Information Systems Analysis and Design for UNICEF Child Care

This report discusses the approach for the development of an information system for UNICEF Child Care, functional and non-functional requirements, cost benefit analysis, project schedule, system information requirement investigation techniques, and reflections and conclusions.

COIT 20248: Information Systems Analysis and Design
Term 3, 2017
Assessment 1 - Systems Development
Lecturer: Lecturer Name
Tutor: Tutor Name
Prepared by:
Student Name
Student Number

Table of Contents
1. Introduction.......................................................................................................................................1
2. Approach to Systems Development..................................................................................................1
2.1 Existing system at the UCC...........................................................................................................1
2.2 Justification for the Selected approach for the development of the system...............................1
3. Systems Requirements......................................................................................................................2
Functional requirements...................................................................................................................2
Non-functional requirements............................................................................................................2
4. Project Cost Benefit Analysis.............................................................................................................3
5. Project Schedule................................................................................................................................4
6. System Information Requirement Investigation Techniques.............................................................6
7. Reflections and Conclusions..............................................................................................................7
8. References.........................................................................................................................................8

1. Introduction
As the “UNICEF Child Care” (UCC) has opened multiple branches in Brisbane, Melbourne,
Rockhampton and Gold Coast and facing difficulties in operating them with current manual process
thus it is important for them to develop and deploy a central information management system
(Coeurderoy, Guilmot and Vas 2014). The main objective of this information system development
project is to automate the manual processes as well as reduce the wastage of the resources at the
different branches and provide improved services to its clients.
The following report contributes to the discussion about the approach for the development of the
information system, functional and non-functional requirements for the proposed information
system. In addition to that, different sections of this consist of discussion on cost benefit analysis of
the development project, schedule of the project and techniques to be used for system information
requirements.
2. Approach to Systems Development
2.1 Existing system at the UCC
For UCC, having multiple branches at different locations it becomes difficult to manage and
integrate the available information coming from different branches. With more than 40 employees
working at different branches it becomes complex to manage the payment related data, generating
receipts, invoices for the suppliers with the manual system (Liu et al. 2016). The current manual
system is mainly inefficient for the below mentioned reasons,
i. Duplication of the data related to the payments and other processes at different
branches.
ii. Inefficient management of the payment related data from the different branches.
iii. Complexity in managing the financial data related to the suppliers and stock at different
branches.
iv. Employees are unable to find required information whenever they require due to the
complex and manual data management process.
2.2 Justification for the Selected approach for the development of the system
As there may be different changes related to the information system that needs to be
accommodated in between the different phases of the project. Therefore, we are select the agile
system development approach for this project.
Compared to the other development methodologies, the agile methodology requires very less
documentations thus optimize use of the resources as well as time for the software system
development projects.
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In this methodology, any new requirements related to the project can be accommodated without
thinking about the budget constraint.
Prototypes of the desired application and testing of those prototypes helps the project team to
determine the gap between the requirements and developed project.
3. Systems Requirements
Functional requirements
As the system will be used by both the administrators and the users (i.e. the parents) thus the
system should be developed in multiple modules such as customer module, admin module, accounts
module as well as inventory management module. In the following section the modules and desired
functionalities are described in brief.
Authentication and authorization
In order to use the developed information system every user must have a unique password and
password. Again as the different departments of the organization does not need access to the all
types of data available in the system (Schwalbe 2015). Therefore, the users will have authorization
levels so that the employees will have access only to that information which are required for
completing their responsibilities. In this way exploitation of the data can be eliminated.
Customer module
For this module, Before the customers pay for the services they have to provide their details such as
their email and other credentials so that the UCC can send back the receipts to the customers. In this
way the customer does not have come to the branch in order to get the invoice of the payment.
Financial module
This module of the information system will be used by the accounts department of the
Organization. Such as the details of deposited payment from the parents of the children, expenses
incurred by the different branches of the Organization.
Inventory management module
It will be used to easily manage and track the inventories at different branches so that the wastage
can be reduced that happens in the manual process.
Admin module
This module of the application will be used by the top level management of the organization in
order to manage the users and overall performance of the users.
Non-functional requirements
Following are the non-functional requirements for the proposed information system
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Reliability: The system should be able to protect the data through unauthorised access from
unauthorized users.
Availability: This is about making the system with lesser downtime so that the services are available
