COM5012/COM5023 System Analysis & Design Assignment Brief

COM5012/COM5023 Assignment Brief

As part of the formal assessment for the programme you are required to submit a System Analysis & Design assignment. Please refer to your Student Handbook for full details of the programme assessment scheme and general information on preparing and submitting assignments.

Learning Outcomes of COM5012/COM5023:

After completing the module, you should be able to:

1. Demonstrate an understanding of basic principles of software engineering and design methods.
2. Demonstrate knowledge and critical understanding of systems analysis & design techniques.
3. Select and apply relevant systems analysis and design tools and techniques for a given scenario.
4. Communicate effectively with stakeholders.
   Graduate attribute:
5. Professional Skills: Perform effectively within the professional environment.

Demonstrate interpersonal skills such as effective listening, negotiating, persuading and presentation. Be flexible and adaptable to changes within the professional environment.

COM5012/COM5023 Guidance 

Your assignment should include: a title page containing your student number, the module name, the submission deadline and the

 exact word count of your submitted document; the appendices if relevant; and a reference list in AU Harvard system(s). You should address all the elements of the assignment task listed below. Please note that tutors will use the assessment criteria set out below in assessing your work.

COM5012/COM5023 Assignment Task 

Case Study 

–UOC UOC is a UK based education company, with study centres in seven locations in the UK and a small study centre in Paris, France. It currently employs more than 200 permanent staff and the student body comprises nearly 20,000 students who attend either face to face in study centres or engage online through the Virtual Learning Environment. It has a long-term goal to become the market leader of education courses through being customer-focused and cost-efficient strategies. During recent years, there has been a great upheaval within the education market due to technology improvements and changing customer requirements. However, UOC has still undergone considerable expansion and is now the tenth most popular education provider globally. This has been achieved through internal investment and expansion of programmes that are offered both in their study centres and as an online option.

With the growth of the business, and to help achieve the goal of being cost-efficient, there is huge demand on all departments to be more cost-effective, responsive, and transparent in their operations. This is especially important within the IT department as this is central for all students and staff. Currently, the IT department runs a variety of legacy systems that serve and support all business functions (HR, Finance, Marketing, communication etc) as well as students, administrators, researchers and academics. Students and staff currently report any IT related issues either via the central service desk, found within the study centres, or by phone to a central number.

Recently, the IT department has had negative feedback from many users regarding the standards of help and assistance provided by the technical teams and service desk. Feedback has centred around the length of time it takes for anyone to get back in touch once an issue has been reported and also that staff with the appropriate knowledge and skills are not always assigned to resolve the issue. The number of calls to the service desk has grown and there is a requirement to develop and improve how these calls are documented and processed as a means to manage and reduce complaints from both students and staff.

An initial investigation has identified that currently, all calls are documented, tracked and managed using two different Excel spreadsheets; one for issues reported directly from the study centres and one for issues reported via phone. Jobs from these spreadsheets are assigned on an ad hoc basic to any available staff within the IT department. There has been a proposal to develop a new centralised ticketing system to manage and assign IT-related issues. IT-related issues can still be reported via the help desk but also through a web-based interface/app. All issues will be documented within a central system and assigned to an appropriate member of the IT staff based on a priority system. Users will be emailed to improve transparency. The new ticketing system also needs to be used by the study centre in Paris to improve data sharing and transparency throughout the whole university. User of the ticketing system have varying levels of familiarity with IT, ranging from highly experienced staff to novices and as such, the range of issues reported by users will vary in complexity.

COM5012/COM5023 Tasks:

With reference to the case study and the new system under proposal:

Task 1: Recommend an SDLC model for the new development.

Justify your recommendation by identifying the key issues from the scenario that need to be addressed and how the chosen SDLC model will resolve them. You should also identify the key advantages and disadvantages of the chosen methodology in terms of resolving these issues. 

Task 2: Present a requirements analysis that:

• Lists the core functionalities of the proposed system solution (identification of actors and use cases).
• Documents the detailed steps of 4 core functionalities of your choice in the format of a use case course of events table.
• Defines core functional and non-functional requirements and suggestions to optimise.

Task 3: Using your requirements analysis that was conducted in the above task, design the proposed system to include the Data Flow Diagrams to represent levels 0, 1 and 2 for the chosen 4 core functionalities.

Task 4: Recommend an implementation plan which should also outline any system testing and training that may be required. Identify how these should be communicated to stakeholders taking into consideration that different communication channels and methods may be required based on stakeholder experience, knowledge, and relevancy.

COM5012/COM5023 Assessment Criteria (Learning objectives covered – all.

COM5012/COM5023 Marking Rubric (100 marks)