Approaches to Systems Development
Discuss about the Approach For Integrating The Prioritization Of Functional.
The SDLC model are the collection of organized activities that are followed for completing a software development project successfully. Various software development life cycle models are available. The selection of a particular SDLC model is depended on the characteristics of the project. Such as, if the project is lengthy and complex then agile models are suitable. On the other hand, for simple and short projects traditional waterfall model is the best choice.
The report is aimed to select a SDLC model for UNICEF, visualize scheduling, work breakdown structure and justify the project through cost-benefit analysis. The main objective of the project is to install a stable and effective technology within UNICEF environment.
The complexity, required resources, project requirements and many more factors are required to be considered and analyzed. The findings of the evaluation will be used for determining the SDLC model. The traditional SDLC models are for simple and straight forward system development. The complex one requires more scalable agile model or others.
The proposed UNICEF Child Care System Development project is a big and complex one. The proposed system has to support payment options. For this purpose, a payment gateway will be incorporated into the system. The system will be collecting input from the parents of the children. The parents will be registered into the system. The system will have a database attached to its core. This database will store all the data into a central location. The biggest advantage of spiral model offers to the client organization and development firms is minimum risks. In the proposed project risk and budget constraint analysis is a vital part. The risks of the project are also medium to high. The project is lengthy and needs various changes throughout the development. The management of UNICEF has decided that many requirements will be shared during development life cycle. The features and benefits of spiral model is suitable for handling the above mentioned development factors (Abrahamsson et al. 2017). The organization also needs extensive amount of prototypes. The spiral model is able to provide vast amount of prototypes during life cycle. There is an issue in spiral model, the processes defined in the spiral model can be too complex. For this reason, the organization must select skilled and experienced personnel as project team members (Alshamrani and Bahattab 2015).
Functional and Non-Functional Requirements
Functional requirements: The behavior of the system is defined based on the functional requirements. The following are the functional requirements of the system.
- Process Automation:The system will be developed with the intention of minimizing the human intervention. To achieve this objective, the organization requires a system that can automate various processes (Dabbagh and Lee 2014). Taken as an example, the system will be tracking business data and creating report automatically.
- Data Storing:Data is the most vital part of a system. The systems are developed with the aim of processing data and generating information and knowledge. The system will be incorporating a database software within its core (Khan et al. 2016). All the data will be stored in this database.
- Interface:The interface will be the medium of communication between the end users and the system. The interface will collect input from the user and show output. Taken as an example, parents will input required information through the interface. The system shows a successful message on the screen if the registration is successful.
- Online Payment:Parents have to pay for the registration. The system will be equipped with the feature of accepting payment from the parents. The system will include a payment gateway (Eckhardt, Vogelsang and Fernandez 2016). All the payments will be handled through this gateway. Parents can pay using cards or net banking or electronic wallet.
- Generating and Sharing Report:The data stored in the database is the source of all the processes and data presentation. The system will automatically retrieve the required data present it as reports. The reports will be shared with the authorized personnel.
Non-Functional Requirements: The non-functional requirements are as following.
- Real time data flow:The real time data flow means input data will be shared with the users as soon as system receives it. Real time data flow increases business efficiency (Ameller et al. 2015). Taken as example, the system will show the payment data to the administrator before the data are stored in the system.
- Scalability:Scalability is a must have non-functional requirement for UNICEF system. Scalability refers to the system capability of adapting with business requirements. The owner of the system can reduce the additional resources to save cost. If required, those resources can be added again to scale up system.
- Security:The security ensures safety of the sensitive data. The system will store parents’ personal data (Shahid and Tasneem 2017). Moreover, the card details will be processed by the system. If the system gets hacked, then the hacker can access the details of the card easily.
The stakeholders must have an idea about how much capital is required for the project and how much can be earned from it. The cost benefit analysis does the work of analyzing and presenting the cost and profits from the project. All the cost including maintenance over the years are presented through it. The cost of the project is $225,000. Total benefit from the system is $507,043.00.
ROI |
1.87 |
||||||
Breakeven analysis |
|||||||
Yearly NPV Cashflow |
($33,608.00) |
$33,254.72 |
$68,022.43 |
$105,086.75 |
$150,612.33 |
$183,674.77 |
|
Overall NPV Cashflow |
($33,608.00) |
($353.28) |
$67,669.14 |
$172,755.89 |
$323,368.23 |
$507,043.00 |
|
Project Breakeven occurs between year 1 and 2 |
1.01 |
||||||
Actual Breakeven |
Cost/Benefit Analysis for the Recovery project |
||||||
Category |
