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IS480 Team wiki: 2012T1 Bumblebee Final Wiki

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Back to Main Page Project Overview Project Scope User Testing 2 Heuristic Evaluation

Project Management

Learning Outcome and Reflection

Final Presentation Slides

Slides

Slides


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Click here to download our final presentation slides.


Project Overview

Stakeholders

Stakeholders

The Bees

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Sponsors

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Project Description

Project Description

Singapore Airport Terminal Services (SATS) is the leading provider of the gateway services and food solutions in the region. It has a staff of 800 to handle more than 35 airlines. Every year, there are two major airline flight schedule change - summer (April) and winter (November). Each change can be a drastic one and has great impact on staff roster. One of SATS’s goals for its staff roster is to meet all its airlines’ requirements. However, there are many uncertainties such as staff members falling sick, staff resigning and flight delay, that cause the roster planned to be ineffective. Thus, Duty Manager in SATS often has to make last minute changes to the rosters and incur costs such as Staff Recall Cost, Over-Time cost and Meal Allowance Compensation (MAC). To help improve the efficiency involving various costs and consequences of the planned staff roster, our project aims to create a Staff Deployment Simulation Software (SDSS) which will first deploy staff based on flight schedule, flight requirements, staff records and staff roster and then simulate the roster plan by taking into account all the various uncertainties and forecast the various costs that the management would have to incur. Understanding the cost and consequences of a given roster, SATS would then be able to make necessary adjustments to avoid high expenses to the company. The diagram below explains the flow of the software.

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To predict the uncertainties, we will take in the mean and standard deviation of the listed simulation parameters in diagram above(MC Rate, Flight Delay Rate, Staff Resign Rate, etc). Having those values, our software will then generate a normal distribution of each uncertainty. After such, we will be applying the uncertainties at the planned roster plan such as removing staff from the roster plan if he/she is taking MC. The software will also try to mimic the actions of Duty Manager who does the necessary adjustment to the staff roster to fulfill the airlines requirements i.e. to imitate human decision making process to come out with an optimal staff roster.

At the end of the day, our software will generate a management report which will reveal the cost and consequences of implementation of a given roster. The output given will be Total Staff Working Hours, Flight Demand Coverage, Meal Allowance Compensation (MAC), Over Time (OT) Cost, OT hours, Staff Utilization Rate, Unproductive Hours, Recall Cost and Recall Hours. Understanding the cost and consequences of a given roster, SATS would then be able to make necessary adjustment to avoid high expenses and thus, increase cost savings to the company.

X Factor

X Factor

Efficiency

Our system is able to handle a highly complex, huge domain size, scheduling problem efficiently in comparison to SATS’ current manual scheduling process.

Algorithmic Complexity

Optimal Scheduling

We provide our client an optimized staff schedule to effectively reduce client's overheads from non-optimal scheduling practices. In essence, we developed an optimal scheduling algorithm to maximise SATS’ resources to meet all airline requirements. This optimal scheduling is written based on Greedy Algorithm concepts.

Probabilistic Simulation

Our system gives our client a clear perspective of cost loss profile from human resource planning uncertainties (flight delays, staff resign, etc). And we would provide recommendation for minimizing additional cost effectively. To be specific, we use normal distribution and Kolmogorov-Smirnov test to forecast the uncertainties which SATS could face. After which we run a simulation to plot our client’s cost profile.

Aviation Industry Knowledge

Our system complies with numerous aviation specific business rules. To develop this system, our group has to understand aviation industry practises deeply. For this, We did a 2 months weekly attachment to SATS' Duty Manager(DM) and Customer Service Officer(CSO).


