Functional and Non-Functional Requirements for the TLS
According to Abraham 2014, a project is a temporary undertaking with clearly set timelines to create a unique product from a service or reserve to deliver a product or service. It is important to note that every project needs to satisfy the requirements specified, work to be done and the period it will take to complete the project. Once the operations are completed, the project has to come to an end with a view of having met its set goals and objectives (Marchewka, 2012).
The aims of the project are the sum total of what the project intends to achieve in the end. The aims of a project point out the starting point and suggest the ending point of the activity intended to be undertaken. Project objectives are the set result of the project: expected immediate, immediate impact and impact in the long haul and should exist in the scope of the project (Young, 2013). Project objectives describe the result of the undertaking taking into account the factors that may interfere with the normal running of the schedule. The aim of HQI should be to provide a world-class teaching and learning system for its students and staff.
High Quality Institute (HQI) needs to have an aim of setting up a working teaching and learning system for its students (undergraduate and postgraduate) and to the staff who are responsible for the students. They also need to set clear objectives to achieve the same. HQI should aim at setting up and implementing a working teaching and learning system to improve service delivery for their students and make it easy and convenient for students to access learning material. The objectives of HQI should see the teaching and learning process right from conception, formulation of functional and nonfunctional requirements through design, testing and implementation of the teaching and learning system. The teaching and learning system should be designed in such a way that it meets the purpose for its conception right to implementation within the budget constraints.
High Quality Institute is a technological, educational institute that provides courses in information technology. The institute has planned to develop a teaching and learning system that supports an undergraduate learning system and a postgraduate learning system. HQI will need both functional and nonfunctional requirements to see that they achieve their set objectives for the proposed project.
A requirement is usually a written proposal of a perceived idea for the upgrade of an existing product or for the birth of a new product. A requirement is a comprehensive description of what has to be provided for the project to be carried out as scheduled (Robinson, 2017). Functional and nonfunctional requirements are critical to the success of any software development project. Functional requirements as well as nonfunctional requirements are critical to the continuity of the project.
Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
Functional requirements specify what the proposed system will do i.e. how the system is supposed to meet the set conditions by behaving in a certain way to provide services to its end users. In the case of HQI, their teaching and learning system should provide email services, web services, and database management services to its students making it easy for them to access learning materials as well as making it easy for staff members to access these services (Robinson, 2017; MacG Adams, 2015). The IT infrastructure must also be put in place to provide communication and networking services to both students and staff.
Nonfunctional requirements for the teaching and learning system may include: performance, scalability, reliability, security, capacity, and availability. The teaching and learning system should be implemented in a way that it performs as required with measures put in place to ensure that there is a disaster recovery plan in case their system is compromised, or there are failures with either software or hardware. The proposed TLS should also be scalable to allow it accommodate more users if the institute gets more students and staff. The TLS should also be reliable and available: the critical components should always be operational to enable students and staff to enjoy using the system. Security should also be considered as a nonfunctional requirement to ensure that the system is protected from both external and internal attacks (Chemuturi, 2012).
Work Breakdown Structure is a tool used to identify tasks and deliverables associated with a project in project management. In WBS, resources are identified for each item within the project. The resources must be analytically budgeted for. Assignments and responsibilities must also be carefully identified and factored in the project. A schedule must be put in place to ensure that things run smoothly and project objectives are achieved within the required time-frame.
In Work Breakdown Structure, there are critical elements that are identified. These elements include; resource requirements (human resource identification and equipment resource identification), space and facility requirements, special requirements and material.s and supply. Human resource identification entails both the skilled and unskilled expertise of players responsible for the project to be undertaken. Equipment resource identification identifies the hardware and software requirements for the project to be undertaken.
Schedule for a Work Breakdown Structure. The WBS should capture the start date, end date, precedence relation, personalities in charge and the effort required (Haugan, 2013). The start date identifies when the project should start, the end date, when it is completed, precedence relation identifies how tasks should be accomplished from one job to the other. Personalities in charge are the people involved in the project from the project management team, the project managers and other stakeholders who might be directly or indirectly involved in the project (Satzinger, Jackson, & Burd, 2016).
PERT/CPM Chart
The Work Breakdown Structure identifies the tasks that will be undertaken to build the Teaching and Learning System. An example of a WBS for HQI is represented in the diagram below:
PERT deals with the problems of uncertainty in the activity time. PERT is used where there is a need to coordinate the activities successfully so as to realize the objectives of the project on time (Marchewka, 2012). PERT is usually used when the stakeholders need to cut down on the project cost and realize the overall time for completion, eliminating slack time and coordinating and expediting planning.
Network fundamentals of PERT include event, activity, network, rules for designing the network and the network development. Event is the starting and ending point of an activity or group of activities (Ding, Zho, Tang, Wei, Zhao & Li, 2015). An event represents a milestone and does not consume time or resource. An activity is the work required to proceed from one event to another. Activities consume time and money. The network is to eliminate any crisis that might arise by providing pictorial representation of the program from which the time is estimated between the earliest starting date and the late starting time (Gornale, 2016). For example, HQI may have a schedule indicating the earliest time they need to start their project and the latest time in case they miss the early start when they need to set the ground running.
Rules for designing the network indicate how events are undertaken. Each activity has a preceding and succeeding event with not more than one activity having the same preceding and succeeding event. For example, development of the teaching and learning system may have the design phase starting at a given time and running for a period. When the design of the system is done, coding may take place to put the ideas on paper to practice so that a functioning system may be rolled out to the end users (Moles, Parrino, & Kidwell, 2011).