Year 0 |
Year 1 |
Year 2 |
Year 3 |
Year 4 |
Year 5 |
Value of benefits |
$20,000 |
$25,500 |
$15,570 |
$27,500 |
$35,260 |
|
Development costs |
($225,000) |
|||||
Annual expenses |
($13,500) |
($15,150) |
($9,250) |
($11,570) |
($9,530) |
|
Net benefit/costs |
($65,700) |
$6,500 |
$10,350 |
$6,320 |
$15,930 |
$25,730 |
Discount factor |
$13,500 |
0.9091 |
0.8264 |
0.7513 |
0.6830 |
0.6209 |
Net present value |
($55,000) |
$5,909 |
$8,554 |
$4,748 |
$10,880 |
$15,976 |
Cumulative NPV |
($35,200) |
($29,291) |
($20,737) |
($15,989) |
($5,108) |
$10,868 |
Task Name |
Duration |
Start |
Finish |
Predecessors |
UNICEF Child Care System Development |
96 days |
Mon 4/16/18 |
Mon 8/27/18 |
|
Planning |
23 days |
Mon 4/16/18 |
Wed 5/16/18 |
|
Requirements are studied and gathered |
2 days |
Mon 4/16/18 |
Tue 4/17/18 |
|
Feasibility study |
3 days |
Wed 4/18/18 |
Fri 4/20/18 |
2 |
Reviews and walkthroughs to streamline the requirements |
2 days |
Mon 4/23/18 |
Tue 4/24/18 |
3 |
Project team is selected |
1 day |
Wed 4/25/18 |
Wed 4/25/18 |
4 |
Project Schedule Creating |
3 days |
Thu 4/26/18 |
Mon 4/30/18 |
5 |
Resource Allocation Planning |
5 days |
Tue 5/1/18 |
Mon 5/7/18 |
6 |
Project Budgeting |
2 days |
Tue 5/8/18 |
Wed 5/9/18 |
7 |
Team Meetings |
3 days |
Thu 5/10/18 |
Mon 5/14/18 |
8 |
Meetings with the Stakeholders |
2 days |
Tue 5/15/18 |
Wed 5/16/18 |
9 |
Risk Analysis |
17 days |
Thu 5/17/18 |
Fri 6/8/18 |
|
Requirements are studied |
2 days |
Thu 5/17/18 |
Fri 5/18/18 |
10 |
Brain storming sessions are done |
2 days |
Mon 5/21/18 |
Tue 5/22/18 |
12 |
Identify Potential Risks |
3 days |
Wed 5/23/18 |
Fri 5/25/18 |
13 |
Risk mitigation strategy is identified |
1 day |
Mon 5/28/18 |
Mon 5/28/18 |
14 |
Risk response is generated |
3 days |
Tue 5/29/18 |
Thu 5/31/18 |
15 |
Risk owner is identified |
4 days |
Fri 6/1/18 |
Wed 6/6/18 |
16 |
Risk Register is Generated |
1 day |
Thu 6/7/18 |
Thu 6/7/18 |
17 |
Risk Matrix is created |
1 day |
Fri 6/8/18 |
Fri 6/8/18 |
18 |
Engineering |
53 days |
Mon 6/11/18 |
Wed 8/22/18 |
|
System functions are identified |
7 days |
Mon 6/11/18 |
Tue 6/19/18 |
19 |
Functional requirement identification |
6 days |
Wed 6/20/18 |
Wed 6/27/18 |
21 |
Non-functional requirement identification |
8 days |
Thu 6/28/18 |
Mon 7/9/18 |
22 |
System UML design |
9 days |
Tue 7/10/18 |
Fri 7/20/18 |
23 |
Database design |
4 days |
Mon 7/23/18 |
Thu 7/26/18 |
24 |
Network design |
7 days |
Fri 7/27/18 |
Mon 8/6/18 |
25 |
Unit Development |
5 days |
Tue 8/7/18 |
Mon 8/13/18 |
26 |
System database development |
4 days |
Tue 8/14/18 |
Fri 8/17/18 |
27 |
System Network development |
3 days |
Mon 8/20/18 |
Wed 8/22/18 |
28 |
Evaluation |
3 days |
Thu 8/23/18 |
Mon 8/27/18 |
|
Customers evaluate the software |
1 day |
Thu 8/23/18 |
Thu 8/23/18 |
29 |
Provide their feedback and approval |
1 day |
Fri 8/24/18 |
Fri 8/24/18 |
31 |
System finalization |
1 day |
Mon 8/27/18 |
Mon 8/27/18 |
32 |
The project initiation date is 16th April, 2018. The Gantt chart is for visualizing the project schedule. The project activities are the activities in the Work Breakdown Structure. The WBS in the figure 2 is a three level WBS. The lowest level works are the main activities of the project.
Stakeholders: The main two stakeholders of the project are UNICEF staff and parents. The staff will be accessing the system for executing job related activities. The parents will be registering and making payments in the system. Therefore, both of the above mentioned stakeholders have to participate in the project management. Based on their reviews and feedbacks, the prototypes will be created in the spiral life cycle model.
Investigation Techniques: The analysts will be responsible for collecting business and system requirements. In order to collect information following three techniques will be used.
- Interviews:Those examiners will organize meeting for the distinct stakeholders. In the meeting they will accumulate client prerequisite majority of the data. Each of the stakeholders will convey uninhibitedly with those questioners (Schwalbe 2015). The questioner will solicit them different inquiries and the stakeholders will gatherings give address. The questioner will record every last one of inquiries also replies done an archive.
- Questionnaire: Those investigators will make a set from claiming inquiries. These inquiries will a chance to be approached of the stakeholders. Every last one of inquiries will be pre-determined.
- Survey:The survey will a chance to be done through dissecting the documents furthermore business methods about unicef. The investigator will accumulate different data also impart with those managements (Kaiser, Arbi and Ahlemann 2015). In the meeting for the management, those investigators will ask different inquiries in regards those distinguished information.
Justification: Interview will be used for collecting individual users’ requirements. The survey will reveal the hidden business requirements. Survey offers so much insight to the business requirements that no other method can provide. Questionnaire is essential for collecting grouped data, such as what all the parents requires. The questionnaire are usually done for collecting more information on a specific topic.
Reflection and Conclusion:
From the above study, it can be concluded that the proposed system has the capability of minimizing the operational efforts of UNICEF and maximizing profits from business operations. The selected SDLC model, spiral fulfills all the requirements of the project. The cost of the project may exceed the profit in first year of implementation but from next years, UNICEF will be collecting more capital than invested. It is estimated that within few years, UNICEF will recover all the money invested in the project. The schedule represented in the report has visualized all the activities and time lines properly. The work breakdown structure is also very good. It has been assumed that project will include only the conventional spiral model activities.
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