Reference no: EM132411100

CASE STUDY

During requirements modelling for the new system, you met with the farm hands and owners of several farms who were in discussions with "Natural-Lee" and intending to join as part of an expanded company, all coordinated in a direct delivery model to customers. Things were moving very quickly, and positively. You conducted a series of interviews, reviewed planting and harvesting records, observed business operations, analysed the payment processes, and studied a sample of sales, billing and account settlement transactions. Your objective was to develop a list of system requirements for the proposed system that would unify the farms at a business level. You found the following:

• A typical farm has capacity to provide produce to 175-250 customers, with two customer types: "Regular" and "Standard". Regular customers seek a relatively "regular" mix of vegetables each week trusting the farms discretion to determine what vegetables to provide for them for the week if need be, while "standard" customers place orders most weeks, but are much more varied in what they may order for that week. If there is going to be a short fall in availability of vegetable produce, then first priority is given to meeting the orders placed by regular customers over standard customers.

• All customers are able to provide their order using the existing "phone-in" system, but there is a preference for customers to order using an online web form. The on-line form "stores" each customers previous weeks' order and so presents a "defaulted selection" with the aim of speeding up order placement for most customers, though there is capacity to change the selections through a check-box interface.

• All orders are defaulted to be delivered to home premises, though there is capacity for a customer to pick up their order from their "local" farm should they choose to do so. The home address thus needs to be known, along with any special instructions regarding hazards on premises, such as dogs being present. Each farm will thus need to establish a delivery service, and it is envisioned that there could be some overlap with respect to which farm may fulfil and deliver for customers who fall near a "boundary" between two or more farms.

• All customers have credit privileges. Credit purchases for vegetables are currently recorded on a paper credit slip, which is signed by the customer, and to be invoiced at the end of the month. The electronic form of ordering vegetables is to maintain such a credit process, though customers may choose to pay as each order is placed, or as produce is delivered.

• At the end of each day, cash/EFTPOS sales and credit charge amounts are entered into the NLA ("Natural-Lee" Accounts) accounting software, which runs on a local computer at each farm. Daily cash takings are deposited in a local bank in the corporate NLA Account. The NLA program produces a daily activity report with a listing of all sales transactions

At the end of the month, each local farm owner uses NLA to transmit an accounts receivable summary to the NL head office at Phil's farm, where member statements are prepared and mailed either by email or physical mail, depending upon the customers selected preference. Members may physically mail their payments to Phil's farm, where the payment is applied to the member account, or use an on-line credit card payment system, which is being promoted by the farm as a preferred method of payments.

• The NLA program stores basic customer information, but does not include information about customer vegetable preferences...although such information would, in principle, be available by interrogating a customers' purchasing history.

• Currently the NLA program produces one local report (the daily activity report) and three reports that are prepared at the head office location (Phil's farm): a monthly customer sales report, an exception report for inactive customers and late payers, and a quarterly profit-and-loss report that shows a breakdown of revenue and costs for each separate line of vegetables.

During the interviews you received a number of "wish list" comments from farm staff and indeed, owners of other farms, who were now becoming more interested in becoming involved commercially with Phil and Wendy.

For example, many farmers want more analytical features so they can spot trends in demand, especially those tied to season, and so prepare by planting more of certain crops. Farm hands are frustrated when there is an over-yield of some crops which are thus left to rot, and would prefer a means by which temporary discounts could be provided to help clear such stock, or better still, to have these used to complete short falls experienced at other farms that are to be part of the NL business network. The farm owners also want better information about the profitability of specific vegetables, instead of bottom-line totals.

Several farmers want to offer various social networking options, including email communications and Facebook groups, to promote/advertise (discount/sale) farm produce. Richard is also in support of this digital marketing and proposed to the management and the management is keen to have this capability in their system.

Several farmers want better ways to handle information about part-time farm hands, and several farm hands have requested flexibility in being able to work at different farms.

ACTIVITY

1. Write down a list of the main functions needed to be handled by the new system.

2. What are the roles that will be interacting with the system?

3. Write down a list of additional features which in principle could be included in the new system, but are more likely to be held back for now and considered in the future if and when the resulting information system is subject to later review and enhancement(s).

Include the list with appropriate descriptions in your report.

4. Using all the information that you know about the NL business so far, create a use case diagram (with all actors/users and use cases) for the new system and include it in your report. You may provide enough explanation about the use case diagram.

5. Select four use-cases and write a brief use-case description for them.

6. Pick one of these use-cases and write a full use-case description for it. Draw and use an activity diagram in the full description.

7. You need to have the following in your report:
• use case list and descriptions
• the use-case diagram and its explanation
• brief use-case descriptions for 4 use-cases
• a full use-case description
• an activity diagram