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IS480 Team wiki: 2009T1 HighFlyer

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Team HighFlyer

HF1.jpg

As the team name suggests, our team aims to be successful in the projects that we undertake and is dedicated to achieving only the best. The soaring arrow symbolizes our passion and determination to strive for excellence in this project. The color red represents compassion, pluck and unity: qualities that our team will uphold throughout the course of the project.


Highfliers

  • WONG Wei Shen (ws.wong.2007@sis.smu.edu.sg)
  • Melissa LIM Yan Ping (melissalim.2007@sis.smu.edu.sg)
  • Adeline TAN Zhen Zheng (adeline.tan.2007@sis.smu.edu.sg)
  • Sarah YAP Bee Xia (sarah.yap.2007@sis.smu.edu.sg)
  • KOH Hoon Seng Christopher (hs.koh.2007@sis.smu.edu.sg)

Supervisor

Benjamin GAN Kok Siew (benjamingan@smu.edu.sg)

2. Project Overview

Background

On 26 December 2004, a 9.1-magnitude underwater earthquake caused a tremendous tsunami that devastated Aceh Province, Indonesia, resulting in the deaths of some 128,715 people (as of 18 April 2005). As a result, thousands of children are left homeless and orphaned. With no where to go and no parents to take care of them anymore, they are faced with the struggle to keep alive even though they survived the tsunami disaster.

A group of volunteers from the UWC (United World College) decided to step in to help these orphans. Organizing several charity drives, they aim to collect funds to support the lives of these orphans, with the hope that they can carry on their everyday lives and going back to school.

The TEF (Tsunami Education Fund) was hence set up, as a funding for orphans who had lost both parents to the Tsunami. The fund from TEF is to allow these orphans to survive on basic necessities like transport and meals, while they resume their studies.

Project Description

In this project, we aim to develop and implement an IT solution for UWCSEA’s TEF project. The solution will basically address 4 major components:

  • Database administration and management
  • Electronic data interchange and File Transfer
  • Audit trails and archival
  • Facilitation and improvement of workflow


Methodology

We propose to approach this project using a standard Iterative Project Development Process. This process will be briefly broken down into the following components:

a) Information gathering

b) Requirements analysis (stakeholder interviews)

c) Design and Workflow analysis

d) Project team feedback of understanding (Through meetings with end-users)

e) Prototyping

f) Implementation of prototype

g) User acceptance test

h) Project implementation

i) Evaluation and feedback


Scope

The scope of our project includes:

  • Developing an acceptable IT solution for UWCSEA’s TEF project
  • Providing application assistance and troubleshooting for the purpose of user acceptance
  • Implementing the accepted solution and providing any training for end-users if necessary

However, our scope will not be able to include:

  • Recommending, developing or implementing solutions for third parties involved. Third parties may include Banks in Acheh, or any parties not directly involved in the workflow of the project.
  • Regular maintenance and improvement of the application. As this is constraint as a Final Year Project, we will need to ‘hand over’ the project once it is accepted by our sponsors and school and fully implemented. However, we do feel that we can provide some assistance for the application issues even after the end of the project term if it is within our abilities and schedule.

Description of Activities and Workflow

The funding of the TEF project is collected through various charity drives (e.g. charity cycling). The bulk of the funds are stored in the TEF accounts in Singapore. Several months of funds will also be kept in the Bank in Banda Acheh.

Once children (orphans)are identified who are eligible to receive the funding, UWC will inform the bank and the children. They will then be accompanied by their guardian or teacher and go to the bank to open an account. During this process, recipient data will be collected when the UWC team visits Banda Acheh. Data include photograph of recipients, name, schools they attend, address etc…

Every month, the funds are transferred DIRECTLY into their bank account. There must be a confirmation that these funds are received by the recipients. Recipients are also required to submit bi-yearly school ‘reports’. These reports are to ensure that recipients are still attending school and essentially still eligible to receive the funds.

Follow-ups are done periodically. This is to ensure that there are no hiccups in the TEF project. (E.g. children are not receiving the funds allocated to them or their bank accounts have problems with transfers).


Problem Identification

  • No standard procedure to receive reports from students. If reports are not received, funding has to be suspended until further notice. These reports are gathered manually, sometimes with UWC staff having to personally travel to Aceh and ‘search’ for the reports. Because of the rebuilding project in Aceh, students, schools, school leaders and guardians are always on the move. This makes it even harder to find the location of the recipients.
  • Data collection is mainly manual. A database is kept by using books,EXCEL,PowerPoint etc. There is a lack of integration of data.
  • Inconsistent of information which leads to verification of information and data integrity. For example, some students write their name in a certain way while schools or banks write their name in another way. This may result in delays updating a student’s record or one student having several different TEF records because of inconsistency.
  • IT infrastructure in Aceh. There are minimal IT infrastructures in Aceh. Internet connection is rarely found and even if existing, it has a very low bandwidth. (Needs about 15 to 30 mins just to send an email from internet cafes). In addition, computers are very old and operating systems and available applications are mostly obsolete. (E.g. Windows 95)
  • School names, locations and children’s names are almost somewhat similar. This makes it hard for administrators to identify who is who and where the exact location of the school that they are studying at is.
  • Database application must be easy to maintain and troubleshoot. This is because UWC staff has limited knowledge on IT.
  • This project is targeted to carry on for the next 10 years. As such, the database will continue to grow.
  • Collaboration is extremely tedious.(Verification and tallying of data).
  • It is tedious to consolidate and send instructions for the bank transfers.
  • UWC needs to have easy access to monthly bank statements and account balances.

