ICT700 Systems Analysis: Agile Methodologies, UCD & CRM Application

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of agile and iterative methodologies, including Scrum, Unified Process (UP), Extreme Programming (XP), and Adaptive Software Development (ASD), and their application in designing a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system for Australian Fashion Designs (AFD). It recommends Scrum for initial CRM implementation due to its simplicity and customer-oriented approach, with a potential transition to UP for future enhancements. The report also delves into User-Centered Design (UCD) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) principles, outlining a plan for a UCD-informed HCI design for the CRM application. Furthermore, it includes a series of modeling and diagramming tasks, such as creating an event table, domain model class diagram, design class diagram, use case diagram, and a use case description for the 'Takes Order' scenario, providing a detailed blueprint for the development of the AFD information system.

ICT700 - SYSTEMS ANALYSIS - TASK 2

Table of Contents
Part A...........................................................................................................................................................3
Task 1: Report..........................................................................................................................................3
General Introduction to the agile and iterative methodologies..........................................................3
Scrum...................................................................................................................................................3
Unified Process (UP)............................................................................................................................4
Extreme Programming (XP).................................................................................................................6
Adaptive Software Development (ASD)...............................................................................................7
Recommendation................................................................................................................................8
Task 2: Memo........................................................................................................................................10
1. Description of UCD and HCI.......................................................................................................10
2. Implications of UCD principles on the CRM application.............................................................10
3. Plan for a UCD informed HCI for the CRM application...............................................................11
4. Recommendation......................................................................................................................11
Part B- Modeling and Diagramming..........................................................................................................13
Task 3: Events Table..............................................................................................................................13
Review the AFD case study and prepare an event table for the information system to support the
business processes................................................................................................................................13
Task 4: Domain Model Class Diagram....................................................................................................14
Review the AFD case study to prepare a domain model class diagram for the supporting
information system...............................................................................................................................14
Task 5: Design Class Diagram.................................................................................................................16
Prepare a Design class diagram for the Sales Representative and Order classes ONLY. These classes
should be part of the Domain model class diagram solution for the previous task...............................16
Task 6: Use Case Diagram......................................................................................................................18
Review the AFD case study and your event table solution from Task 3 to prepare a Use Case
diagram for the supporting information system....................................................................................18
Task 7: Use Case Description (intermediate).........................................................................................20
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Prepare a Use Case intermediate description for the 'Takes Order' use case, as documented in the
event table solution and the use case diagram solution.......................................................................20
Flow of activities for scenario of Takes order in AFD information system.........................................20
References.................................................................................................................................................22
Table of Figures
Figure 1 Scrum Methodology......................................................................................................................4
Figure 2 UP lifecycle phases........................................................................................................................5
Figure 3 XP Lifecycle....................................................................................................................................6
Figure 4 ASD lifecycle phases.......................................................................................................................8
Figure 5 Domain model class diagram.......................................................................................................14
Figure 6 Class Diagram for Sales Representative and Order classes..........................................................16
Figure 7 Use case diagram for information system of Australian Fashion Designs....................................18
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Part A
Task 1: Report
General Introduction to the agile and iterative methodologies
Agile and iterative development has been bought into existence over traditional methodologies to
get new ways of software development which are flexible, lightweight, and efficient and team-
oriented. After the discussion over introducing agile methodologies, better ways have been
uncovered with four basic principles of agile which includes- Interactions and individuals will be
given priority over development tools and process, the working software that is created is prioritized
over the complete documentation of the software, collaboration with customer is chosen over
negotiation of contract, and responding to real-time changes are chosen over sticking to a particular
plan. The iterative approach has been used in programming this software. The iterative development
means the whole lifespan of software development is composed of iterative processes in sequence.
Iteration will perform the complete process of analysis, designing, programming, and testing. The
result of iteration will be a subset of final product and the combined product iteration will be a
partially completed product (Larman, 2004).
The different agile methodologies used for software development are:
Scrum
Scrum has been designed by Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle in 1990s with a perspective that
changes exist throughout the lifecycle of a software development process and it attempts to manage
and solve the problems caused by these changes. It is an agile and incremental development process
that adds focus, clarity in each iteration process and work in close observation to increase the speed
of development process and evolution of the software system. Work has been classifying into cycles
called sprints, which focuses on the development of software as per customer requirements and at
the end of each sprint, a potential product is developed that is ready to be shipped. Scrum iteration
takes two to four weeks duration and it can complete a useable product with its complete
functionality demonstration within 30 days on average. It can be implemented at the start of the
project, in middle, or when a project has encountered a risk or trouble (Cobb, 2015).
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Figure 1 Scrum Methodology
Advantages
 Simple to use and manage work products.
 Openness and flexibility.
