Brief
The aim is that your team should produce a requirements document that describes the problem to be solved and captures the requirements for an information system that supports the needs of the vehicle pool manager as described later in the Case Study Description. Each student will individually consider possible solutions and make their recommendation.
Scope: At a minimum, the system will provide functionality for booking and return of vehicles. A register of vehicles and employees is required.
If you need clarification on any issues, either speak to your tutor (who will be marking your assignment), ask your questions during lecture time or otherwise post your questions via the discussion board in Blackboard.
Suggested Report Outline Cover page
Document Title Team members List of contents
Introduction
- What is the organisation and what does this organisation do?
- What is the business problem we are trying to solve OR what is the opportunity that we can make use of?
Scope
- Written statement of key functional/non-functional requirements
Dataflow diagrams
- Context Diagram
- Diagram 0
- Lower Level Data flow diagrams as required
- ERD Diagram of the high level data model
Data dictionary
- Data flow description
- Data element descriptions
- Data stores/Entities in the ERD diagram
Process Descriptions
- Most can be briefly written in plain English
- Write at least three process descriptions in structured English
User Stories and acceptance criteria
- Identify different types of users and write sample user stories for key functions
Use Case description
- Use case diagram
- Most use case descriptions of each function can be brief however at least three should be described at an intermediate or formal level
Appendices
- DFD fragments, event list etc.
- This contains any other documents that might be useful for reference or too detailed or lengthy to put into the main part of the document. *Ensure your pages are numbered for easy reference
Part 3: Individual Critical Thinking Analysis (document submitted separately)
Provide a document which discusses possible solutions and makes a recommendation. Your document should cover, at a minimum, the following aspects:
- Suggest any extra functionality or features that you believe might be useful to the organisation
- Suggest and compare at least three different types of solutions and the advantages and disadvantages of each type.
- Make your recommendation as to the solution type and argue why this is the best solution type.
Please note that part 3 requires research and analysis. You are not just answer ‘what' questions, but most important ‘why' & ‘how' questions.
Case Study Description
A vehicle pool manager of XYZ Company is in charge of issuing company vehicles to employees of the company as well as ensuring that all vehicles undergo regular maintenance. Vehicles are provided to employees for several hours or days at a time. There are dozens of vehicles but all the vehicles are located at one site.
Current system
Currently, records are kept in a variety of ways including paper based documents such post-it notes, in diaries and computer based documents such as spreadsheets. This sometimes leads to errors. For example, an employee makes a booking over the phone but the booking is lost or if things get busy a booking or cancellation might not be recorded. Employees who have booked vehicles sometimes double book or forget to cancel a booking if a vehicle is no longer required. From the vehicle pool manager's point of view, it is difficult to produce summary reports because information is scattered and stored in a variety of formats. If a vehicle is not available for some reason e.g. because of an accident, the manager would like to be able to quickly determine if there are enough vehicles available for all the bookings and, if not, contact employees to let them know that there may not be a vehicle for them. The current method of recording information is as follows:
- Bookings, issuing of vehicles and returns are all currently recorded in a single spreadsheet maintained by the car pool manager. This information is archived at the end of each month.
- Information about employees is maintained in a spreadsheet document.
- Sometimes an employee wants a car for a particular day or time but it is not available. If the employee still would like a car for that day, the manager writes a note in his diary as a reminder in case there is a cancellation.
The vehicle pool manager wants a computer based system to manage the vehicle booking, issuing and returning. The system currently works in the following way.
Bookings:
When an employee decides that he/she needs to borrow a vehicle, they currently can call the vehicle pool manager to book a vehicle at a later date and time or send an email. Employees may need to use a company vehicle for a few hours or days at a time. The booking records the employee id, vehicle type required, date and time required and expected date and time of return. The manager currently checks that a vehicle is available and confirms or rejects the booking. Only the employee concerned or the vehicle pool manager can cancel a booking.
An employee can request a particular vehicle or type of vehicle if they wish. For example, if there are several employees travelling together then the employee may request a larger vehicle. Some vehicles are vans which a suitable for carrying large packages and equipment.
Issuing of vehicles:
When the employee arrives to take a vehicle the following is recorded
- the employee's id
- the registration number of the vehicle that is issued
- the mileage on the speedometer of the vehicle (i.e. the total distance travelled by that vehicle in its lifetime)
- the date and time of issue.
When the vehicle is returned the date and time of return is logged, any damage noted and the mileage on the speedometer is also noted. The vehicle pool manager is the only person who can issue a vehicle and record the return of the vehicle.
Maintenance of employees:
The manager must maintain the list of employees who can borrow a vehicle. The information about employees kept is their employee id, driver licence number, name, work phone number and mobile phone number.
Maintenance of vehicles
The manager must maintain a list of available vehicles. He does this in an Excel spreadsheet. The information kept about vehicles is their registration number, make, model and vehicle type. Vehicle type categories are small passenger, medium passenger, large passenger, 4WD and van. Obviously, a vehicle cannot be issued when it is booked in for a service or damaged.
