System Analysis Report For International Charity Foundation

System Development Approach

In order to provide funding to young children for their education and medical treatment, Mr. Colin MacFarlane of Rotary Club of Box Hill Central set up the International Charity Foundation (ICF) in partnership with In-country Facilitators and Australian OAGDS (Overseas Aid Gift Deduction Scheme) organisations. The company is a private ancillary fund and receives donations from various sponsors for their main operational purposes.

Due to the use of manual operational system, the current operations are slow and very less efficient. Hence, the company has decided to conduct a project for the implementation of an information system that will be to solve the existing operational problems and issues.

System development methods are used to develop particular systems based on their requirements. There are several methods that are aligned with standard project management methodologies for the development of the system (Jin 2015). Some of the common systems development methods used are waterfall, agile, scrum, rapid prototyping and others.

Based on the analysis and requirements of the case study, the most suitable approach for systems development is rapid prototyping. Rapid prototyping method involves continuous development of prototype until all the issues are resolved and the final design is ready for implementation. One main advantage of this method is that several components of the project can be designed and developed at the same time and hence, reduces excess time required if the development is done one by one. In this project, there are several features of the system that need to be developed and hence, using the prototyping method, they can be simultaneously developed with much reduced project time required.

System requirements are the features or components that build up the entire system, technically and functionally (Madon and Krishna 2018). Based on the types, there are two types of system requirements – functional and non-functional.

Some of the functional requirements of the system include the online registration portal, secure online payment system and stock tracking system. The features of the functional requirements are briefly explained as follows.

Registration Portal is the feature of the system that allows the user to create a personal account for enrolment in one of the services provided by the organization. Previously, the enrolment process was done manually using paper documents. With the new online portal, the enrolment process will be much more efficient and easier. Furthermore, the records of the users who have created profiles will be stored in cloud and hence, there will not be any issues regarding the preservation of the documents.

Functional Requirements

Online Payment System is another functional necessity in the system using which, the users can make their payments without having to manually pay in cash. The users will be able to pay through online cashless transfer directly from bank account to bank account.

Stock Tracking System is another specific requirement needed by the organization in order to ensure the contents in the stock are always tracked in order to avoid situations like excess resources or shortage of resources.

Some of the non-functional requirements of the system include security of the online processes, accessibility of the users to various services of the system and access to the customer care service for the users 24 hours. Although these are not straightforward functional requirements, these are extremely essential components of the system that must be installed in order to ensure smooth running, security and supporting the functional requirements of the entire system.

Cost Benefit Analysis refers to the analysis of benefit values against the amount of cost encountered during the course of the project. In other words, it is the measure of the monetary benefits gained from the project after investing in the project during its start. Cost benefit analysis is an extremely important requirement of the project planning phase as it is used to determine the overall feasibility of the project in terms of the financial aspect. If the estimated cost benefit from the project is not sufficiently high, the project is not deemed to be suitable for investment. There is also a number of different components of the cost benefit that include Net Present Value (NPV), Return on Investment (ROI), Payback Period and others.

The cost benefit analysis for the project is done as follows.

Cost Benefit Analysis for ICF
Hardware	$       125,000.00
Software	$         50,000.00
Development of the System	$         50,000.00
Employee Training	$         25,000.00
Total Development Cost	$       250,000.00
Maintenance	$           7,200.00
Labor Costs	$           4,000.00
Operations Costs	$           4,000.00
Total Operational Cost	$         15,200.00
Savings from Salary	$         60,000.00
Reduction of Wastage of Resources	$         48,000.00
Total Benefit	$       108,000.00
Discount Rate Used	10.00%

Project Cost-Benefit Analysis
Analysis Variables:
Discount Rate Used	10.00%
Annual Benefits	$   108,000.00
Annual Operational Costs	$     15,200.00
One-Time Development Cost	$   250,000.00
				Year of Project
		0	1	2	3	4	5	TOTALS
Economic Benefit		$0.00	$        108,000.00	$        108,000.00	$          108,000.00	$        108,000.00	$      108,000.00
Discount Rate		1.0000	0.9091	0.8264	0.7513	0.6830	0.6209
PV of Benefits		$0.00	$98,181.82	$89,256.20	$81,142.00	$73,765.45	$67,059.50
NPV of all BENEFITS		$0.00	$          98,181.82	$        187,438.02	$          268,580.02	$        342,345.47	$      409,404.97	$     409,404.97
One-Time COSTS		$ (250,000.00)
Recurring Costs		$0.00	$         (15,200.00)	$         (15,200.00)	$           (15,200.00)	$         (15,200.00)	$       (15,200.00)
Discount Rate		1.0000	0.9091	0.8264	0.7513	0.6830	0.6209
PV of Recurring Costs		$0.00	$         (13,818.18)	$         (12,561.98)	$           (11,419.98)	$         (10,381.80)	$         (9,438.00)
NPV of all COSTS		$ (250,000.00)	$       (263,818.18)	$       (276,380.17)	$         (287,800.15)	$       (298,181.95)	$     (307,619.96)	$    (307,619.96)
Overall NPV								$     101,785.01
Overall ROI
								0.3309

