Teaching and Learning System Project Report

This project report details the development of a Teaching and Learning System (TLS) for the Quality Institute (HQI). It encompasses a system analysis and design, functional and non-functional requirements specification, Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), PERT/CPM chart for critical path identification, a class diagram illustrating the student registration data model, and financial analyses including Net Present Value (NPV), Payback Period, and Return on Investment (ROI). The report concludes that the project is highly viable with a strong ROI and short payback period, recommending its advancement to implementation.

HIGH QUALITY INSTITUTE (HQI) CASE STUDY
By Student’s Name
Date:
Course Code:

Introduction
Background of the Case
The High Quality Institute (HQI), a technological training institute operates in the educational
sector, offering courses in information and communication technology. The institution seeks to
develop and deploy an advance Teaching and Learning System (TLS). The intended system will
provide a range of services such as staff and student emails and a database management system
for the institution. As such the project to develop this application will also entail configuring a
database server a management, web and email servers.
Besides the configuration of the servers, a complete IT infrastructure has to be established at the
institutions to support the deployment of the intended system as well as provide a secure and
highly available communication and networking platform. The intended network will use a range
of network devices including routers, intrusion detection systems and backup solutions.
The intension of the management at the institution is to develop and deploy two online systems;
an Undergraduate Learning System (ULS) and a Postgraduate Learning System (PLS). These
systems will be developed internally by the IT department of the institute.
Aims and Objectives
The aim and objective of this report is to present a system analysis and design of the intended
system for the institution. This will entail identifying the functional and non-functional
requirements of the proposed Teaching and Learning System (TLS). The report will present a
Work Breakdown Structure which will identify the various tasks required to accomplish this
project. A PERT/CPM chart will then be developed. This will be followed by the identification
of the critical path and time requirements for the project. The report also presents a data model of
the student registration process by use of class diagrams. Finally the report presents calculations
for the net present value, payback period and return on investment.
Functional and Non-functional requirements of TLS
Theoretically, functional requirements refer to the expected functioning of the system to be
developed. These are the system’s features or what the system should do or provider for users.
Functional requirements include the functions, reports, online queries and details of data to be
held by the system. On the other hand, Non-functional requirements refer to controls, constraints
and attributes, which describe the systems and can be used in judging the performance of the
system. These include attributes such as security, performance level, availability, reliability and
usability.

The functional requirements for TLS are;
 Enable assigning a student to an advisor
 Enable units registration
 Maintain student details and
 Maintain details of assigned advisor
 Maintain Course and Units details
Although the case study does not explicitly mention the course and units, from the other
functional requirements, the system must have a function to keep track of all courses and units
offered by the institution.
Non-Functional Requirements
 Usability: the developed system has to be easy to use, to facilitate use by novice
computer users.
 Availability: the system should be highly available at any time. The underlying
infrastructure has to be designed in a way that provides high availability; with minimal or
no downtime at all
 Reliability: the system should perform the required tasks consistently and reliably.
 Security: the system will hold personally identifiable information; as such the system
should provide adequate data security for data in databases and on transit over the
internet.
Work Breakdown Structure
A Work breakdown structure WBS outlines activities necessary to be performed in a project to
attain the project’s deliverables. A WBS outlines the activities in a hierarchical subdivision of
the project’s tasks into work areas, with the lowest level forming a work package. In a project a
WBS forms the base of all the project management tasks from project planning, cost estimation,
resource allocation and project scheduling. The Project Management Body of
Knowledge (PMBOK) defines a work breakdown structure as a “deliverable oriented
hierarchical decomposition of the work to be executed by the project team”. A WBS provides a
structural view into a project. The main functions of a work breakdown structure include;
 Enables scope definition
 Facilitates resource allocation to tasks
 Enables the establishment of a control baseline
 Provides means of measuring project progress and accomplishments by defining
milestones
The work breakdown Structure for this project is as follows;