If a vehicle breaks down or is significantly damaged it needs to be repaired immediately. The vehicle should be taken to the repairer and any bookings cancelled for that particular vehicle.
The vision
The manager would like to automate as much of the current processing as is reasonably possible. For example, he envisions that employees should be able to make bookings, cancel bookings and view their own bookings over the company intranet. When a car becomes unavailable it is time consuming to find the current bookings for that vehicle, find alternative cars (if available) and contact those employees concerned so he would like to improve this process.
Non-functional aspects
The manager has suggested that there is a small budget of a few thousand dollars that could be spent on a suggested solution. However, he will need to put a case to higher level management that the proposed solution will, in the long term (e.g. within 3 years or so), pay for itself through savings and efficiencies and/or possibly provide extra features that will make it very appealing to management and/or employees. Experience has shown that organisational IT support for small systems such as an isolated vehicle pool system is likely to be minimal (e.g. restricted to upgrades and back up). Also, while the manager and any staff employed by the manager are comfortable with IT applications such as simple spreadsheets, simple databases, document processers (E.g. Word) and so on they are not interested in being involved in programming or systems development.
Some sample events:
The manager is quite busy with many vehicles being booked and returned each day. An observation of the manager's typical day shows that there are a three busy times with quite few people arriving around the same time in the morning, at lunchtime or at the end of the day to pick up or return vehicles. At other times he is taking calls for bookings or changes or cancellations, checking cars if a problem has been mentioned and so on. These are just a few examples of events happening over a few days.
On March 23rd employee John Smith (employee id 23745) asks to book a small passenger car for March 26 from 1 pm to 5 pm. There is a vehicle available. Recorded on bookings spreadsheet.
John Smith arrives on March 26 at 12:45 pm to pick up his vehicle. The car is recorded as having been picked up. The time and car mileage is recorded. Recorded on bookings spreadsheet.
John Smith returns the car at 5:15 pm. The manager records that the car has been returned together with its current car mileage. There is no damage to record. Recorded on bookings spreadsheet.
On March 23rd employee Mary Jones (employee id 13753) asks to book a medium size passenger car for all day March 27. There is a vehicle available. Recorded on bookings spreadsheet.
On March 23rd employee Andy Tan (employee id 29083) asks to book a medium size passenger car for all day March 27. There is no vehicle available. Manager writes a note in his diary in case a car becomes available.
On March 24th, employee Mary Jones (employee id 13753) calls to cancel the booking for a medium size passenger car for all day March 27. Booking deleted on bookings spreadsheet. (Manager forgot about Andy Tan's request and didn't check his diary ...)
On March 26th employee Harinder Patel (employee id 20284) asks to book a van for March 27 and March 28. There is a vehicle available. Recorded on bookings spreadsheet.
Harinder Patel arrives on March 27 at 9 am to pick up his vehicle. The van is recorded as having been picked up. The time and car mileage is noted. Recorded on bookings spreadsheet.
Harinder Patel arrives on March 28 at 4:30 pm to return his vehicle. The manager records that the car has been returned together with its current car mileage. There is no damage to record. Recorded on bookings spreadsheet.
On March 27th employee Andy Tan (employee id 29083) asks to book a medium size passenger car for all day March 30. There is a vehicle available. Recorded on bookings spreadsheet.
Andy Tan arrives on March 30 at 9:30 am to pick up his vehicle. The car is recorded as having been picked up. The time and car mileage is noted. Recorded on bookings spreadsheet.
Andy Tan rings the car pool manager at 11:45 am to say that there has been an accident and the car he was allocated has been damaged. Andy returns the car at 12:30 pm. The manager records the damage. He books the damaged car for repair at Swinburne Super Star Repairs. They estimate that it will take a week to repair. He looks through the bookings for the following week that had that particular car booked with a view to changing the booking for another car or cancelling the booking if there are no substitutes available. He calls anyone affected by cancellation.
Vehicle XYZ123 is due for a major service. He books the car for a service on April 12th at Swinburne Super Cheap Service Centre. The manager notes the day and makes sure that no- one books that vehicle for April 12th. This is recorded in a diary.
At the end of the day of April 12th, the manager records on a spreadsheet for that car that vehicle XYZ123 has had a major service at Swinburne Super Cheap Service Centre, the invoice number, the cost of the service and when the next service is due. The invoice is filed. Component
Description of the organization business problem and expected benefits
Functional requirements as DFD fragments for each event
A levelled set of dataflow diagrams for this system
A dictionary describing all the dataflows in the DFD
An entity relationship diagram for this system
A data dictionary describing the attributes in your ER diagram
Document Quality
Organisation and problem description
Functional requirements as DFD fragments for each event
A levelled set of dataflow diagrams for this system
A dictionary describing all the dataflows in the DFD
An entity relationship diagram for this system
A data dictionary describing the attributes in your ER diagram
User Stories and acceptance criteria
Use case diagram
Use case descriptions of each event/function.
Document Quality