 Customer involvement and steering.
 Team communication and working together builds strong team values.
 Can be easily combined with other working methods.
 Focus.
Disadvantages
 Require daily update on Sprint Backlog by either trackers or members.
 Can’t change the requirements of iteration as stability is required for constant changes.
 Bad documentation can result in bad designing of the system and eventually, a bad product
will be delivered (Cobb, 2015).
Unified Process (UP)
The Unified Process follows an object-oriented approach for software development. It has been
designed to incorporate six practices that a system should have which includes iterative
development, defining and managing system requirements, using component architecture for
overall development, visual models have been created for simplifying the development process,
quality verification is done, and damage and change control system is enabled to handle such issues.
The UP modeling constitutes four phases- inception phase in which a feasible study of requirements
is done to decide whether the project is worth to invest in or not, elaboration phase consists of
requirement analysis of one sub module and then designing its development and implementation
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strategies by designing use case, class, and other UML diagrams, Construction phase in which the
actual implementation of the software starts with the iterative approach including testing of each
module and resulting in multiple releases of the system, transition phase when system is delivered
to end user (Satzinger, Jackson, Burd, 2011).
Figure 2 UP lifecycle phases
Advantages
 Can be customized easily.
 Guidelines have been offered in many disciplines from requirement analysis to configuration
management.
 Focuses on risk and value-based priorities.
 Can be used on small scale and large scale projects.
 Emphasis on building an early cohesive architecture.
 Learning resources are available as a widely adopted methodology.
Disadvantages
 Iteration process can be too long and can last up to several months.
 Iteration period is increased when deadline not met which makes iteration out of time.
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 The development case of the system is too complex to handle.
 Uses lots of planning and designing UML diagrams (Cobb, 2015).
Extreme Programming (XP)
One of the most common and well-known methodologies used for agile development is Extreme
programming. It focuses on early system creation and collaboration along with skillful practices for
development. The four basic underlying principle of this methodology are communication, feedback
process, simplicity in the process, and courage. Apart from these four main principles, there are 12
other core practices that have been defined in this methodology to fight against any changing
environment and technology. The approach used in XP is to release smaller subsystem with various
functionality test code before actually writing specific code for each functionality or feature. This
methodology strongly recommends knowledge sharing among customers and developers just like
RAD approach. It is very distinctive and doesn’t require detailed work products. Extreme has been
used to imply that this methodology provides many good things in a software system like good
testing, coding, iteration and integration processing and communication with customers and team
members (Larman, 2004).
Figure 3 XP Lifecycle
Advantages
 Communication emphasis among all stakeholders.
 Quality emphasis by using high impact practices such as continuous integration, test-first
development.
 Regular and detailed review of what has done.
 Customer acceptance done is performed to clarify what system is acceptable.
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Disadvantages
 It is just a combination of iterative development with minimum documentation and unit
testing process.
 Applying uncompensated subset practices before completing the whole of XP will result into
an error. Hence no customization can be added in the middle of the process.
 No standard way of defining the document structure.
Adaptive Software Development (ASD)
Adaptive Software Development (ASD) has been grown out of RAD (Rapid application development)
that embodies the solutions for problems in designing large and complex system. It emphasizes on
constant prototyping along with iterative and incremental development. This process has been
carried out in three-phase – speculate, collaborate and learn. Speculation is used in place of planning
because planning views uncertainty as a weakness and any kind of change or deviation will result in
failure. Collaboration emphasizes the power of communication and teamwork for the development
of any complex system. Learn focuses on the need to acquire knowledge and learn from mistakes to
respond to problems in future. ASD is not task oriented but component oriented methodology and
each component has its own sets of processes with a predefined timeline. It focuses on the end
result and quality of generated product instead of the undergoing tasks and processes
(Abrahamsson, Salo, Ronkainen, et.al, 2017).
Figure 4 ASD lifecycle phases
Advantages
 It does not imply the use of co-located teams.
 ASD offers inter-team collaboration technique for sharing of information, strategies over
social, cultural and skill boundaries.
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Disadvantages
 Building a complex system will require extensive knowledge and hence, a team of experts on
the subject will be required.
 It features to build an adaptive culture in the organization instead of focusing on the
specifics, which makes it less popular to use in organizations as other methods need to be
used along with it for the development of a system.