Task No Description Predecessors Duration
1. Teaching and Learning System 180 days
2. Project Initiation and Planning 7 days
3. Project kickoff meeting 1 day
4. Stakeholder Identification 1 day
5. Risk Identification 4 2 days
6. Development of a project plan 5 3 days
7. Milestone 1: Project Charter Approved 0 days
8. Requirement Analysis 12 days
9. Requirement gathering 5 days
10. Functional Requirements analysis 9 4 days
11. Analysis of non-functional requirements 10 3 days
12. Milestone 2: System Requirements approved 0 days
13. Application Design 12 days
14. Application Basic Design 5 days
15. Technical Feasibility Assessment 14 2 days
16. Architectural Reference Group Presentation 14,15 2 days
17. Application Detailed Design 15 5 days
18. Milestone 3: Detailed Design Approval 0 days
19. Infrastructure Development 11 11 days
20. Network design 12 3 days
21. Laying of the network 20 3 days
22. Servers installation 21 2 days
23. Network and Servers configuration 22 2 days
24. Network testing 23 1 day
25. Development 44 days
26. Coding 18 20 days
27. Unit testing 26 2 days
28. Integration testing 26 2 days
29. Debugging 28 2 days
30. Milestone 4: Development Complete 0 days
31. Testing 16 days
32. Complete System testing 30 2 days
33. Debugging 32 2 days
34. User Acceptance Testing 32 2 days
35. System & User Interface Bug Fix 33,34 2 days
36. Milestone 5: Testing Completed 0 days
37. Launch 6 days
38. User Training 36 5 days
39. Deployment and GoLive 38 1 day
40. Closure 10 days
41. Document Lessons Learnt 39 1 day

42. Release Project Team 41 1 day
43. Finalize and Archive Project Documentation 41 3 days
44. Close Project 43 1 day
Pert Chart
From the network diagram above, the critical path for the completion of the project is made up
of;
 Project Initiation and scheduling
 Requirement analysis
 Application design
 Programming
 Hardware /network configurations
 Unit Testing
 System testing
 User training
 Project closure
Class Diagram

An analysis of the System
In calculating the NPV the rate was taken to be 0 since the investment is a system
YEAR
No Category 0 1 2 3 4 5
1 Value of benefits 7000 7000 7000 7000 7000
2 Development Cost -20000 0 0 0 0 0
3 Annual Expenses -2000 -2000 -2000 -2000 -2000
4 Net benefits/costs 10000 5000 5000 5000 5000 5000
5 Discount factor 1 1 1 1 1 1
6 Net Present value ($10,000.00) ($5,000.00) ($5,000.00) ($5,000.00) ($5,000.00) ($5,000.00)
7 Cumulative NPV ($10,000.00) ($5,000.00) $0.00 $5,000.00 $10,000.00 $15,000.00
From the cumulative NPV the payback period is 2 years.

Initial investment was 20,000 but year zero had a return of 10,000, meaning the effective initial
investment was -10,000
Year Cash Flow Payback
0 -10000
1 5000 -5000
2 5000 0
3 5000
4 5000
5 5000
Return on Investment
Initial investment was 20,000 but year zero had a return of 10,000, meaning the effective initial
investment was -10,000
Year Cash Flow
0 -10000
1 5000
2 5000
3 5000
4 5000
5 5000
Total discounted benefit amount = 25,000
Total discounted cost amount = 10000
ROI = (benefit – cost) / cost = (25,000 – 10000)/10000 = 1.5
Therefore return on investment = 150%

POSTER

Conclusion
This report has presented an outline of a project intended to develop a Teaching and Learning
System (TLS) at the Quality Institute (HQI). The report has presented a system analysis and
design of the intended system. The identified functional and non-functional requirements of the
proposed Teaching and Learning System (TLS) have been presented. The report has also
presented a Work Breakdown Structure which identifies the various tasks required to accomplish
this project. A PERT/CPM chart was developed, which outlines the critical path for the project. .
The report also presented a data model of the student registration process by use of a class
diagram. Finally the report presents calculations for the net present value, payback period and
return on investment. From the analysis, the project is a very viable one, with a very high return
on investment and a short payback period. The project should therefore continue to the
implementation stage as it is feasible and viable.

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