Approaches to Systems Development

The report mainly focusses on the information system development for the “UNICEF Child Care” organization so that the problems that the organization is facing due to the utilization of manual system can be mitigated easily. The new system will provide the facility of depositing fees online and after the payment, a thanking email for the payment will be generated automatically. The data as well as information related with payment will be stored within the client login so that at the end of the year they have consolidated statement regarding payment. In addition to this, the ordering of supplies product for the childcare will become automated.

How Child Care go about developing its information system

 It is identified that in order to develop the information system for the UNICEF childcare organization, it is very much necessary to select proper software development methodology as per the project necessity. The needs for the development of information system is generally fragmented down into number of phases and proper effort is provided in order to complete the development of the information system for the UNICEF child care organization successfully (Mir & Pinnington, 2014).  Furthermore, proper budget as well as time must be analyzed for the project so that the project tasks that are assigned to various project stakeholders could be completed effectively within due date. Proper management is quite important in order to develop the system as per the organizational goals and objectives.

Justification for the selected approach for the system development

In this project, agile project methodology is selected for developing an information system for the “UNICEF Child care” organization.  The selection of the model is done after focusing on number of factors including size of project team as well as nature of Information system required (Serrador & Pinto, 2015).  It is analyzed that agile method will be most suitable for the project as the project  it virtually eliminates the chances of project failures and also assists in minimizing the number of errors that is mainly generated during the advancement of project development process. In addition to this, this project methodology helps in enhancing collaboration and ownership among the various team members of the project.

Listing primary functional requirement for the system

The functional requirements of the system includes:

Administrative functions: Various administrative functions are needed in order to manage the information that is present within the information system database.

Business rules: It is found that business rules are generally needed in order to analyze the project requirements so that the needs of the project can be easily aligned with the information system development (Buede & Miller, 2016). 

Systems Requirements

External interfaces: In order to record the information as well as data that are generally inputted by the users, external interfaces are generally needed.

Legal and regulatory requirements: It is necessary to resolve all the regulatory issues as well as challenges before the deployment phase of the information system that is mainly developed for UNICEF childcare (Volk, Stengel & Schultmann, 2014).

Authentication: It is necessary to protect the account of the admin as well as users by providing the facility of authentication so that other personnel do not misuse confidential information.

Listing non-functional requirement for the system

The non-functional requirements of the system includes:

Data integrity: It is very much necessary to integrate the data that is mainly present within the database of the information system (Hosseini et al., 2016).

Scalability: In order to enhance system scalability as well as flexibility by minimizing the operational cost that is associated with the information system, it is necessary to implement cloud solution.

Performance:  It is quite necessary to have system that have very much less response time as compared to others (Ismail & King, 2014).

Security: Proper security as well as encryption facility must be provided to the database of the system in order to avoid misuse of information and data.

Cost benefit analysis is mainly undertaken within the project in order to estimate all the costs that are involved with the project and the various possible profits that are generally derived from the project (Boardman et al., 2017).  It is identified that with the help of cost benefit analysis, both positive as well as negative aspect of the project can be properly analyzed in order to elaborate the benefits of the project in context to effort as well as time. In addition to this, both the ratio of operating costs as well as benefits can be identified with the help of CB analysis.

Cost Benefit Analysis for UNICEF Case Study
Hardware	$         80,000.00
Software	$         70,000.00
Development team salaries	$         70,000.00
Training	$           5,000.00
Total Development Cost	$       225,000.00
Maintenance	$           6,000.00
Changes	$           3,000.00
Operational Labor	$         30,000.00
Total Operational Cost	$         39,000.00
Approximate salary savings	$         54,000.00
Reduced Food Wastage	$         60,000.00
Total Benefit	$       114,000.00
Discount Rate Used	6.00%

Project Cost-Benefit Analysis
Analysis Variables:
Discount Rate Used	6.00%
Annual Benefits	$   114,000.00
Annual Operational Costs	$     39,000.00
One-Time Development Cost	$   225,000.00
				Year of Project
		0	1	2	3	4	5	TOTALS
Economic Benefit		$0.00	$        114,000.00	$        114,000.00	$          114,000.00	$        114,000.00	$      114,000.00
Discount Rate		1.0000	0.9434	0.8900	0.8396	0.7921	0.7473
PV of Benefits		$0.00	$107,547.17	$101,459.59	$95,716.60	$90,298.68	$85,187.43
NPV of all BENEFITS		$0.00	$        107,547.17	$        209,006.76	$          304,723.36	$        395,022.04	$      480,209.47	$     480,209.47
One-Time COSTS		$(225,000.00)
Recurring Costs		$0.00	$         (39,000.00)	$         (39,000.00)	$           (39,000.00)	$         (39,000.00)	$       (39,000.00)
Discount Rate		1.0000	0.9434	0.8900	0.8396	0.7921	0.7473
PV of Recurring Costs		$0.00	$         (36,792.45)	$         (34,709.86)	$           (32,745.15)	$         (30,891.65)	$       (29,143.07)
NPV of all COSTS		$(225,000.00)	$       (261,792.45)	$       (296,502.31)	$         (329,247.47)	$       (360,139.12)	$     (389,282.19)	$    (389,282.19)
Overall NPV								$      90,927.28
Overall ROI
								0.2336

 

Work breakdown structure, project schedule and relation between them

Work breakdown Structure

The Work breakdown Structure is created for the project so that the team work can be organized into number of manageable sections. It is used for visually defining the scope of the project into manageable chunks so that the project team can understand and can able to execute the development of information system for the organization successfully.

