BA372 - Case Study

Contractor Tracking & Metrics System
Sponsored by The Standard

Preamble 

• Please note that this project represents the second phase of a two-phase project. Whereas the first (BA371) phase covered business process modeling and database design, this BA372 phase covers architectural design, user interface design, software design and prototyping.
  

Project Description

• In this project you'll analyze, design and prototype parts of a system for managing information concerning security exception management.  In the BA371 part of this project we conducted requirement analysis, business process modeling and business process redesign. We developed a plan for ROI assessment and we designed the application's supporting database. In this part of the project we'll explore several system architectures, explore the user interface, develop UML-based software designs and prototype one part of the system.

Design Project Requirements

Groups of three people conduct the following activities and report four times on their progress. Each of these are chapters that add to an overall Case Study Design report that we build up over the course of BA372. This report will contain:

1. Review and revision of the BA371 Final Report. This contains:
1. Revisions of the BA371 Final Report as requested by your instructor.
2. Revision (if needed) of all components of the BA371 report based on (new) information gathered during the April 11, Business Process Review session with the project sponsors.
   

2. Architectural design. This contains:
   

1. A specification, explanation and motivation (advantages & disadvantages) of the preferred system architectures for this new system. This includes a description of the major software components of the (new) system and their interactions.

3. User Interface design. This includes:

1. Coordinate and consult with your instructor on the part of the system for which you will design a user interface
2. Specify the user interface--diagrams and explanation--given the choices made in 3a.

4. Prototype. This includes:
1. In VB/ASP.Net or LAMP, prototype the component(s) designed in step 3.
2. Document the resulting software designs using three UML diagrams:
1. Class diagram.
2. Sequence diagram.
3. State diagram



5. In-class presentation (aim for 15 minutes) of your BA371/BA372 project work. This includes:
   • A description/presentation of the problem we were asked to solve.
   • ROI/Impact analysis proposal.
   • Process modeling results and comments on the before-after differences.
   • Proposed system architecture.
   • System prototype.
   • Conclusion.

Notice that as we progress through our work, we again build (accumulate) a complete case-study report. Your instructor will provide you with feedback on each of the phases/partial reports you submit. You are strongly encouraged to revise your submissions accordingly before submitting the next edition of the report. You must summarize these changes in an appendix titled Revisions Log.

Design Report Guidelines

• A sample outline:
• Title Page:
• Project Title.
• Name Authors.
• Course and Instructor.
• Date.

• Executive summary (a very brief, no more than 1/2 page summary of the report).
• Introduction (summary of the case study).
• Return on investment plan.
  
• Business process models.

• Existing business process.

• Suggested business process changes.
• Database design.
• Architectural Design.
• User Interface Design.
• UML Design.
• References.

  Suggested format:

  Smith, T.J. (2001) An Overview of Systems Design; Hammersmith Publ., Ottawa, Ontario.

  Smith, T.J. (2001) System Design Methods; Journal of System Design, 12, 551-561.

  Smith, T.J. (2001) Systems Design; New Developments; Available: http://www.wherever.com/smith/hereitis.pdf.

• Revisions Log.

• Format requirements:
• Use headings and separate your text in logical blocks and segments.
• Number pages (Title page has no number. First page with content has page number 1).
• Integrate figures and tables into the text; do not add them as an appendix in the back of the report.
• Properly number and caption figures and tables (use Microsoft Word support for this).
• Use cross-references to refer to figures and tables. DO NOT HAND-TYPE THE FIGURE AND TABLE REFERENCES.
• Spell check (both automatically and manually!).

• Add an automatically generated table of contents (TOC).
• Grammar check!!
  
• Peer review!! Before handing in your report, carefully (!!) read what you and your colleagues wrote. Clean up ambiguities, break up long and awkward sentences into shorter, more elegant ones. In other words: show that you care.