Hardware and Software

For Hardware, we will be leveraging on the school server for development and testing purposes. Upon completion, the project will be deployed on UWCSEA’s web and MSSQL server that will be provided by UWC.

After careful study, we decided to make use of the following software for development, testing and deployment:

  • MSSQL
  • MSDNAA (provided by SMU)
  • C# (provided by SMU)
  • Microsoft Office (MS EXCEL)
  • Microsoft Outlook
  • Internet Explorer 6.0
  • .NET Framework 3.0
  • Visual Studio Professional 2008

Project Schedule Plan

Schedule1.jpeg

3.Weekly Meetings

Week 1

  • Submit Final Proposal
  • Revised Data Structure
  • Prof and Client review Project Proposal

Week 2

  • Prepare Team members computer for development works - Installing MSSQL2005, Visual Studios 2008
  • Start working on UI prototype and Database
  • Discussed about creating a dynamic report function

Week 3

  • Commencement of Iteration 1
  • UI Prototype is about 80% done
  • Researched on C# and .NET Framework
  • Database is 80% done

Week 4

  • Data integration with GUI in process
  • Preparing GUI for client meeting next week 17th September 7pm @ SOB Benches
  • Team is 1 week behind schedule [ Changes made to the Gantt Chart ]
  • Final Presentation Date : 30th Nov @ 2pm
  • Lastest Update : Client meeting is changed to 30th September by client

Week 5

  • Completed data integration with application.
  • All of Iteration 1's use cases completed.
  • Completed functions to Create, Edit & Delete Users .
  • Completed Create, Update, Delete & View Student's information.
  • Have to seek clarification from TEF on unique ID of Gurdians and Next-of-Kins.
  • Working on reporting functionality (Dynamic Reports)
  • Data Import and Export (pending to retrieve sample data from UWC)
  • Started to work on Mid-Term Reflections report, due on week 7.

Week 6

  • Completed 70% of Iteration 2 ( intermediate functionality )
  • Testing was done on 22/9 and 29/9
  • Integration of all completed functions
  • Completed and Tested Data Import , Export part not completed
  • Archive Function ( only completed for Bank side )

Week 7

  • Milestone 5 completed ( Mid term Reflection )
  • Integration with GUI
  • Preparation to meet Client on Wed 30/9 @ 7.30pm in SIS GSR 2.3
  • Start Transaction Management Modules

Week 8

  • Team will try to deploy project by end of the week
  • Export function is completed
  • Working on client's new requirements
  • upload/retrieve photo function has been fixed and is working perfectly
  • deployment will be delayed. some hardware problems faced with PC14

Week 9

  • Updated Transaction Tables to better fit TEF's records
  • Attempted to Deploy application (Failed, as we were not assigned an external IP address)
  • Began work on Transaction Functionalities

Week 10

  • in the midst of deployment
  • Storing and retrieve of student profile and addition of new school function
  • Completed Add Transaction Functionality
  • Work on Auto-Updating of Account Balance when transaction is added is in progress
  • Began work to add clients additional requirements to previous functionalities
  • Completed functionalities Transactions functions ,Accounts ,Data import/export,Printing,Uploads

Week 11

Week 12

  • All the links with their functionalities should be working now.
  • Transactions (add new transactions added)
  • Transactions (view transactions details added)
  • Transactions (upload transaction files added)
  • View account (view TEF account details added)
  • Student ( school images, previous school, current school added)
  • Student (edit functionalities fixed)
  • Populated database with real data (60% of data populated)
  • Outstanding issues:
  • Admin
  • Validation
  • Crystal reports
  • User interface

Week 13

  • Client meeting on 9th Nov 2009
  • Amendments to be made:
  • Client wants to have multiple records of previous school and suggested that the display position to be prioritized for current school.
  • Alias and transaction status field to be added into the student profile
  • Multiple visitation dates to be added – display of most recent and archive the history (max 10 records)
  • Contact Number field of student needed to be added to student profile
  • School Report – whether they have submitted the report with the most recent date
  • Prioritize guardian above next-of-kin and an additional field of relationship to be added in next-of-kin
  • Contact Number field in transaction account not needed.
  • Need to know the spending per bank for Bank of Aceh
  • Office Number, Email, Remarks and Map Grid to be added into school details
  • For Crystal Reporting

- Age, Address, Bank Name, Guardian Name, Contact, Siblings and Grade are not needed
- Information to be sorted by School, alphabetical order for student name, visitation date and transaction status
- Prof suggested generating 2 reports – One for record keeping and another for visitation purposes.
- At least one previous school to be added in the transaction report.

To be done :

  • Team needs to acknowledge the excel sheet that client will be sending over and populate the data.
  • UAT needs to be done when all function is up.
  • Everything needs to be done in less than 2 weeks
  • Client will send current excel spreadsheet of student
  • Current interface to change to the black banner with SEA spelled out as South East Asia
  • Team will work on suggestions and comments given


  • New deployment passwords
  • Super-Admin User


Username: hskoh
Password: pass

  • Admin User


Username: sarah
Password: pass

  • Read-Only User


Username: ws
Password: pass