To understand the complexity and the abundance in probabilities of scheduling, try to solve this:
We want to color countries on a map so that no two adjacent areas have the same color. How many colors do you need at the most? Map Coloring Teaser
Courtesy of IS103 Computational Thinking

Motivation

Motivation

There are 2 main motivations for working on this project:
1. The industry that we are working with - it's aviation industry, in which we have minimum exposure in school! We would love to explore and understand more about what aviation industry is and how IT can help to make a difference in it!
2. Our software can make a significant difference as it will be implemented in SATS' daily operation. =D

Project Scope

Use Case

Use Case
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Deliverables and Scope

Deliverables and Scope
S/N Component Modules Description Requirements
1 Bootstrap Data Import data: flight schedule, staff records and roster plan from CSV files to the application database. Support multiple format (txt,csv).

Notify user if there is an error in importing.

2 Manage Airline Requirements Set special requirement such as how many CSA, CSO needed for a combined gate for each airline. Able to cater to different combination of flight sizes.
3 Pre-deploy staff Schedule staff roster based on employees’ working hours, system qualifications and other factors. Application development methodology should be agile iterative process coupled with test-driven development.
4 Perform simulation for deployment plan Perform simulation for optimized flight schedule, staff records, flight requirements and roster plan by mimicking Duty Manager’s activities such as calling back staff and extending over-time hours. Include all generated uncertainties/parameters in the simulation.
5 Measure the effectiveness of the roster Measure the effectiveness of the roster by simulating the Unproductive Time, Airline Demand Coverage, Over-time Cost, Staff Recall Cost, Meal Allowance Cost, and many others. Simulation results should be credible and realistic.
6 Manage past results Save and view past results. Past results could be exported as PDF report file. GUI should be user-friendly and simple

Please refer to use case description for greater details.

Graphical User Interface

Graphical User Interface
1HomePage.png
2ImportData.png
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4ManageAirlineReqCounterDept.png
5ManageAirlineReqGateDept.png
5aManageSimulationParameter.png
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6SimulationResult.png
7GeneratePDF.png
8PDFreport.png
9ManageResult.png
10ManageResultChooseDate.png
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ViewChangiMap.png
ViewStaffLocTask.png
Csv.png
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1HomePage.png


User Testing 2

Objectives and Documents

Objectives and Documents

The goals and objectives of usability testing

• Record and document general feedback and first impressions

• Identify any potential concerns to address regarding application usability, presentation, and navigation

• Get feedback on the usefulness and accuracy of the functions developed

• To match client expectations on the system developed

Click here to download our report


Heuristic Evaluation

Objectives and Documents

Objectives and Documents

The goals and objectives of usability testing

• Record and document general feedback and first impressions

• Identify any potential concerns to address regarding application usability, presentation, and navigation.


Click here to download our report.




User Testing 3

Objectives and Documents

Objectives and Documents

The goals and objectives of usability testing

• Record and document general feedback and first impressions

• Identify any potential concerns to address regarding application usability, presentation, and navigation

• Get feedback on the usefulness and accuracy of the functions developed

• To match client expectations on the system developed

Click here to download our report


Project Management

Time Management

Time Management


Milestones

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Iterations Parallel Plan

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Schedule Metric

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Schedule Tracking

Click here to see our Schedule Tracking.

Quality Management

Quality Management


Bug Metric

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Bug Tracking

Click here to see our Bug Log.

Risk Management

Risk Management


Risk Metric

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Risk Table

S/N Risk Statement Likelihood (H/M/L) Impact (H/M/L) Level (Derived) Mitigation Strategy &/or Contingency Plan
1 Managing expectation of new person in charge from client company

New client in charge may have different expectation of the software deliverable and functions.

H H A Prepare software introduction to client and other potential users. Earlier handover to client company.

Ensure that new person in charge is also clear of the software objective and current client is also available to help smoothen the handover process.

2 Limited real data to work with

Sample data provided might not be sufficient to represent the big picture.

H H A Consistent and thorough demonstration of system to client

Ensure that all doubts are clarified during client meeting. Bi-monthly demos are done to client to ensure correctness of our data. Try as far as possible to generate sensible data from provided samples.

