Case Study: International Charity Foundation Information System Development

Approach to Systems Development

The report that is being developed basically highlights of the case study for the organization of International Charity Foundation and there is a need to develop an information system for the organization, the discussion for which has  been provided in this report (Fleming and Koppelmann 2016). I am the software consultant who has been asked to perform an analysis on the design of the system that the organization is looking to implement.

The main objective of the project is the development of a Global Business Management System.

The main aims of this report is to provide a detailed description of the analysis of the project and provide a design which is to be used for the development of the system for the organization.

For the development of the system the Waterfall model is to be adopted, since the project which being considered in this report is basically a linear project and all the metrics and the measurements are fixed hence the selection is of this model is very apt for the development of the project (Marchewka 2014). The major phases which are to be involved in the project development in this method are requirement gathering phase in which the major requirements and the deficiencies in the current system for the organization are identified. After the requirement gathering or the project analysis phase is over the project planning is considered where the project schedule is designed and the budget for the project is allocated. The project implementation phase involves the procedures of designing if the software intended for the project, the database and the integration of the backend procedures of the database. After the project has been implemented the testing phase is done where the software is subjected to various type of testing methods and the software is developed according feedbacks received from testing the system. After the risks involves in the project are mitigated through the testing procedure the maintenance phase for the project is covered and the schedule for the maintenance and resource allocation for the maintenance of the project is done. After the maintenance phase is done with the further development in the project takes place and the delivery of the project is done by uploading the project on the domain of the organization and submitting the documents related to the project.

The system requirements analysis of any type of project deals with an analysis of the functional requirements and the non-functional requirements of the project. The functional requirements of the project are provided below (Walker 2015):

• The children should be able to enrol themselves into the ICF programs.
• The system should also be able to provide the institutions and the organizations to donate money for the welfare of the organization.
• The system should also be able to keep track of the stock levels in n each of the braches and the income level and expenses of all the branches of the organization.
• In addition to this, the organization would also like to provide the login and registration features for their clients.

The main non-functional requirements of the project are provided below:

Data integrity: The system should be able to store the data of the organization efficiently and this would help the management of the data for the braches of the organization efficiently. Thus it is very important feature as the data storage options for any type of organization is a very important feature and the loss of data from any sector would hamper the sector effectively.

Availability: The system is to made available for the client on daily basis 24×7 so that they can login to the system whenever they want to and also this would reduce the response time of the organization for the clients which would help them in increasing the customer satisfaction level for the organization.

Systems Requirements

The project cost and benefit analysis is a very important factor that effects towards the economic feasibility of the project for the organization (Heagney 2016). It has been given that the monthly income is $9000. Hence, the annual savings for the project is $108000. Additionally, the maintenance cost of the project annually is $7,200.  The cost benefit analysis of the project is provided below:

Cost benefit analysis for Global Business System
	Year 0	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3	Year 4	Year 5
Overall savings	$0	$1,08,000	$1,08,000	$1,08,000	$1,08,000	$1,08,000
Development cost	($2,50,000)	$0	$0	$0	$0	$0
Maintenance Cost	$0	($7,200)	($7,200)	($7,200)	($7,200)	($7,200)
Net benefit/costs	$0	$0	$0	$0	$0	$0
Net cash flow	($2,50,000)	$1,00,800	$1,00,800	$1,00,800	$1,00,800	$1,00,800
Discount factors
Discount rate	10%
Year Index	0	1	2	3	4	5
Discount factor	1	0.91	0.83	0.75	0.68	0.62
Discounted flows
Cost	($2,50,000)	($6,545)	($5,950)	($5,409)	($4,918)	($4,471)
Benefit	$0	$98,182	$89,256	$81,142	$73,765	$67,060
Net	($2,50,000)	$91,636	$83,306	$75,733	$68,848	$62,589
Cumulative	($2,50,000)	($1,58,364)	($75,058)	$675	$69,522	$1,32,111
Net present value	$1,32,111
ROI	10%
Payback Analysis
	Years	Months
	1	23
Payback Period in Years	2.90

Table 1: Cost Benefit Analysis

Source: (created by Author)

The schedule of the project is provided below:

