COMP.6209 System Analysis and Design

Learning Outcome one covered:

1. Apply appropriate business process modelling tools to analyse and document business
processes.
2. Estimate the time needed to develop a system from a specification.

Assignment Principle:

Students need to answer each and every question by reading and consulting different resources. Answers to research questions must be the students’ own inference by citing researched materials. Copying materials directly from internet or other resources is not acceptable and APA6 referencing is required for any material obtained from other resources. All answers need to be typed neatly in proper format. A proper format is to make your report readable and more professional. For example, having numbered sections, indentation, page breaks, headings, line spacing (1.5) and suitable font size (i.e. size 11 to 12) will make better report, however student discretion is required. Illustrations incorporated with your written research report, is an indication of your thorough understanding of the subject.

All references need to follow APA6 Style guidelines (in class APA6 teaching session will be provided if required). Any work copied directly from another source must be acknowledged correctly. Authors also need to be acknowledged, if you have reworded or synthesised their ideas.

Assignment Tasks:

You are an analyst and you have been asked to design and build an information system to automate a currently manual operated car parking business. Before you get involved in the software analysis and design you are required to research and analyse the situation and provide solutions report. This report should indicate benefits of system development and considering surrounding circumstance. This car parking business is in the heart of the city and this business is being operated manually for years. Owner of this site started the business when this city was not fully developed. Now after years of development this large premises became the largest car park in the centre of the city. Business owner/manager cannot keep up with new changes and he decides to develop an information system to manage the car park more efficiently and more customer focused. Therefor you as system analyst/designer/developer are responsible to provide a researched base report as the first step to answer a few research questions and create some analysis matrixes to prove the benefits of the system development by providing guide lines. (In the second assignment you are going to continue with the design) AT this stage, you need to observe, research, assume and understand the manual car parking process for this car parking business and produce a report based on the following guidelines and questions.

1- To identify current system problems, it is required to research, observe, explain and write a report about the current manual system (a brief scenario) and highlight existing problems. You may use samples from the web or assume a manual car park for this discussion, but the scenario needs to be well referenced.

2- Research and find at least one example of an automated car parking system/software/demo/etc. and explain how this system works and explain the benefits of a such a system for your client. This needs to be referenced clearly and extensively (APA6).

3- You need to develop an information system/software system for new car park and you need to explain the development approach in writing. Assuming that clients knows about traditional software development , but you need to use newer software development techniques called “object oriented development techniques” and you need to convince your client about this new approach using available literature and resources . Therefore you need to write a well-researched and referenced report. This report should at least answer the following questions :

a) What is traditional software development?

b) What is object oriented development, and what tools and techniques are being used for this development approach?

c) Why you prefer the use of an object oriented approach over the traditional approach.

4- After company’s manager approved the use of (Object-Oriented) techniques, you need to decide what methodology you are going to adapt for the software development lifecycle. You need to research (well documented /well reference) and find how many available standardised methodologies are available for OO development and then pick one methodology which suits your development plan best. This discussion should be based on some logical facts (like size of the work, available tools, number of available developers, etc.). In this report you need to justify your decision by referencing creditable literature and resources using extensive APA referencing techniques. The minimum questions that need to be answered in this section are:

a) What are available OO methodologies for your approach to system development (briefly explain your understanding and use references to back your knowledge about each of the methodologies)?

b) Explain the tools and techniques for each technology including historical backgrounds

c) What methodology you choose to use and why did you choose this methodology. You also need to indicate, why you believe this methodology will be suitable for this project.

The answers to these questions should be justifications, based on logical facts like the size of the project, the nature of the project, the size of the team, the budget, the ease of use, good comprehension of the methodology, the time frame available or time constraints, etc.

5- Produce a problem, opportunity Matrix (To achieve this, you need to compare the existing nonautomated car parking system and identify all exciting problems. Then identify all benefits and opportunities may be gained by developing new automated system. (At least 3 line of either problems, opportunities or directives need to be identified)