Recommendation
The agile and iterative systems development is more widely used in industry from last two decades
because of its more flexibility and openness achieved in the system. The different methodologies
used to execute agile development have been discussed here. Now if we consider the case of
Australian Fashion Designs (AFD), their business needs to incorporate sales and customer
relationship management system. The current computer usage of the brand is negligible, hence they
need a system at their basic level which can be customized and enhanced later. The product
requirements are simple and can be achieved using Scrum methodology as it is simple to implement
at the starting stage of a system. As scrum is the customer oriented approach, it will be helpful in
designing Customer relations management system. Once the basic system is implemented and
delivered to them and they require any enhancement in the system or wanted to add other features
to the system or prepare any other system for salary management then the Unified process model
can be used as it provides better facilities in customization and responds efficiently to changing
requirements. The basic requirements of AFD, for now, are to create a CRM application, a review
application for the stores that become its customer and their management, and a monthly sales
report. Scrum model will be effective in designing the system as in its first phase the developers will
contact the AFD stakeholders to discuss their requirements and what changes they want in it, then
they can present a prototype to them depicting the functionalities of the final product. The whole
process will be steered by AFD employers and they can ask to change anything that doesn’t fit their
requirement during the development process only so that they can get desired product at the time
of delivery.
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Task 2: Memo
From:
To: AFD Management Team
CC: Australian Fashion Designs
Subject: Adopting a plan with the principle of UCD and HCI.
1. Description of UCD and HCI
User-centered design is a designing process based on an iterative approach that interacts
with the user in each phase to focus on their needs while designing the system. UCD involves
users throughout their designing process to include a variety of designing techniques
suitable to users for high usability and accessibility of products. UCD requires that the
system designer needs to include investigative and generative approach and tools to get
most of the user needs. It is regarded as a multi-stage platform that not only envisions user
needs but also validates their needs by putting the system to test in the real world.
Human-Computer Interaction is a research field that deals with the communication and
interaction between humans and computer technologies. The theories used in HCI aims to
understand the various ways in which humans try to communicate with computer systems
and design new ways to create interactive user computer interfaces for improving usability
and user experience. HCI incorporates many other disciplinary fields such as psychology,
computer science, sociology, behavioral science and communication to get the best output
for human-computer interaction. This way the developers designing a system can relate to
what the end user needs and can design a system that suits all the end users.
2. Implications of UCD principles on the CRM application
For designing a customer relationship management system, user-centered design approach
will be befitting the most. The UCD framework is based on six main principles that need to
be implemented in the CRM system to the server for individual techniques. Firstly, the
business target is determined and the characteristics of these customers are identified to
reach out to a solution that maximum of them can use efficiently. Later the target audience
needs to be contacted o understand their requirements and needs. This is the main driving
force of a UCD framework. The third principle is to design a total customer experience that
includes everything a customer needs to see and hear. The whole system is designed in a
way that the customer actually wants. Then the system design is evaluated by getting
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frequent feedback from the targeted audience. The fifth principle deals with the market
competitiveness and focuses on giving a unique experience to their customers. The design
that they are implementing needs to be unique to stand out in the market. A thorough
examination of other competitor’s products will help in evaluating one’s own design. The
last principle that UCD follows is how to manage users. This principle is most important as it
manages users and their feedbacks that are an integral part of the designing process. If this
process is not implemented properly, then the design will not be integrated into the system
and the user will not be able to use the design it was expected.
3. Plan for a UCD informed HCI for the CRM application
The implementation of the Customer relationship management system with the help of UCD
approach involving the HCI principles will help in attaining the best results for the system.
Human-computer interaction will help in an effective communication between the computer
system and the users. Thus the implementation of UCD principles with HCI will ease out the
designing process for the developers. The combined use of both these technologies will
result in a fully operational and user-friendly system. Interactivity is the main concept in
designing the user interface and communicating online. Hence various interactive features
are included in a system where the user can interact with the computer system. The HCI
deals with the psychology and behavioral science of humans that helps the developers in
gaining the knowledge of what kind of product with what features the user wants. This will
help in providing a customized interface for each user as per their needs and requirements
by implementing a single system. Different psychological theories are proposed for achieving
different interactivity and this can be gained by receiving responses from a large number of
users. Hence customer feedback is always important to a brand as it helps in improving their
services and managing users (Matharu, 2015).
4. Recommendation
As we have discussed the principles of User-centered design and human-computer
interaction, it is clear that the use of these two approaches in a project will gain higher
outputs that will be beneficial to any organization. I will recommend the combined use of
both these approaches as Australian Fashion Designs is new to computer technology and
they don’t have strong reliance in a computer system, hence they will be least aware of what
a user likes over the internet. That is why it is important for them to introduce HCI in their
system along with UCD which will help their customers as well as their employees to be well
versed with the system and can be able to interact with it in a more efficient way. This way,
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chances of misleading and misusage of a system is least. This will also help them in
developing a system that can easily manage their sales record and the customers’ records
such as their basic information along with their orders. It will also provide AFD an
opportunity to review the customer application without any difficulty. Hence the use of
these approaches will enhance their system functionality (Meena, 2015).
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