G52LSS – Large Scale Systems Design
Coursework – Semester 1, Session 2009-2010
Team Number: / Team XStudent Names: / Student name (representative)
student name 2
student name 3
student name 4
INSTRUCTIONS
This coursework is worth 40% of the module assessment. Please read these instructions carefully. Marks will be deducted if the coursework does not follow this specification.
Printed and electronic copies should be submitted by 8 December 2009, 16:00 hrs. Please hand-in the printed copy to the CS Office (room A31) and the electronic copy through the CS submission system, see web site at the following url: (make sure you submit to the correct coursework code). The electronic copy must be one single pdf file named cw-teamX (replace X with the number of your team). The last submission date is 18 December 2009 at 16:00 hrs. A penalty of 5% absolute will be applied for each late working day, or part day, after 11 December, 2009. After 18 December 2009, submissions will only be accepted directly to the lecturer and supported by a valid extenuating circumstances form (ECF) which should be approved by your personal tutor.
This page, completed with your details above and leaving the last column of the table below blank, must be included as the cover page of your final coursework. Note that the details in the table above must be typed.
Formatting: text must be typed and diagrams produced electronically, pages in your coursework must be numbered, paper size A4 printed in one side only. The answer to each question should start on a new page and be clearly labelled with the question number on the top right-hand corner. The document should be stapled in the top left corner (please no folders for the printed hard copy).
The table below shows for each question: space limit and marks available. Note that the total number of sheets in the final coursework should be maximum 12 in addition to this cover page.
Question / Word/Space Limit / Page Number / Marks Available / Marks AwardedQ1a / 2 pages / 3 / 10
Q1b / 1 page / 5 / 10
Q1c / 2 pages / 6 / 15
Q1d / 3 pages / 8 / 30
Q1e / 2 pages / 11 / 15
Q1f / 1 page / 13 / 10
Q1g / 1 page / 14 / 10
Total: / ------ / ------ / 100
Question 1. Project Planning and Analysis – The PC Gurus case.
The management of PC Gurus is trying to improve the business and wants the professional advice of a systems analysis and development team. They have approached E-Solve which is a small consultancy firm. The personnel that E-Solve can be committed to the PC Gurus case is as follows: one senior systems analyst (yourself) who would take the role of project manager too, one systems analyst assistant, and three experienced programmers who have similar expertise in the development of a range of computer systems.
The PC Gurus company, which is based in Nottingham, maintains a fleet of 25 cars and 35 technicians, who share the cars when driving to customers. The company provides repairs of all makes of PCs and laptops, broadband/network problems, data recovery and software faults. The primary customers are private residential customers and small firms. The crew of each car is determined by the type and size of the job: one technician per car to private jobs, two technicians to firms with more then 5 PCs and or network problems or network installation assignments. Each technician is specialised in one of the platforms serviced by the company: Windows, Linux and Macintosh. However, some technicians have basic skills on the other two platforms in which they are not specialists. Three of the technicians are hardware specialists.
At the beginning of each working day, everyone arrives to the company offices in Nottingham and the controller assigns jobs to individuals or pairs of technicians based on the list of pre-booked service calls, giving priority to urgent jobs. The controller strives to keep the crews the same from day to day but this is not always possible, depending on the composition of the day's jobs. Then, each crew departs from Nottingham to carry out the assigned jobs. The pre-booked service jobs assigned to each crew are those service requests that customers made in the day or days before. The current response times are on average about 3 days for a normal service request and 1 day for an urgent service request.
At present, customers can only make service bookings by telephone or email, following the contact details on a simple company website. The company sends the bill to the customer by mail 2 to 3 days after the service was carried out. Many customers would like to get the bill from the service team immediately after the job is done. However, this is not possible for PC Gurus because all the accounting and billing process is done by the accounting department at the end of the working day using a system that runs on a single computer at the offices in Nottingham. This is the same system used to calculate payments to the Inland Revenue and to process the payroll. Together with the bill, customers get a questionnaire and a pre-paid envelope and they are asked to send their feedback to the company about the service provided. At present, not many customers send their feedback to PC Gurus.
Due to the difficulty in scheduling and routing, there is considerable idle time for each crew during a typical day. PC Gurus management wants to increase the productivity of each crew because although there is considerable idle time, there is no lack of jobs to be carried out.
Several times a year, technicians are sent to training courses which can last from half a day to one week. These courses are delivered in the company offices in Nottingham and the goal is to increase the skills of employees so that the reliability and range of services to customers can be improved. However, sometimes a job must be put off or a training course interrupted if there is a sudden increase of demand for a certain kind of service.
Another way in which PC Gurus management seeks to increase the skills of their technicians is to organise seminars. In these seminars, technicians meet to share their knowledge, skills and experience of services provided in the past by them. Both seminars and training courses make the personnel development programme of PC Gurus.
The only customised computer system in PC Gurus is the one used by the accounting department. All the other processes are carried out with the aid of general office tools such as MS Excel and Word.
Q1aList the opportunities that you identify to improve the business for PC Gurus. For each opportunity, suggest a computer system that could be developed. Then, from the list of opportunities that you identified, select the one for which you propose to develop a computer system in order to improve the business of PC Gurus and prepare a 1-page System Request.
Q1bIdentify the type of system (knowledge work system, decision support system, etc.) that you proposed in question Q1a. Write a prioritised list of functional and non-functional requirements for the proposed system. If you think you need to use a requirements analysis technique, state which one and justify your answer.
Q1cAs a Systems Analyst you want to get a better understanding of how things work in PC Gurus in relation to the computer system you proposed in question Q1a. Design a Questionnaire to be distributed to the relevant personnel.
Q1dBased on the scenario description of PC Gurus, draw the context DFD for the computer system that you proposed in question Q1a. Then, draw the corresponding Level 0 DFD to model the Processes required. Make sure you validate the DFDs. Explain your diagrams and state any assumption that you make. Take into consideration that this information will be used by PC Gurus to understand your proposal and by the programmers in your team to develop the system.
Q1ePrepare a Use Case Diagram for your Level 0 DFD of question Q1d. Use the information given in the scenario description and state any assumption that you make. Then write a User Story for your proposed system.
Q1fFor your Level 0 DFD of question Q1d prepare a Data Model in the form of an ERD. Use the information given in the scenario description and state any assumption that you make. Explain your diagram.
Q1gWrite a process description in structured English (pseudo-code) of the decision logic that the controller in PC Gurus uses to assign crews to jobs. If your proposed system is related to this process, make sure your pseudo-code takes this into consideration.