Table of Contents
Clients and user requirements 5
Software Development Lifecycle 5
Client Interview 11
Requirements 13
Client Interview 11
Designs for the program 11
Review the design with others to identify and inform improvements to the proposed solution…………..15
Justify design decisions 16
User testing questionnaire 17
Program optimisations 18
Stability Testing – Test Plans 22
Evaluations 25
Screenshots of the code 29
PROGRAM:62
Client and user requirements (Introduction):
I have been told to design and produce a program for a local college. The program will
be a scoring system for their tournament. The program will calculate the scores of
each of the 4 teams and output the results for the user to view. Firstly, I will design
the program, designing how the program and its interface will look face. I will talk
about how I will implement the Software Development Lifecycle when designing and
creating the program.
Once my designed have been made, I will ask for feedback on these designs. Once
this feedback has been gathered and improvements have been made, I will then
create the code for the program. I will be coding this program in Python.
Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC):
There are many different versions of the Software Development Life Cycle, however
most stages are very common and follow the same order.
It is a conceptual model that describes the stages used to manage the creation of a
solution from its inception, through its maintenance and its retirement.
It consists of 6 stages:
Assessment of the requirements for an identified problem:
Understanding the requirements for an identified problem. If there is no
understanding of what the client's needs, then it will be significantly more difficult to
,find a solution. These requirements can most commonly be found from the clients
brief. If these requirements are not detailed and require more clarification, then you
must find more details. This can be done by directly questioning the users about the
tasks they perform, work patterns and any problems they encounter in their job. It
can also be done by observing what process is being computerised, such as answering
a customer question or calculating a cost of an order. Another way it can be done is
by examining the manual documents which need to be computerised, such as data
collection forms (order forms, timesheets, stock lists)
Once the requirements are found and are clear, it can be decided what is within and
what isn't within the scope of the project.
Feasibility study (Microsoft Access & Excel):
Usability assessment:
The Microsoft Access solution previously mentioned is more user friendly for the
college. It has a user-friendly Graphical User Interface which will allow any student,
even ones that are not on an IT course, to create new teams, modify data or remove
data with ease. This GUI is mainly based around a ribbon menu placed at the top of
program, allowing users to change fonts, formats, insert shapes/pictures, include
formulas (SUM, LOOKUP, COUNT), switch views and zoom in and out. In simple
terms, this ribbon is where the users will find all their options for the software. This
ribbon menu is also used in Microsoft Word, and incredibly mainstream, popular word
processing software. Whilst Microsoft Word would not be appropriate of this project, it
is likely that students at the college have had some experience with Word’s GUI
before, therefore they would not have much trouble using Access or Excel’s GUI.
As it is very unlikely for the students to have major trouble using this piece of
software, it would be in line with client requirements (needing future students to
maintain it in the future). It was also mentioned that the college uses computers with
the Windows 10 Operating System installed, therefore it would be able to run
perfectly on the college computers.
Microsoft Excel's Ribbon Menu
Microsoft Access Ribbon Menu
Microsoft Word Ribbon Menu
Economic assessment:
, Microsoft Access and Microsoft Excel requires an Office 365 license to use. Office 365
is a collection of Microsoft software, including Excel and Access. Considering the scale
of the college, this license would not come cheap. The cheapest plan for Office 365 is
£2.20 per student. The college has over 500 students, therefore this license will cost
at least £1100 a year, which would go over the College’s budget for this project of
£1000. If the college has no plans to utilise this license in other projects, then this
cost will significantly impact the feasibility of using this solution for the project, as the
college would lose more paying for this license than they would gain. The college has
no intention to make money of this project, therefore they would see no profits.
However, this solution will not require any new hardware for the college, as the
Windows 10 computers they already have should be able to run Microsoft Access with
no issues.
However, Python is completely free to use, not requiring any license fee or
subscription to use and produce programs. Therefore, Python would be the much
cheaper option out of the 3.
Legal assessment:
There should not be any legal troubles when using this Microsoft Access and Microsoft
Excel solution, unless the college uses the software without paying for the software
license. If there were due to this, they are technically pirating the product, therefore
could face legal repercussions.
If these programs will be storing sensitive/personal information, then it will be up to
the college to ensure that this data does not get into malicious hands, and is
sufficiently protected, appropriately following the Data Protection Act 2018. Microsoft
will not be responsible for any of the college’s mismanagement of data/data breaches
when using their products, unless the data was stolen due to a fault with their
OneDrive service, if the college choose to use it.
Risks of using this solution:
Whilst I previously mentioned that Microsoft Access is easy to use, this depends on
how computer literate the user is, and if they have used other pieces of Microsoft
software before, such as Word or PowerPoint. If they have not had experience in
these pieces of software, then they may struggle to use Access, as the Graphical User
Interface is very similar to Word and PowerPoint. This risk can be overcome though,
by making the college teach their students how to use Access, so that they can
maintain the tournament database. This teaching period should not take a large
amount of time.
Scheduling assessment:
If this solution were to be implemented for the project, it is likely that the project
would be a success. Once the students at the college are taught how to use the
software, they can then maintain the database fairly quickly, most likely in a week or
two. However, the teaching period may take a month, therefore potentially failing to
meet the May 2nd deadline for the project.
Security assessment:
