QUESTION 1
A university is involved in the organisation of a yearly academic conference. In such conferences, researchers submit papers (containing their research work). The papers are reviewed by academics (to check whether they are worth being presented at the conference). The papers may then be accepted or rejected or accepted with modifications. The researchers then have to resubmit the final papers which are all then compiled into the conference proceedings.
As this process is quite tedious, the university wants to develop a web application to facilitate this process.
The project is expected to incur the following costs:
Capital cost: Rs 100,000
Recurrent costs: Rs 25,000
The conference will have an attendance fee of Rs10,000 per researcher. It is expected that the web application will encourage at least 10 additional participants per conference. Consider that the project lifetime is 2 years. Assume discount rate to be 10%.
(a) Perform a technical feasibility study for the above project.
(b) What issues might need to be considered for the operational feasibility of the project?
(c) Perform an economic feasibility of the project.
(d) Develop a Work breakdown structure for the above project and complement it with a WBS Dictionary.
(e) Using the WBS Dictionary above, develop a schedule for the project. How long will it take to complete the project?
QUESTION 2
A mobile operator selling iphones is asked by Apple Inc. to apply its business model of the company to develop local mobile applications for the local Appstore (i.e. to ask local developers to do it individually). In this context, the mobile operator organised a conference to which it invited all ICT students and professionals in the country. The development platform and other tools were presented to the attendees. Latest market surveys carried out by the mobile operator were also shared with the people. As a whole the event was considered a success and all the attendees went back home very excited about new mobile applications which they would develop and sell themselves on the local appstore. A local minister who was also present congratulated the organisers of the event for their effort in democratising the economy
(a) What type of outsourcing is being practiced in the above case?
(b) Describe FOUR benefits of this type of outsourcing as opposed to the mobile operator developing the mobile applications itself?
(c) Describe FOUR possible pitfalls of this type of outsourcing?
(d) Assess the risk for TWO of the possible pitfalls
(e) What mitigating actions could be taken for the above TWO pitfalls
QUESTION 3
A university is involved in the development of high end software for tracking and monitoring of satellites. The software will detect the position of the satellite from signals sent by the satellite and detected by appropriate sensors on the ground station. Moreover, the software could also be used to trigger different engines on board of the satellite to make any corrections to its orbit
(a) Describe THREE quality attributes which would be expected from such software
(b) What would you advise the university to do to achieve the above quality attributes
(c) What metrics could be used to measure the quality attributes mentioned in (a)
(d) Explain the challenges involved in testing such software and how you would overcome these challenges