3 Long simulation duration taken

Large amount of data to handle which will cause simulation duration to be long.

H H A

Explore ways to increase the efficiency of code (e.g. caching, threading) Also, the team will only consider necessasry data.

4 Low productivity

Unproductive team members esp when 3 out of 5 members are doing internship.

M M B Set sensible timeline and do progress check

Team has to set a sensible and achievable timeline. Also, project manager

5 Unexpected bugs

As the project is dealing with complex algorithm, unexpected bugs may surface and may not be very visible or consistently appearing.

M M B More thorough testing with more data test and more buffer time

Team has to ensure that each testing period in each iteration is well used to identify all possible bugs. This is also to prevent any old bugs from surfacing later in time. Team needs to assign more buffer time to prepare for the unexpected bugs.

6 Resource limitation

Final will be a great challenge as our PM will be away on the last week of IS480 course for personal reason.

M M B Prepare early and finish the big tasks early

Team can plan to finish the tasks, including administrative work early.

7 Sudden change of requirement

Client may have sudden change or addition of requirement.

L M C Regular communication and agreement sign off with client

Team will have frequent bi-monthly meeting with client to align the project requirement between both parties. Besides, agreement made between two parties helps to clarify the requirement.

Learning Outcome and Reflection

Learning Outcome

Learning Outcome
S/N Description Actions to Realize Learning Outcome(s)
1 Integration of business & technology in a sector context
1.1 Business IT value linkage skills
  • Deep understanding with aviation industry
  • Analyse what is SATS doing and what are the current problems that SATS is facing. After understanding SATS' deployment processes, help SATS solve their problem by developing SATS Staff Deployment Software
1.2 Cost & benefits analysis skills
  • Conduct cost and benefit analysis by comparing SATS current staffing cost and cost saving that brought about by SATS Staff Deployment Software in terms of time and monetary
1.3 Business software solution impact analysis skills
  • Conduct cost and benefit analysis by comparing SATS current staffing cost and cost saving that brought about by SATS Staff Deployment Software in terms of time and monetary
2 IT architecture, design and development skills
2.1 System requirements specification skills
  • Gather and propose functional and non-functional requirements of Staff Deployment Simulation Software
  • Analyze business requirements and propose user interface, infrastructure and applications needed to complete project.
2.2 Software and IT architecture analysis and Design skills
  • Design the solution architecture based analysis from gathered requirements.
2.3 Implementation skills
  • Implement system, develop and integrate all customized modules and third party functionalities.
  • Deploy prototype in every iteration and resolve bug from tests within proposed schedule.
  • Conduct User Acceptance Test (UAT) at every milestone for the developed product.
2.4 Computational thinking skills
  • Use Greedy Algorithm and Monte Carlo simulation in developing Staff Deployment Simulation Software\
  • Apply algorithm efficiency so that software could run in reasonable amount of time
2.5 Technology Application skills
  • Use data visualisation to make the result of our software reader-friendly
3 Project management skills
3.1 Scope management skills
  • Detail discussion with sponsor with regards to scope of the project
  • Discussion with supervisor with regards to scope of the project
  • Conducted sign-off with sponsor with regards to scope of the project
3.2 Risks management skills
  • Discussed risks with the team with regards to possible risks using risk metric.
3.3 Project integration and time management skills
  • Prepared a detailed schedule for the entire project span
  • Use schedule metric to make sure the team is on time with schedule and able to deliver the software
3.4 Quality management skills
  • Deploy prototype in every iteration and resolve bug from tests within proposed schedule.
  • Conduct 3 User Testing (UT) and Heuristic Evaluation for the developed product.
4 Learning to learn skills
4.1 Search skills
  • Learn how to find solution using the internet - blogs, forums and and articles
5 Communication Skills
5.1 Presentation skills
  • Organise requirements and deliverables and present it to supervisor and reviewers



Reflection

Reflection
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