Project Plan: Dairy Farm Monitoring System (E-Milking Farm)

This project plan outlines the development of an E-Milking Farm, an automated dairy farm monitoring system designed to improve farm management and financial outcomes. The system includes key performance indicators like milk production and cost analysis, facilitating loan applications for farmers. The project encompasses a detailed concept, business model, and user stories, targeting farmers, farm managers, and administrators. It covers core technologies such as PHP for the front-end, cloud-based NoSQL databases for the back-end, and integration of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence for data analysis and enhanced functionality. The system aims to address challenges in farm monitoring, providing features like performance tracking, loan requests, and report generation, ultimately aiming to enhance farm profitability and efficiency. The plan also discusses the competitive landscape and early feedback from potential users, ensuring a user-friendly and technologically advanced application.

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Dairy Farm Monitoring System (E-Milking Farm)
Project Plan
3/14/2019

E-Milking Farm
Executive Summary
Project planning is one of the significant parts of any project. The dairy farm management
system is an automated system that will keep a track of the performance and financial
outcomes of the dairy farms. The system will include certain key performance indicators,
such as average milk production, cost per kg of the milk produced, and likewise to
understand the financial performance of the dairy farm. On the basis of the cash flow
calculated by the application, the farm managers will be able to provide loans to the farmers.
The document is a Project Plan prepared for dairy farm monitoring system (E-Milking Farm).
It comprises of the concept, business model, and details of the user stories. The core
technologies that will be involved in the project are also covered.
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E-Milking Farm
Table of Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................3
Project Concept.....................................................................................................................................3
Problem Statement.............................................................................................................................3
Justification.......................................................................................................................................3
Basic Functionality............................................................................................................................3
Target Audience................................................................................................................................4
Early Feedback......................................................................................................................................4
Competition...........................................................................................................................................5
Personas.................................................................................................................................................5
Top User Stories....................................................................................................................................5
Business Model.....................................................................................................................................6
Core Technologies.................................................................................................................................7
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................8
References.............................................................................................................................................9
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E-Milking Farm
Introduction
Project management has become essential for any small to large-scale projects. It is because;
there are various activities that are carried out during a project timeline. There are various
phases that are a part of the project management lifecycle. Project planning is one of the
significant parts of any project. The document is a Project Plan prepared for dairy farm
monitoring system (E-Milking Farm). It comprises of the concept, business model, and
details of the user stories. The core technologies that will be involved in the project are also
covered (Radujkovic and Sjekavica, 2017).
Project Concept
The project is the dairy farm monitoring systems that is being developed for the dairy farm
managers and farmers.
Problem Statement
There are a number of dairy farms that are present; however, the management and monitoring
of these dairy farms has become a concern for the farm managers and owners. There are also
farmers that do not get access to the loans and fail to keep track of the farm performance. The
dairy farm managers also find it challenging to determine the financial performance of the
farms before providing the loans to the farmers to scale up their operations and activities.
Justification
The dairy farm management system is an automated system that will keep a track of the
performance and financial outcomes of the dairy farms. The system will include certain key
performance indicators, such as average milk production, cost per kg of the milk produced,
and likewise to understand the financial performance of the dairy farm. On the basis of the
cash flow calculated by the application, the farm managers will be able to provide loans to
the farmers. Also, the application will allow the farmers to gain access to the techniques that
may be used to enhance the milk production. The communication between the farmers and
the farm managers will also be made possible using the system.
Basic Functionality
There will be login functionality provided to the three user types, as farm manager, farmer,
and administrator. The farmers will be able to log the values in the performance indicators,
such as daily milk production, cost per kg, weekly production units, and likewise. The
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farmers will also be able to send requests for the loans to the farm managers using the
application. The farm managers will be able to receive the input values provided by the
farmers. The system will make use of analytical tools and will provide the results in the form
of profits, performance outcomes, and the overall revenues (Zheng, 2015). The decision to
provide the loans to the farmers will be made on the basis of the results and the loan status
will be shared with the farmers through the application.
The administrator will be able to manage the application information, user account, and user
permission.
Target Audience
The target audience of the dairy farm monitoring system is the farmers and the farm
managers of the dairy farms.
The users may be divided on the basis of the size of their farms as the farmers and farm
managers of small farms may be grouped in one unit and likewise. The system will target
12000-14500 users in the first phase.
Early Feedback
The idea of the dairy farm monitoring system was shared with the members from the target
audience along with the industry experts.
The farmers and the farm managers were impressed with the concept and liked the
performance indicators that were to be included in the application. However, they wished to
have added functionalities in the system. They wished to have the option to fetch daily and
weekly reports from the system. Also, the farmers and the farm managers wanted to keep a
track of the health and nutrition details of the animals in the farm through the application
(Soest, Mourits and Hogeveen, 2015).
The industry experts also liked the idea and provided the feedback that focussed on the user
interface of the application. The experts provided the feedback that the interface shall be kept
simple so that the users easily understand the flow of the application. The layout must also be
self-explanatory as the majority of the users may not be technologically advanced.
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E-Milking Farm
Competition
There are offline dairy management units that have been set-up that act as third-parties for the
farmers and the farm managers and provided them with the services of farm monitoring and
performance tracking. There are also certain similar applications in the market.