The network development lists and enumerates all activities in the project which needs scrutiny to be completed in time. The network development must identify the preceding activity, succeeding activity and the concurrent activity (Kendall, & Kendall, 2014). This is important in estimating the time needed to undertake the project while taking into account the optimistic time (q), the most pessimistic time (r) and the most likely time (t)
te= q + 4t + r 6
Class Diagram to Represent Student Registration
An example of the estimated time for HQI to come up with a teaching and learning system in a duration of eighteen months. Where: the optimistic time (q) is one month, the most pessimistic time (r) is five months and the most likely time (t) is eighteen months.
te= q + 4t + r 6
te= 1+ 4(18) + 5 6
te= 13 months
NPV is the current value of the money received at the required rate and the return of the venture compared to other underlying factors (Alhabeeb, 2015). By taking a look at the total cash one hopes to amass from the speculation and interpreting those profits into dollars, one can decide whether the undertaking is advantageous or not (Neuwirth, 2015). Net Present Value considers the time value of currency, making a projection of future money streams into the present cash available. It likewise gives a solid ground that administrators can use to effectively compare and contrast an expense against the present value of the undertaking. Administrators likewise utilize NPV to choose whether to influence huge to buys, for example, gear or programming.
Ct = net cash inflow
Co = total initial investment costs
r = discount rate, and
t = number of time periods
Payback period is that period taken to recuperate the cost of an investment. Payback period is expressed in years. Payback period is the period needed to recover the money invested in. The payback period does not consider the time value of money. As long as the payback period is shorter than or equal to the maximum desired payback period, then the management will usually have no problem in investing in the project. The payback period is the time required for the money invested to be ploughed back into the net income to improve the profits for the venture (Nwogugu, 2017).
Payback Period = Initial Investment
Net annual Cash Input
The payback period for HQI would be:
|
Year |
Cash In |
Expenses |
|
0 |
$10000 |
-$40000 |
|
1 |
$7000 |
-$2000 |
|
2 |
$7000 |
-$2000 |
|
3 |
$7000 |
-$2000 |
|
4 |
$7000 |
-$2000 |
|
5 |
$7000 |
-$2000 |
From the table above, the total cash flow over the five-year period is projected to be $ 45000. This gives us an average of $ 9,000 per year. When divided by the $ 40,000 original investment, the payback period is 4.44 years.
Return on Investment (ROI) is a tool used by investors to calculate the profitability of a venture. ROI is used to calculate the profits of an investment as a percentage of the original cost (Brealey, Myers & Allen, 2017 ; Carrie, 2017). ROI shows how money is made on an investment. ROI is calculated as a percentage of the purchase price. ROI is used to forecast profitability (Phillips, 2012).
ROI Calculation
ROI = Gain from an Investment – Cost of an Investment
Cost of an Investment
Return on Investment for HQI in the first year would be:
Gain from investment = 7000
Cost of Investment = 2000
ROI = 7000 – 2000
2000
= 2.5%
Conclusions
From the evaluation of cost, the system is expensive and will cost High Quality Institute money. The teaching and learning system is expensive in the short term. However, once it is implemented and is fully functional, the system will save the institution costs in the long run. Given that the system will run for a given period offering the students and staff the solutions they want for as long as the system is relevant. The teaching and learning system will continue operating providing services that it is meant to provide till it becomes outdated making it necessary for the management of High Quality Institute to go for an improvement or a new system for its students and staff.
References
Abraham, A. (2014). Project Planning and Management. Hamburg: Diplomica Verlag.
Alhabeeb, M. J. (2015). Entrepreneurial finance: Fundamentals of financial planning and management for small business.
Brealey, R. A., Myers, S. C., & Allen, F. (2017). Principles of corporate finance. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
Carrie, F. (2017). Designing Learning and Development for Return on Investment. Business Expert Press.
Chemuturi, M. (2012). Mastering IT project management. Boca Raton, Fla. : J. Ross ; Brighton : Roundhouse [distributor], 2012.
Ding, R., Zho, J., Tang, G., Wei, K., Zhao, X., & Li, S. (2015). Key project management based on effective project thinking.
Gornale, S. (2016). System Analysis and Design. Place of publication not identified: I K International Publish.
Haugan, G. T. (2013). The government manager’s guide to the work breakdown structure. Tysons Corner, VA: Management Concepts Press.
Kendall, K. E., & Kendall, J. E. (2014). Systems analysis and design. Boston: Pearson.
MacG Adams, K. (2015). Nonfunctional requirements in systems analysis and design. 28th ed. Cham : Springer, 2015. ©2015.
Marchewka, J. (2012). Information technology project management. Hoboken,N.J.: John Wiley & Sons.
Moles, P., Parrino, R., & Kidwell, D. S. (2011). Fundamentals of corporate finance. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Neuwirth, P. (2015). What’s your future worth? : using present value to make better decisions.1st ed. Oakland, CA : Berrett-Koehler Publishers, [2015] ©2015.
Nwogugu, M. C. I. (2017). Anomalies in Net Present Value, Returns and Polynomials, and Regret Theory in Decision-Making. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Phillips, J. J. (2012). Return on Investment in Training and Performance Improvement Programs. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis.
Robinson, C. (2017). Fundamentals of DevOps: Functional and Nonfunctional Requirements.
Satzinger, J. W., Jackson, R. B., & Burd, S. D. (2016). Systems analysis and design in a changing world.
Young, T. L. (2013). Successful Project Management. London: Kogan Page.
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
