System Development Methods
You should hand in one copy of your assignment/project by the time and date mentioned above to the appropriate 'hand-in location' at the Gulf College. Fill in the front cover (staple together with you assignment). MAKE SURE that you fill in all the relevant details on this form. An acknowledgement will be given to you upon receiving your assignment. This is your receipt, keep it. You can submit work by post, but you must send it recorded delivery, it must be postmarked two days before the deadline date and a copy must be kept by you in case it is lost in the post. Faxed assignments will not be accepted.
Assignments must be submitted by the due date. The only circumstance in which assignments can be submitted late is if an extenuating circumstances form is submitted at the same time. In this circumstance work may be submitted up to 2 weeks late only. If the extenuating circumstances are upheld, the assignment will be graded; otherwise a 0 will be awarded.
This assignment will assess learning outcomes:
1. Analyse and develop different views of a system
2. Apply structured analysis, design and implementation techniques to develop a simple prototype, with a suitable interface, from conception through to implementation
3. Demonstrate knowledge of the fundamental issues of HCI by applying interface design principles to a prototype.
4. Select and justify appropriate methods of analysis, design and implementation for a particular component or application be it traditional, multimedia or web based.
NOTE: This assignment is to be carried out in groups of 2 students and counts as 50% of the total marks for this module.
1. Case study: AL Marai Juice Factory
"Oman Juice and Milk Factory" is one of the successful factories in the Sultanate of Oman. This factory manufactures many types of packed juices and milk under the brand name AL Marai.
The factory consists of six departments:
Human Resources Department: it is concerned with all matter which relates to staff members. It keeps track of employees records, counts and registers every employees worked hours per month (include overtime hours) and close the employ record in case of contract termination.
Accounting Department: it registers and keeps track of all revenues or expenses, financial transactions (debit and credit) and prepares the required financial reports like cash flow reports and balance sheets.
Purchasing Department: it delivers any tenders offers that may come from the suppliers to determine the supplier that will provide the required materials to the factory. In addition to purchasing anything that needed in the factory.
Production Department: this department consists of three production lines namely:
- Fresh juice Production Line
- Fresh milk Production Line
- Tetra milk packs Production Line
Each production line has a specific number of employees which includes packing employees, bottling employees, in addition to one (1) supervisor.
Inventory Department: it keeps details of all types of juice and milk that have been manufactured through the production lines and deliver to the customers who placed and paid orders.
Sales Department: it promotes and sell the goods.
The main activities in the factory are the following:
- Every Production supervisor requires the raw materials needed from the Inventory.
- Any final product will be counted and registered by the production supervisor then will be sent to be kept in the Inventory. A delivery report will be sent from production manager to the Inventory manager to sign it.
- Every supervisor should register the daily worked hours and over time hours - if any - for all production line staff and send a report to the HR department.
- HR department should calculate the total monthly worked hours for every employee and send a report to the accounting department.
- Inventory department sends an order to the purchasing department whenever the stock level for any item from the raw materials reaches the lowest level.
- The purchasing department should buy what is needed and the accounting department should pay the cost.
- Any payments from any customer should be paid to the accounting department.
Management have decided to develop a computerized information system to provide accurate information system about the factory activities and operations. At the first stage this information system should encompass the Human Resource Department, Production Department and Accounting Department and it should produce all required outputs like:
- Report for all employees in the factory.
- Report about daily manufactured juice and milk grouped by type.
- Monthly employee wage receipt.
- The customer's invoice.
Assignment Requirements
You are required to provide the following:
1. Identify the functional requirements of the factory.
2. Produce a process model comprising of:
o A levelled set of data flow diagrams, including a context and p level 1 DFD with one of the main processes decomposed to an appropriate level.
3. Produce an entity relationship diagram to support the business requirements including: a list of attributes with primary and foreign keys identified.
4 Produce an event model for the main entities.
5. Provide a sample documentation for one of the elements of each model for example:
o An event description, process description, external entity description, data flow description, data store description and an entity description.
6 Provide evidence of correlation of the models.
7 Using Microsoft Access; implement those parts of your model which relate to the involved departments like management of HR Department, Product Department and Accounting Department.
You may need to amend the mapping of your model to the implementation to reflect the partial implementation of the design and you should document any changes.
Enter suitable test data.
The database must be able to provide the following information to the management:
o A report showing all details about all employees.
o An invoice, based on a parameter query, showing the subtotal costs and total cost for the sold products to the customer. The invoice must be formatted and presented according to commercial standards
o Monthly employee wage receipt which shows the wage details like worked hours, overtime worked hours, bonuses and deductions in addition to the net wage.
o One additional report which provides information that you think would be useful to management.
8 Design and implement a suitable user interface for the application, taking into account relevant HCI principles and provide an explicit rationale for your interface design decisions (i.e. refer to HCl/usability principles/research to justify each interface design feature). Provide evidence that the artefact satisfies the user requirements including evaluation of usability, and explain why you have chosen those particular usability evaluation methods.
The report should be submitted to the Moodle and a receipt of it should be attached. A copy of any written work should be submitted on flash drive. Any practical work intended for demonstration to your tutor must be submitted and hand in along with the report. If you do not submit the practical work with the written report, this will be regarded as a non- submission.