using endpoints, authentication, and data formats like json, yaml, or xml to exchange orders without shared spreadsheets.

Explore services as apps with defined APIs that enable modular, reusable components and external integrations, such as address validation via Google Maps, within a scalable, resilient, interoperable service oriented architecture.

Explore how solution architecture scopes a mobile app from local storage to remote synchronization, a synchronization queue, APIs, and security, through conceptual, logical, integration, application, and physical architectures.

Identify business requirements, stakeholder requirements, and solution requirements to guide architecture and development. Clarify functional, non-functional, and transition requirements to ensure full coverage and a coherent implementation plan.

Understand a multi-layer testing approach from unit tests to non-functional tests, including functional, integration, end-to-end, regression, and user acceptance testing, guided by the testing pyramid.

Explore how computers exchange data over networks using mac and ip addresses, switches, and routers to route messages and enable encrypted https communication at ports.

Explore how the OSI model structures data transmission across seven layers, from application to physical, detailing translation, sessions, and end-to-end delivery. Compare OSI with TCP/IP, which merges layers.

Explore how the internet operates as a network of networks, mapping URLs through DNS to IP addresses, sending http requests, and rendering static and dynamic web pages in the browser.

Explore how automation digitizes routine tasks and minimizes human input, from simple messaging to workflow, business process, decision making, and robotic process automation, with AI increasingly enabling smarter processes.

Learn how business process automation integrates apps to transform end-to-end processes, using low-code tools and formal modeling to streamline HR workflows and decision automation.

Accelerate business decisions by formalizing rule-based logic with decision trees or tables, then implement automated decision making via automation engines and robotic process automation to improve efficiency and reduce costs.

Learn how robotic process automation uses software to mimic human actions within an operating system, handling repetitive tasks like opening files, copying content, and updating presentations.

The lecture explains data storages in information systems, comparing HDDs and SSDs with RAM, highlighting non-volatile versus volatile memory, real-time data needs, and database considerations.

Discover how databases organize structured data into linked tables with IDs, enabling fast SQL queries and joins, and differentiate relational from non-relational approaches.

Shift from local data storage to centralized outsourced storage via nas and data centers, where cloud providers offer scalable space, computing power, and borrowed infrastructure.

Learn how to apply data analysis and analytics to describe past data with descriptive analytics, diagnose causes, predict future trends, and use prescriptive analytics to guide decision making.

Explore how cybersecurity protects information and information systems by safeguarding confidentiality, integrity, and availability, with real-world examples of threats and defenses.

Protect data at rest by encrypting with algorithms and keys, while enforcing access control, antivirus, and redundant backups, and classifying data by risk (PII high, admin low).

Explore how identification, authentication, two-factor and multi-factor methods lead to authorization, with role-based access control tailoring data and function access for different user roles.

Protect data in transit with encryption and symmetric and asymmetric keys to ensure only the intended recipient can decrypt messages; securely exchange keys using firewalls or network isolation.

Explore how IT management and ITIL4 service management align people, processes, and technology to plan, engage, design, obtain, deliver, and improve IT services through service and technical catalogs and SLAs.

Build and maintain a centralized IT inventory using a configuration management database (cmdb) to catalog all configuration items with metadata. Enforce change management to assess risks and impacts before updates.

Learn how the help desk categorizes requests—standard changes, change requests, service requests, and incidents—and resolves them under SLAs through level zero to level four escalations and monitoring.

Top management defines an IT strategy that aligns technology with business goals, detailing capabilities, operating model, governance, and enterprise architecture to support the business strategy.

Conclude with encouragement to continue learning in IT, download the book for details, and use this course as an overview to prepare for interviews and start your IT career.

Explore legal notes and copyright information for IT project managers and business analysts, grounded in the foundations of IT.