Odd Jobs Limited: Mobile Application System Development

Odd Jobs Limited Company

Odd jobs limited is a business company the is situated at Sydney but recently had expanded to other centers and it mainly give services to their customers by giving skilled staffs and vehicles to do some customers jobs where customers pays on hourly basis.

This company was started by Colin grey and he had been responsible of planning and managements where he is being assisted by 100 employees his main role is to manage the staffs, customers and invoicing management system.

The company has various type of employees who entails the office staffs, contracting staffs and the drivers, currently the office staffs allocates the jobs to the contracting staffs who then update the completed jobs to the office staffs through the call and emails stating the amount of completed job, the vehicle used and the hours taken to complete the task which becomes much time consuming.

Tom smith and the entire management team had proposed the use of the mobile application that the office staffs will be adding new customer jobs, allocating the jobs to the contracting staffs, then the contracting staffs will then be updating any completed job details stating the details of vehicle used ,amount of job and the hours spent on job and also he will do the completion of the customers invoice stating all job details.

Using the proposed mobile application Tom Smith will be seeing the daily completed jobs and also Gary Tallent will be able to run the monthly reports which summarize the completed jobs and the level of income from every vehicle.

The development team had opted to develop the system using the standard system development life cycle to ensure all system functionalities are fully implemented.

Adaptive methodology is software development life cycle that had been developed from the previous rapid development life cycle and it is continuous in nature and it adapts to the current state of affairs.

Adaptive development process had been adopted instead of the use of the waterfall system development life cycle which tends to be lengthy and this methodology consists of three major cycles which includes:  

1. This is the plan process for initializing adaptive cycles.
2. This is where system, development efforts are balanced and prediction of the possible changes is made which could be technological, requirement and stakeholders.

• This is where the various stakeholders interact with the system during the designing, build and testing processes which enable the developer’s team identify errors and rectify them.

Below are the areas where the adaptive software development methodology is used:

1. In case system requires quick development.
2. If system development requires stakeholder’s interaction.

1. Produces systems of high quality. The systems developed are fully tested to be fully functional.
2. Customers are highly satisfied. The system clients are involved in the development process and thus are aware of all processes.

• There is increased control of project. There is transparency and several sprint meetings which are essential in development processes.

1. It has low risk. This ensures that chances of failing of the project are very minimal.

1. It is unpredictable .The development team cannot specify exact time and efforts to be applied in development process.
2. It is time consuming and need much commitment.

• It demands much attention of developers and clients.

1. No end system documentations.
2. There are chances of system failure on the track of developments.

Scrum development methodology is an adaptive methodology that uses the agile framework, it is done by a total of up to nine members and they do the work by splitting it into sprints which are done where there progress is taken and re-planned during stakeholders scrum meetings. 

System Development Life Cycle

Scrum methodology is used in various areas including:

1. If system developed have no specific business requirements.
2. If the system developed is very small.

• If the development team is quite small.

1. If the system should be developed within short time.

1. Is good for systems without specific business requirements.
2. It is good in fast coding and testing of the project.

• It is easy to control it due to update of progress frequently.

1. It is highly interactive.
2. It can cope with any change due to short sprints and constant feedbacks.
3. The productivity of individuals is measurable due to daily meetings.

• Issues are easily resolved due to daily meeting.
• Quality systems are delivered within set time frames.

1. It is applicable to fast moving projects like web and mobile applications.
2. It involves minimum overhead cost which results to quick and cheaper result.(Wixom, 2016).

1. The project development can be creep due to lack of fixed delivery dates.
2. There are chance of inaccuracy of costs and time as a result of poor tasks definitions.

• System may fail due to uncommitted developers team members.

1. It’s only best for small size projects due to small number of team members.
2. The methodology depends on only experienced development team members.
3. The system development progress is affected in case some development team members happen to leave the development team.

Extreme programming is another type of adaptive methodology which also adopts the agile development cycle and eventually produces software of high quality.   

Below are the areas where extreme programming methodology is used:

1. If the system being developed requirements changes dynamically.
2. If the developers team is quite small.

• If the testing of units and functions is through automated technology.

1. Developers are able to save both time and cost.
2. The project failure risk or programming is highly reduced.

• There is simplicity in this methodology.

1. There is visibility and accountability in the various processes in this methodology.
2. The development process gives feedbacks constantly.
3. The system errors are easily and efficiently detected in stages of developments.

• The employees get satisfaction and retention in this methodology.
• It enhances teamwork in the proposed system development.

1. This methodology is difficult to use by and not preferred by many developers.
2. This methodology highly relies on many factors.

• This method emphasis on code more than the system designs.

To develop the proposed system I do recommend the use of scrum methodology since the team will be able to do coding and testing quickly, the system issues can be resolved with ease, the system can be delivered within a short period of time and only little overhead cost is incurred in the entire system development.    

MEMORANDUM

To: The O.J.L managers

From: Team of Developers. 

Subject: Mobile Application System Development

The system requirements entails all the functions that the system is required to be having while it is fully implemented, these requirements are gathered using various methods and they are obtained from the various system’s stakeholders where the gathered requirements will comprise of the requirements that the users would like the system behave and they include the  functional requirements, users requirements  and technical requirements. The correction of the system requirements has some challenges since most of the stakeholders are not aware of exact needs they have and therefore the requirements gathering technique is selected to gather, analyse and implement the selected system requirements.  