Task Name	Duration	Start	Finish	Predecessors
Global Information System	40 days	Mon 03-09-18	Fri 26-10-18
Project Initiation	3 days	Mon 03-09-18	Wed 05-09-18
Meeting with the clients	2 days	Mon 03-09-18	Tue 04-09-18
Identifying the Project aims and objective	1 day	Wed 05-09-18	Wed 05-09-18	2
Requirement Analysis	5 days	Thu 06-09-18	Wed 12-09-18
Identifying Functional Requirements	2 days	Thu 06-09-18	Fri 07-09-18	3
Identifying the Non-Functional Requirements	1 day	Mon 10-09-18	Mon 10-09-18	5
Construction of the project schedule and work breakdown structure	2 days	Tue 11-09-18	Wed 12-09-18	6
Project Implementation	19 days	Thu 13-09-18	Tue 09-10-18
System interface design	6 days	Thu 13-09-18	Thu 20-09-18	7
Database Development	5 days	Fri 21-09-18	Thu 27-09-18	9
Integration of the back end process with the database	8 days	Fri 28-09-18	Tue 09-10-18	10
Project Testing	7 days	Wed 10-10-18	Thu 18-10-18
System testing	2 days	Wed 10-10-18	Thu 11-10-18	11
Analysis of the test results	2 days	Fri 12-10-18	Mon 15-10-18	13
System update	3 days	Tue 16-10-18	Thu 18-10-18	14
Project Deployment	2 days	Fri 19-10-18	Mon 22-10-18
Installation of the project in the office	2 days	Fri 19-10-18	Mon 22-10-18	15
Project Maintenance	4 days	Tue 23-10-18	Fri 26-10-18
Submitting project deliverables	1 day	Tue 23-10-18	Tue 23-10-18	17
Assigning personnel for project	1 day	Wed 24-10-18	Wed 24-10-18	19
Scheduling Project maintenance	2 days	Thu 25-10-18	Fri 26-10-18	20

TABLE 1: Project Schedule

Source: (created by Author)

The system information requirement technique involves two parts one of which is stakeholder’s analysis and the others are interviews and questionaries methods which are to be used for the investigation of the project and effect towards the betterment of the project (Verzuh 2015). The stakeholders mainly involved in the project are project manager, database designer, project manager, system engineer, back end developer, customers, staffs and sponsors for the system which is to be developed. In addition to the stakeholders there are other methods which are to be followed for the further development of the project and hence, the procedures such as the interview sessions, questionaries and feedback procedures are to be adopted.

Interviews: The sessions of the interviews are conducted by the project manager where he asks the stakeholders a certain amount of questions in a one on one sessions and gathers very useful information about the development of the project (Mir and Pinnington 2014). Sometimes the information provided by the stakeholders are very important for the development of the project and also goes to a great extent for defining of the particulars for the project.  

Questionnaire: The process of questioning the stakeholder for every aspect of the project. The process is generally conducted after the completion of the project and in this process a set of questions are handed over to the targeted stakeholders and project is reworked according to their insights.   

Feedbacks: In the feedback process a beta version of the project product is provided to the stakeholders and they provide an efficient feedback/suggestions to the developers for improvement of the project to a great extent.

Reflections and Conclusions

For the summarization of the project it can be considered that analysis of the project and the requirements of the company were very important for the development of a Global management system. The report has been used for the appropriate discussion of the analysis and the design of the project.

I would like to acknowledge that the course has helped me a great deal in gathering knowledge about the project management techniques which would be further useful in my future project in practical life.

References:

Fleming, Q.W. and Koppelman, J.M., 2016, December. Earned value project management. Project Management Institute.

Marchewka, J.T., 2014. Information technology project management. John Wiley & Sons.

Walker, A., 2015. Project management in construction. John Wiley & Sons.
Heagney, J., 2016. Fundamentals of project management. Amacom.

Verzuh, E., 2015. The fast forward MBA in project management. John Wiley & Sons.

Mir, F.A. and Pinnington, A.H., 2014. Exploring the value of project management: linking project management performance and project success. International journal of project management, 32(2), pp.202-217.

Mir, F.A. and Pinnington, A.H., 2014. Exploring the value of project management: linking project management performance and project success. International journal of project management, 32(2), pp.202-217.