to the users as soon as necessary maintenance of the system is completed.
Usability: Proposed information system should be easy to use even for a non-technical user so that
they can complete their tasks with ease.
4. Project Cost Benefit Analysis
The cost benefit analysis of the proposed information system will help the organization to
determine the economic feasibility of the project. It will compare the total cost to develop and
maintain the solution for the organization with the tangible value of the benefits from the
implemented system (Coeurderoy, Guilmot and Vas 2014). Following is the table that shows the
calculation of the cost and benefit from this project.
Cost required for Hardware $ 45,000.00
Cost required for Software $ 30,000.00
Development team Cost $ 65,000.00
Training Cost $ 20,000.00
Total Cost for Development $ 1,60,000.00
Hardware maintenance cost $ 10,000.00
Software maintenance cost $ 15,000.00
Operational cost $ 40,000.00
Total Operational Cost $ 65,000.00
Overall savings $ 1,14,000.00
Maintenance cost of the system $ 60,000.00
Total Benefit $ 1,74,000.00
Discount Rate 6.00%
Table 1: Cost Benefit analysis of the Information system development project
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5. Project Schedule
Following is the schedule and Gnatt chart for the project of developing an information system for
UCCC.
Schedule
Task Name Duration
Information system development for UNICEF Child
Care 165 days
Planning 29 days
Gather Requirements 10 days
Analyze Requirements 5 days
Feasibility Study 8 days
project plan and Proposal Submission 4 days
Completion of Project Plan 2 days
Analysis 24 days
Determine functional and non-functional Requirement 15 days
Review of the Functional specification 5 days
Review of the Non-functional requirements 2 days
Finalizing the functional and non-functional requirements 2 days
Design 50 days
Development of the first prototype 25 days
Get feedback from the Client 5 days
Accommodate new functionalities 20 days
Alpha release of the Information system 5 days
refine and Amend new functionalities 15 days
Beta release of the system 5 days
Testing 25 days
Functional Testing 10 days
Security testing 5 days
User Acceptance report 10 days
Deployment and go live 12 days
Deploy the System with the required Framework 5 days
Provide Training to the users of the system 7 days
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Gnatt chart
Figure 1: Gantt Chart for the project
The project schedule for this information system development project is give above. As we
can observe in the above schedule that most of the milestones are achieved through some
smaller tasks. work breakdown structure or the WBS simplifies the effective identification
of the resources as well as skills that are going to be required in order to complete the tasks
in order to achieve a certain deliverable (Coeurderoy, Guilmot and Vas 2014). This in turn helps
in the faster determination of the right people and resources for the tasks.
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6. System Information Requirement Investigation Techniques
There are numerous techniques that are used for the investigating the requirements for any
proposed information system. Some of them which can be used for the organization are
discussed below;
One to one meetings: This is one of the most widely used requirement gathering
techniques. In this technique the development team asks different kinds of questions. This
questions can be open-ended, follow-on questions or probing. In this way, the process will
help to elucidate different stakeholder’s requirements from the proposed system. The
advantages of this process are, it helps in collection of good information while interacting
with stakeholders (Schwalbe 2015). Also the probable users do not feel inhibited about what
they need from the system or their privation of knowledge in certain areas.
Brainstorming: Brainstorming may be used for individuals or for a group of users. Ideas from
the users are collected after which they are reviewed / analysed. After analysis some of the
ideas are included within the system requirements wherever the ideas seem to be relevant.
Ideas are self-generated and can come from what stakeholders have experienced or seen
anywhere else.
Use cases: The use cases related to the specific process depicts how a certain process works,
who are involved in the process. From the use cases the process is described from the users
point of view and what kind of improvement they want.
Prototyping: Prototyping technique includes the process of collecting initial requirements
for the proposed system and build a prototype by using those initial requirements. This
helps the stakeholders to see a potential solution.
7. Reflections and Conclusions
Every segment of any information system development project deals with the prospects to
streamline different business operations while reduce the cost related to those. In addition to that
the use of the information system improves performance of different processes by providing the
right information available at the right time whenever required. Readily accessible data can help the
management of the organization to make the right decisions at the right time for the business.
In this project I learned about the importance of the scheduling of the tasks in a project in order to
make it successful. In addition to that the use of the different requirement gathering techniques will
also have helped me to refine the requirements for an information system.
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8. References
Arvidsson, V., Holmström, J. and Lyytinen, K., 2014. Information systems use as strategy practice: A
multi-dimensional view of strategic information system implementation and use. The Journal of
Strategic Information Systems, 23(1), pp.45-61.
Coeurderoy, R., Guilmot, N. and Vas, A., 2014. Explaining factors affecting technological change
adoption: A survival analysis of an information system implementation. Management
Decision, 52(6), pp.1082-1100.
Eason, K.D., 2014. Information technology and organisational change. CRC Press.
Kateb, M., Swies, R., Obeidat, B. and Maqableh, M., 2015. An Investigation on the Critical Factors of
Information System Implementation in Jordanian Information Technology Companies. European
Journal of Business and Management, 7(36), pp.11-28.
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 Transactions on Power Delivery, 31(2), pp.721-731.
Nguyen, L., Bellucci, E. and Nguyen, L.T., 2014. Electronic health records implementation: an
evaluation of information system impact and contingency factors. International journal of medical
informatics, 83(11), pp.779-796.
Schwalbe, K., 2015. Information technology project management. Cengage Learning.
Sligo, J., Gauld, R., Roberts, V. and Villa, L., 2017. A literature review for large-scale health
information system project planning, implementation and evaluation. International journal of
medical informatics, 97, pp.86-97.
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