FIGURE 1: Work Breakdown Structure of the Project

(Source: Created by Author)

FIGURE 2: Gantt Chart of the Project

(Source: Created by Author)

Work Breakdown Structure and Gantt Chart are two project management techniques for determining work packages and project schedule respectively. Work breakdown structure helps to simplify the project considerably so that a suitable project roadmap can be developed based on the priorities of the requirements. A work breakdown structure divides the project into the different phases each of which contains the sub-deliverables that in turn contain the project work packages. On the other hand, a Gantt chart uses the links between the work packages in the work breakdown structure, arranges the work packages in terms of priority and then estimates an overall time schedule required to complete the project. Gantt chart also significantly helps to determine the estimated cost in the project using the bottom up estimation technique.6. System Information Requirement Investigation Techniques

Non-functional Requirements

There are several stakeholders involved in the project that include the project manager, IT manager, finance manager, developer and tester.

System information requirement investigation is mainly performed to identify additional requirements of the system or even solve issues occurring in the system (Mabogunje 2015). For the purpose of investigation, various techniques are used. Some of the most common techniques include interview of the employees working on the system, frequent monitoring of the system and others. These techniques are briefly discussed as follows.

Interview of Employees – This is an effective investigation method that is used to determine whether the employees are encountering any problems and issues while working in the system. In this method, each employee is called separately for interview regarding the system and the opinions of the employees are noted down accordingly.

Monitoring of the System – Although this method is less efficient than the previous employees, it allows the organization to visually verify whether there are really any issues faced by the employees in the organization. The monitoring is done on daily basis and any reports regarding the issues detected during the monitoring process are noted down for analysis.

Survey – Instead of calling the employees for interview one by one, survey is a great alternative for conducting system investigation. In this technique, a questionnaire is designed with some specific system related questions and suitable options as answers for each of the questions. The questionnaire is distributed among the employees who will then fill each of their copies and return to the authority for further analysis and system investigation.

Reflections and Conclusions

This report has been developed for the preparation of an appropriate project plan for the development of an information system for ICF that is aimed to solve certain operational problems like manual errors, use of paper documents for keeping records and others. The new system will require implementation of new and updated hardware and software and the development process to be followed is rapid prototyping. Additionally, the pre-determined budget for the project is $250,000 that includes costs of hardware, software and development. Finally, as per estimations, the project is expected to be completed in around 85 days if there is no significant delay in the project.

I gathered a lot of knowledge while working on the development plan for the project. I selected an appropriate systems development methodology and also determined project budget, cost benefit and schedule using appropriate techniques. I also learnt in depth about various project management techniques that will assist me in the near future.

References

Eason, K.D., 2014. Information technology and organisational change. CRC Press.

Erich, F., Amrit, C. and Daneva, M., 2014, December. A mapping study on cooperation between information system development and operations. In International Conference on Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (pp. 277-280). Springer, Cham.

Grudin, J., 2017. Obstacles to participatory design in large product development organizations. In Participatory Design(pp. 99-119). CRC Press.

Hanseth, O. and Lyytinen, K., 2016. Design theory for dynamic complexity in information infrastructures: the case of building internet. In Enacting Research Methods in Information Systems (pp. 104-142). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Jin, A., 2015. On the Development of College Student Information Management System. In SHS Web of Conferences (Vol. 17, p. 02010). EDP Sciences.

Laudon, K.C. and Laudon, J.P., 2016. Management information system. Pearson Education India.

Liu, Y., Zhan, L., Zhang, Y., Markham, P.N., Zhou, D., Guo, J., Lei, Y., Kou, G., Yao, W., Chai, J. and Liu, Y., 2016. Wide-area-measurement system development at the distribution level: An FNET/GridEye example. IEEE Trans. Power Del, 31(2), pp.721-731.

Mabogunje, A., 2015. The development process: A spatial perspective. Routledge.

Madon, S. and Krishna, S., 2018. The Digital Challenge: Information Technology in the Development Context: Information Technology in the Development Context. Routledge.

Oinas-Kukkonen, H. and Harjumaa, M., 2018. Persuasive systems design: key issues, process model and system features. In Routledge Handbook of Policy Design (pp. 105-123). Routledge.

Stein, E., Taskaeva, N. and Chibisova, E., 2016. Methodological Aspects of the Creation of Information-and-technological Complexes Within the Investment Projects as a Factor of the Urban Territory Development. Procedia Engineering, 165, pp.1410-1416.

Wagner, W.P., 2017. Trends in expert system development: A longitudinal content analysis of over thirty years of expert system case studies. Expert Systems with Applications, 76, pp.85-96.