 

Figure 1: WBS

(Source: Created by Author)

Gantt chart is created for this project so that the team members of the project can be able understand the overall impact of project delays for stronger collaboration as well as for better organization of the task. The Gantt chart is also helpful in handling the project successfully by estimating the time that is needed for completing the development of information system. From the Gantt chart, it is assumed that the entire project will be completed in 117 days.

Project Cost Benefit Analysis

 

Figure 2: Gantt chart

(Source: Created by Author)

Relation between Gantt chart and WBS

The Gantt chart that is provided is mainly used for monitoring the activities of the project that are mainly assigned  for completing the entire project work within the estimated budget and time (Snyder, 2014).  It is identified that the schedule of the project helps in delivering the project on time and it is identified that in order to successfully develop the project schedule, it is necessary to have proper work breakdown structure. It is found that the work breakdown structure generally assists in breaking the project into number of manageable tasks and helps in estimating time within which the activities of the project will be executed.

Explanation for the reasonability of the project schedule

It is very much important to understand the system goals as well as requirements properly for creating the project schedule. The schedule that is developed is mainly aligned with the various project requirements so that the needs of the project can be fulfilled and the schedule can be used by the project managers for executing each of the project activities successfully within the estimated budget as well as time (Wolken-Mohlmann et al., 2016). The schedule of the project must be fragmented into numerous phases so that the cost of the project can be estimated properly.

Listing the stakeholders in the project

The stakeholders  of the project are listed below:

• Chairman (John Smith)
• Admin staff
• Accountant
• Handyman
• Treasure
• Public officer
• Treasurer

Explanation of the three most useful investigation techniques

 The three most important investigation technique that are useful for determining the requirement of the project are as follows:

• Sampling of forms, databases and documentation
• Interviews
• Prototyping

Justification for the usefulness of the three-investigation technique

The benefits of the three-investigation technique are as follows:

Sampling of forms, databases and documentation:

Interviews: Interviews are mainly categorized into structured as well as unstructured interviews. Interviews are performed by involving the human resource department of the organization (Chen et al., 2015). The main purpose of the interview is to gather information about the requirement of the project and for involving the project stakeholders within the entire development process of the project.

Prototyping: It is one of the sampling method in which a simple preliminary design is created for the information system in order to get the approval from the project stakeholder. The prototype is mainly applied within the early stages of development phase for reducing errors within the project (Preston & Roy, 2017).

Sampling of present forms, databases and documentation: This method is mainly utilized in order to collect existing documents that are associated with the organization. The sources that are included with sampling includes emails, reports, customer complaints as well as box notes (Razak et al., 2016).

Conclusion

It can be concluded that the development of Information System for the “UNICEF Childcare” organization is quite advantageous, as it not only helps in resolving the challenges that the company faces due to manual system but also assists in making the operations of the organization automatic. It is identified that Agile project methodology is mainly utilized within the project in order to successful develop the information system. In addition to this, cost benefit analysis is mainly undertaken for analyzing the feasibility of the project.

References

Boardman, A. E., Greenberg, D. H., Vining, A. R., & Weimer, D. L. (2017). Cost-benefit analysis: concepts and practice. Cambridge University Press.

Buede, D. M., & Miller, W. D. (2016). The engineering design of systems: models and methods. John Wiley & Sons.

Chen, Y. C., Chung, T. Y., Lin, C. S., Wu, T. S., & Leu, H. S. (2015). Investigation report on an event of neurosurgical postoperative surgical site infections. Journal of Microbiology, Immunology and Infection, 48(2), S115.

Hosseini, M., Shahri, A., Phalp, K. & Ali, R., (2016). June. A modelling language for transparency requirements in business information systems. In International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (pp. 239-254). Springer, Cham.

Ismail, N. A., & King, M. (2014). Factors influencing the alignment of accounting information systems in small and medium sized Malaysian manufacturing firms. Journal of Information Systems and Small Business, 1(1-2), 1-20.

Mir, F. A., & Pinnington, A. H. (2014). Exploring the value of project management: linking project management performance and project success. International journal of project management, 32(2), 202-217.

Preston, R. P., & Roy, J. (2017). Use of unmanned aerial vehicles to supplement conventional investigation methods for underground open void stability and mitigation.

Razak, S. A., Othman, S. H., Aldolah, A. A., & Ngadi, M. A. (2016). Conceptual investigation process model for managing database forensic investigation knowledge. Res. J. Appl. Sci., Eng. Technol., 12(4), 386-394.

Serrador, P., & Pinto, J. K. (2015). Does Agile work?—A quantitative analysis of agile project success. International Journal of Project Management, 33(5), 1040-1051.

Snyder, C. S. (2014). A guide to the project management body of knowledge: PMBOK (®) guide. Project Management Institute: Newtown Square, PA, USA.

Volk, R., Stengel, J., & Schultmann, F. (2014). Building Information Modeling (BIM) for existing buildings—Literature review and future needs. Automation in construction, 38, 109-127.

Wolken-Möhlmann, G., Bendlin, D., Buschmann, J., & Wiggert, M. (2016). Project schedule assessment with a focus on different input weather data sources. Energy Procedia, 94, 517-522.