System Analysis And Design For Waiters On Call Meal-Delivery System

Reflection on System Requirements Modelling

Assignment is based on the case study - Waiters on Call Meal-Delivery System.

1) Reflection (as a journal entry): on how fundamentals concepts of systems analysis and design can be applied to the case study. This task requires you to critically apply your knowledge and understanding gained during weeks 1-5, such as user requirements (functional and non-functional), feasibility, information gathering and system requirements modelling.

Your reflection must be YOUR OWN and must NOT repeat the summary notes from your textbook or information copied from other resources. It should not have theory of system analysis and design alone. You should explain how theory can be applied to the case study given.

2) Two Modelling Diagrams :Create a Use Case Diagram and an Activity Diagram for the case study. You may create these diagrams for the entire system or for a sub-system such as Sales sub system, Account sub-system, production sub-system or any other.

Waiters on Call is a restaurant meal-delivery service started in 2008 by Sue and Tom Bickford. The Bickfords

worked for restaurants while in college and always dreamed of opening their own restaurant. Unfortunately, the initial investment was always out of reach. The Bickfords noticed that many restaurants offer takeout food and that some restaurants—primarily pizzerias—offer home-delivery service. However, many people they met seemed to want home delivery with a wider food selection.

Sue and Tom conceived Waiters on Call as the best of both worlds: a restaurant service without the high

initial investment. They contracted with a variety of well-known restaurants in town to accept orders from customers and to deliver the complete meals. After preparing the meal to order, the restaurant charges Waiters on Call a wholesale price, and the customer pays retail  plus a service charge and tip. Waiters on Call started modestly, with only two restaurants and one delivery driver working the dinner shift. Business rapidly expanded, and the Bickfords realized they needed acustom computer system to support their operations. They hired a consultant, Sam Wells, to help them define what sort of system they needed.

“What sort of events happen when you are running your business that make you want to reach for a computer?” asked Sam. “Tell me about what usually goes on.”

“Well,” answered Sue, “when a customer calls in wanting to order, I need to record it and get the information to the right restaurant. I need to know which driver to  ask to pick up the order, so I need drivers to call in and tell me when they are free. Perhaps this could be included as a smartphone or iPad app. Sometimes, customers call back wanting to change their orders, so I need to get my hands on the original order and notify the restaurant to make the change.” “Okay, how do you handle the money?” queried Sam.

Use Case Diagram and Activity Diagram for Waiters on Call Meal-Delivery System

Tomjumped in. “The drivers get a copy of the bill directly from the restaurant when they pick up the meal. The bill should agree with our calculations. The drivers collect that amount plus a service charge. When drivers report in at closing, we add up the money they have and compare it with the records we have. After all drivers report in, we need to create a deposit slip for the bank for the day’s total receipts. At the end of each week, we calculate what we owe each restaurant at the agreed-to wholesale price and send each a statement and check.” “What other information do you need to get from the system?” continued Sam.

“It would be great to have some information at the end of each week about orders by restaurant and orders by area of town—things like that,” Sue said. “That would help us decide about advertising and contracts with restaurants. Then, we need monthly statements for our accountant.”

Sam made some notes and sketched some diagrams as Sue and Tom talked. Then, after spending some time thinking about it, he summarized the situation for Waiters on Call. “It sounds to me like you need a system to use whenever these events occur:

? A customer calls in to place an order, so you need to Record an order.

? A driver is finished with a delivery, so you need to Record delivery completion.

? A customer calls back to change an order, so you need to Update an order.

? A driver reports for work, so you need to Sign in the driver.

? A driver submits the day’s receipts, so you need to Reconcile driver receipts.

“Then, you need the system to produce information at specific points in time—for example, when it is time to:

? Produce an end-of-day deposit slip.

? Produce end-of-week restaurant payments.

? Produce weekly sales reports.

? Produce monthly financial reports.

“Am I on the right track?”

Sue and Tom quickly agreed that Sam was talking about the system in a way they could understand. They were confident that they had found the right consultant for the job.

Recall that Waiters on Call has been working with Sam Wells on the requirements for its meal-delivery system. Sue and Tom Bickford want a new system that will automate

and improve their specialty business of providing customer-ordered, home-delivered meals prepared by a variety of local restaurants. Sam did a great job of identifying the use cases required for the delivery service, which impressed the Bickfords. And while working on the use cases, he continued to note all the business terms and concepts that the Bickfords used as they described their operations. He followed up with questions about the types of things they work with each day, which they answered. “Based on what you’ve told me,” Sam said, “I assume

you will need the system to store information about the following types of things, which we call data entities or domain classes: restaurants, menu items, customers, and orders. I also think you’re going to need to store information about the following types of things: drivers, addresses, routes, and order payments.” The Bickfords readily agreed and added that it was

important to know what route a restaurant was on and how far it might be to the customer’s address. They

wanted drivers to be assigned to a route based on the distances from place to place. “Yes, we need to decide how things need to be associated  in the system,” Sam agreed. “Can you tell me if

drivers pick up orders from several restaurants when they go out? Can you tell me how many items are usually included in one order? Do you note pickup times and delivery times? Do you need to plan the route so that hot dishes are delivered first?”