The competition will be dealt with as the functionalities included in this application will
cover the determined specifications along with the ones provided by the target audience in the
early feedback. There will also be use of latest technology, such as Big Data Analytics and
Artificial Intelligence (AI) concepts that will be done in the application to enhance the overall
performance and functionality of the system (Hussain and Roy, 2016, p. 25-32).
In this manner, the application will have a competitive edge in the market.
Personas
The description of the three types of users is provided below:
 Farmers: These will be the users looking after the animals in the dairy farm and
working in the farm to make profits and earn livelihood. They may or may not be the
farm owners themselves.
 Farm Managers: These are the users that will be responsible for farm management
and may be the owners or hired by the owners to ensure that the enhanced profits are
gained out from the farm.
 Administrator: The application admin will manage the user details and information
and will also be able to grant permissions to the user.
Top User Stories
User Story
ID
User Story
1 As a farmer, I would like to login to the application so that I can access the
system information and functionalities.
2 As a farmer, I would like to key in the values for the key performance
indicators so that I may get to know the performance results of the farm.
3 As a farmer, I would like to send the loan request through the application so
that the loan sanctioning process becomes quick.
4 As a farmer, I would like to provide the nutrition information of the animals
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E-Milking Farm
in the system so that I may get to access the preferred nutrition and health
details.
5 As a farmer, I would like to access the farm reports for my farm so that I
may understand the farm performance.
6 As a farm manager, I would like to login to the application so that I can
access the system information and functionalities.
7 As a farm manager, I would like to receive the values provided by the
farmers so that I may understand the farm performance and monitoring the
same.
8 As a farm manager, I would like to access the performance statistics, graphs,
and charts so that I may monitor the farm performance.
9 As a farm manager, I would like to access the farm reports of the farm so
that I may understand the farm performance.
10 As a farm manager, I would like to access the loan requests from the farmers
so that I may approve or reject the loan and send the loan for processing.
11 As an administrator, I would like to login to the application so that I can
access the system information and functionalities.
12 As an administrator, I would like to set user roles and permissions so that the
application information remains safe at all times.
13 As an administrator, I would like the ability to add, delete, or modify the
users so that the user access is controlled properly.
14 As an administrator, I would like to modify the application contents as per
the need so that application integrity, information confidentiality, and
availability is maintained at all times.
Business Model
The dairy farm monitoring system is being designed for the farmers and the farm managers to
provide them with the ability to monitor and manage the farms correctly. The primary focus
of the system will be on the financial performance and monitoring for the farms. As more and
more number of users will get associated with the system, the revenues earned by the system
will also go up.
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E-Milking Farm
Also, there will be partnerships with the insurance service companies that will also be done
so that the loan acceptance or processing can be fastened. The association will also provide
the revenues and the same will go up with the increase in the number of users on the system.
The services will be sustainable as dairy farm management is one of the activities that is
relevant and will stay for long. The milk products will be consumed by the people and the
demand for the milk and milk products will never go down. The performance monitoring is
also essential for the farmers and the farm managers as they wish to earn enhanced revenues
and profits through their respective farms.
Core Technologies
The dairy farm management system will have a front-end and a back-end. The front-end will
be the interface that will be accessible to the users and the users will be able to access all the
system functionalities using the front-end. The front-end will be developed as a mobile
application as the users will get the ability to access the system functions on any of their
mobile devices. This will enhance the availability of the system for the users. The
programming language that will be used to develop the front-end will be PHP programming
language as it will provide the required scalability, portability, and flexibility to the
application.
The back-end of the application will be the data storage unit that will store and process all the
system data and information. Cloud services will be used to store the system data. There will
use of NoSQL cloud-based databases that will be done in this case so that the infrastructural
needs of storing the data are avoided. The cloud-based databases will be accessible through
the network and will provide the virtual storage space to the system.
Big Data will be another core technology that will be involved. There will be numerous users
that will be registered on the application. Each of these users will have abundant data sets in
terms of the values of milk production units, health & nutrition information, and likewise.
The manual analysis of the information sets will not be possible (Abbaszadegan and Grau,
2015). The use of Big Data tools will be done in the system and these tools will be integrated
with the dairy farm management system. These tools will provide an automated analysis of
the values provided by the users (Elder, 2015, p. 4).
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Another core technology that will be involved in the system will be Artificial Intelligence
(AI). It is a technology that provides the ability to develop smart machines that may be able
to perform in a human-like manner. The use of the AI concepts will be done in the system to
determine the health and nutrition needs of the animals on the basis of the data provided by
the farmers in the past (Luxton, 2014).
Conclusion
Automation has become a necessity in the present times. It is because the processing speed of
the operations needs to be reduced with enhanced quality and accuracy of the operations. The
dairy farm management system is an automated system that will keep a track of the
performance and financial outcomes of the dairy farms. The farmers will be able to log the
values in the performance indicators, such as daily milk production, cost per kg, weekly
production units, and likewise. The farmers will also be able to send requests for the loans to
the farm managers using the application. The farm managers will be able to receive the input
values provided by the farmers. The front-end will be developed as a mobile application as
the users will get the ability to access the system functions on any of their mobile devices.
The back-end of the application will be the data storage unit that will store and process all the
system data and information. Cloud services will be used to store the system data.
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References
Abbaszadegan, A. and Grau, D. (2015). Assessing the Influence of Automated Data
Analytics on Cost and Schedule Performance. Procedia Engineering, 123, pp.3-6.
Elder, J. (2015). A new training program in data analytics & visualization. Big Data and
Information Analytics, 1(1).
Hussain, A. and Roy, A. (2016). The emerging era of Big Data Analytics. Big Data Analytics,
1(1).
Luxton, D. (2014). Recommendations for the ethical use and design of artificial intelligent
care providers. Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, 62(1), pp.1-10.
Radujkovic, M. and Sjekavica, M. (2017). Project Management Success Factors. Procedia
Engineering, 196, pp.607-615.
Soest, F., Mourits, M. and Hogeveen, H. (2015). European organic dairy farmers’
preference for animal health management within the farm management system. animal,
9(11), pp.1875-1883.
Zheng, Z. (2015). Introduction to Big Data Analytics and the Special Issue on Big Data
Methods and Applications. Journal of Management Analytics, 2(4), pp.281-284.
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