There are various methods that are used to gather system requirements which include the following: 

This is process of including the system’s stakeholders to correct the requirements and views and ensuring all the gathered requirements covers the system’s functionality. 

The interview sometimes is not comprehensive since the respondents gives limited information , however the subjected questionnaires provides the respondents with some questions and this enable them to answer by marking the choices or by writing the open ended questions answer.

The questionnaire uses open ended or close ended type of questions in which response from the respondents is captured accordingly awaiting the analysis.

• Through making observations.

The interviewer can use the observation technique to correct the requirements where all daily operations are identified and they can be added in the requirements list, however the interviewer can analyse the existing system and get the available functionalities and choose any other requirements that can be added in the existing system.

1. Prototyping method.

The system requirements can be identified through the presentation of already developed system prototype to the system stakeholders, then the system stakeholders are able to choose any requirement that they don’t want in the prototype as they also suggest any additional requirements they want to be added in the proposed system.

To correct the proposed system requirements is a major process and it requires to be planned to ensure the requirements are corrected successfully and on time.

In gathering the system requirements the questionnaire will be used as the requirements gathering tool as in the below requirements gathering plan.

Tasks	Descriptions
Choice of respondent	Initial stage is selecting the respondents who include the managers, customers and the employees as well.
Choice of gathering  tool	In this case the most appropriate tool will be selected to be used in gathering the requirements and for this case it will be the questionnaire.
Preparation of questionnaire	In this stage some questions are structured which are both open ended and close ended questions and they will be given to stakeholders for filling in.
Giving questionnaires to respondent	The prepared questionnaires are then subjected to the respondents who fill in the structured questions independently according to their personal knowledge.
Capturing the data in analysis tool	In this stage all the questionnaires are taken and the information given by respondents is extracted and inserted in the analysis tool like ms excel or spss tool.
Clean the captured data	The data captured in the analysis tool is cleaned where the odd figures are eliminated and the anomalies.
Analyse the  clean data	This is where the already clean data is analysed to get the most preferred requirements from the stakeholder’s response.
Listing the final system requirements.	This is where all possible system requirements are listed and they will be submitted to development team for implementation.

The requirements gathering is done to ensure that the proposed mobile application system will be having all the functional requirements needed which includes the following:

1. The proposed application should allow users registration.
2. The proposed application should allow user login.

• The proposed application should enable recording of customers details.

1. The proposed application should enable recording of new customer’s jobs.
2. The proposed system should enable the office staffs to assign the contracting staffs some customer’s jobs.
3. The proposed system should enable contracting staffs to update the customers invoice and the completed jobs details.

• The proposed system should enable the managers to view the daily completed tasks and income gained in each vehicle.
• The proposed application should enable manger to generate monthly reports for each vehicle and the respective profits.

1. The proposed application should enable the office staff to create a new vehicle records.

The odd jobs limited company has been using manual way in the recording of the daily routine processes which includes the recording of staffs, customer and new jobs details which is poor way of managing the records and thus leading to poor decision making.

I therefore recommend the company to adopt the proposed system as it will boost good customer relations, time management, good records storage and retrieval, efficient profit analysis and good decision making.

Yours sincerely,

Development Team Leader   

Event name	Event-Type	Triggers	Sources	The Use Cases	System Response	Destinations
Create  customers records	Temp	Wants to create new customer’s Records.	customers	creating new staffs records	Customer’s records saved	System
Create  vehicles records	Temp	Wants to create new vehicles Records.	Office-staffs	creating new vehicles records	Vehicle’s  records saved	System
Create vehicle’s movement records	Temp	Wants to create vehicle’s movements Records.	Office-staffs	creating vehicle movements records	Vehicle movement records saved	System
create jobs details records	Ext	Wants to create new jobs records	customers	creating new jobs records	New-job records saved	System
Update completed jobs details records	Temp	Wants to update complete jobs records	Contracting-staffs	Updating complete jobs records	Jobs records updated	System
Run the  jobs reports	Ext	Wants to run job’s monthly report.	Tom Smith	Running the job’s monthly report.	Monthly report produced.	Tom-smith

(Laplante, 2013).  5.5 Use Case Description (intermediate)

Use case Name:	Creating  job records
Scenario:	Wants to create a new customer job.
Triggering Event:	Customer has some job to submit.
Brief Descriptions:	Customer get some job, visit his nearest office, the office staffs take his details and job description and create the new job in the information systems.
Actors:	Customers, office-staffs.
Related use case:	Updating complete job records.
Stakeholders:	Office-Staffs: They create customer’s and jobs records. Customer: Gives personal and job’s records details.
Pre-conditions:	Customer needs his job to be done.
Post conditions:	Contracting staff do the job and update the details to the system.

(Award, 2013).   

Reference

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Gupta,B.(2015) Power System Analysis and Design.1^st edn.New Delhi: S Chand & Company.

Goyal, A. (2011) systems Analysis and Design Paperback .2^nd edn.INDIA:Prentice Hall India Learning Private Limited.

Karumanchi,N.(2012) Peeling Design Patterns: For Beginners and Interviews.5^th edn.New York:CareerMonk Publications.

Laplante,P.(2013) Real-Time Systems Design and Analysis: Tools for the Practitioner.2^nd edn.New Jersey:Wiley.

Singh,B.(2016) Systems Analysis and Design.4^th edn.Delhi:New Age International Private Limited.

Wixom,D.(2016) Systems Analysis and Design.2^nd edn. New Jersey: Wiley publishers.