The Bickfords were further reassured that they had picked an analyst who was aware of the needs of their business.

Reflection on System Requirements Modelling

System Analysis & Design is one of the most significant aspects of the system development projects. There are several concepts that are defined under system analysis & design. The application of these concepts shall be done to design and develop a flexible, scalable, and reliable system. I got an opportunity to apply these concepts and my understanding of the methods on Waiters on call meal-delivery system that was to be developed. The system required the automation of order recording, updating, payments, and delivery operations for the customers.

It was necessary to determine the methodology for software development to be used for the project. I analysed the several options present and found out that agile methodology for system development will be apt for this case (Altameem, 2015). I selected the methodology as adaptive environment will be created for system development for the creation of portable, scalable, accurate, high-on quality, and reliable system as per the requirements. Before beginning the practical execution, it was necessary to perform a background analysis and I analysed the system capabilities, the benefits that the system could provide, and the system modules. The information helped me to analyse the project requirements. The system analysis and design phase of the project includes requirements analysis as one of the primary tasks. The requirements for the system were identified as per the FURPS+ acronym. The functional specifications were first defined that covers the primary functionalities to be included in the system. There were also additional requirements in the form of non-functional requirements that were to be covered to ensure enhanced user experience (Juric and Kuljis, 2010). These included usability, reliability, performance, and security requirements. I analysed the system and gathered information from several data sources to define all of these non-functional requirements for the system. There is different data collection techniques defined and I utilized them for system analysis and requirements analysis processes. Some of the techniques that I used were interviews, observations, and surveys.

System analysis and design concepts also involve various use case modelling (UML) concepts so that the in-depth details of the system can be understood and put forward. It is necessary that the analysis and designing of the system is adequately done so that the tasks for the development and deployment teams simplifies. The UML concepts under system analysis and design provide the ability to graphically represent the system requirements and specifications (Misbhauddin and Alshayeb, 2013). I developed a number of such modelling diagrams for the case provided so that the adequate understanding of the system could be achieved. There was several use cases involved with the restaurant service management system that had to be developed. The two techniques that can be used to identify the use cases are user goal technique and event decomposition technique. I made use of the event decomposition technique to identify the use cases. In this technique, I listed down all the events that could take place under restaurant service management system. I then allotted a use case name to each event that I had identified. There were different events that I identified, such as external events, temporal events, state events etc. In the use case diagram, the users are represented as the actors and the use cases are the actions that these users perform. The three actors in the case were customer, employee, and driver. I mapped the relationship between these actors and their respective actions on the use case diagram.

Apart from the user case diagram, there are several other diagrams defined under UML. Activity diagram is one such diagram that I developed to further understand the system specifications and modules. The system processes in this diagram were plotted in the form of the activities. These activities were represented under each user of the system and the connections were also depicted (Bhuiyan, Haque and Shabnam, 2018).

The project provided me with an opportunity to apply my knowledge and skills on system analysis and design concepts. It also provided me with a chance to improve upon my weaknesses. For instance, I had theoretical knowledge of the event decomposition technique but did not get a chance to apply it practically. The project gave me an opportunity to practically implement this technique. There were certain issues that I experienced with the technique initially but later got success with it. Apart from the concepts that I used and applied, there are abundant of other concepts that may be applied as per the requirements of the system (Muhairat, 2010). For instance, data flow diagrams, entity relationship diagrams, sequence diagrams etc. can also be plotted.  

Use Case Diagram 

References

Altameem, E. (2015). Impact of Agile Methodology on Software Development. Computer and Information Science, 8(2).

Bhuiyan, M., Haque, F. and Shabnam, L. (2018). Integration of Organisational Models and UML Use Case. Journal of Computers, 13(1), pp.1-17.

Juric, R. and Kuljis, J. (2010). Engineering Requirements Through Use Cases in Complex Business Environment. Requirements Engineering, 4(2), pp.65-76.

Misbhauddin, M. and Alshayeb, M. (2013). Extending the UML use case metamodel with behavioral information to facilitate model analysis and interchange. Software & Systems Modeling, 14(2), pp.813-838.

Muhairat (2010). UML Diagrams Generator: A New CASE Tool to Construct the Use-Case and Class Diagrams from an Event Table. Journal of Computer Science, 6(3), pp.253-260.