BSA5

Project Title:

Sales and inventory management system

Project Sponsor(s):

University of phoenix

Business Context for the System:

Sales co company is a company engaged in the sale of retail goods. It includes the suppliers who supply the company the products, the retailers who from the company as well as the individual clients who do the same. This system allows for the encompassing of the three key parties into on central place.

Project Scope Description:

The system should enable the company to facilitate access to data via a secure way, add information and manage information of products, suppliers, retailers and the clients, allow for filtering of data through records, allow printing of data via reports as well as viewing of sales via a charts module

Date Prepared:

06/06/2020

Prepared By:

Problems

Issues

Opportunities

· Insufficient security for the records

· Inadequate data back up

· Added cost of purchasing items such as file and folders

· Lack of Employee accountability for entered records

· Slowness in extracting records

· Physical attributes such as wear and tear affecting the record storage

· Disorganization of data by the employees

· User error

· There are no measures to ensure that a particular person can view or change records

· There is no data backed up in case of a catastrophe such as fire

· The company continually uses money to buy items needed to record purchases and other business items

· No measures set in place to record what a given employee did or was doing at a particular time

· Extracting data especially for a long time ago is cumbersome and slow

· Physical factors such as rodents and wear and tear affect the business making storage of records tricky.

· Records are oftenly placed in disorganized ways leading to problems while trying to trace records of a particular client or supplier

· There are a lot of errors such as misspelling words, extra numbers on identification numbers etc

· Provide a security module that will allow users of specific user categories to access only the data they are allowed to view

· Facilitate a module that will provide for data back up

· Using a computerized database will solve issues of cost of buying resources such as files

· Logging feature will allow a user to identify what a given employee was doing at a given time

· Provide a record feature that will allow a user to quickly and effectively get a given document from a specified time or timeframe

· Use of error checking to ensure that the data entered by a user is free from errors

· Organizing data in a database for a clean and fast accessibility feature

Project Objective Name

Project Objective Description

Create a secure system

Making a system that will enable security in the business as well as offer security features that will enable users to access data on a need to know basis

Record generation

Provide a module that will allow a user to quickly search for records, view records as well as export records

Data entry

Provide a system that will allow users to feed and save information of products, suppliers, clients and retailers to the business

Logging

Provide a feature that will keep track of all the activities done in the application

Project Deliverable Name

Project Deliverable Description

User interface

This refers to the software features that the user will use to interact with the system

User Training

Refers to the education of the end user to on how to use the application

Back end development

Refers to the database that will be used to store the data that will be used by the end user

User Manual

Refers to a set of documents that will be used to offer insight into the operations of the system itself

Project Acceptance Criteria Name

Project Acceptance Criteria Description

Stock notification

Once logged in, the system should check all products and check for the products that are less than a given amount of units or out of stock and display a message to the user

Record search

While searching, a user should select the time period when the records were added to the database for the time search and a unique identification number for an ID search and display the record

Error messages

When encountering an error, an error message will be displayed showing information of the error itself.

Login

A username and password should be provided when login to allow a user into the system if they match.

Project Exclusion Name

Project Exclusion Description

Password recovery

The user will not be able to recover a password on their own but rather only the administrator can change their own passwords

Online database back up

The system will only back up the database locally, that is, on the computer itself an not upload it on a cloud or external server

Sales prediction

The system will only show available sales and not predict the sales to be earned on a future date or period

Windows operating system

The system will only work on a windows operating system environment and not in a mac os or linux operating system.

Project Constraint Name

Project Constraint Description

Cost

This refers to the amount to be spent in total during the development of the application itself. The budget for this system is estimated at $250

Scope

The system once finished should be able to allow secure login by end users, allow the addition and management of products, suppliers, retailers and individual consumers, generate records and reports as well as show sales charts and employee performance data. The system should also keep track or rather log what is happening in the system.

Time

The project will start immediately after the project proposal is accepted and proceed for 3 weeks after which it will be completed.

Quality

The quality will be of the highest possible level provided the above constraints are maintained and managed properly

Project Assumption Name

Project Assumption Description

Conversant users

That the users of the system will be conversant with computers and know how to use the system

Cost

The cost will not change throughout the project development

Scope

The scope of the project will not change and rather will remain the same

Operating system

The operating system installed on the computers will be a valid windows operating system and between windows 7 – windows 10

PROJECT METHODOLOGY

For the purposes of this research, I have decided to use a combination of two of the classic social sciences research tools – questionnaires and interviews. The questionnaires will be distributed among managers from SalesCo as part of their management techniques, as well as among carefully selected employees of the same company, who form part of the team of the same managers. As a complementary method, i conducted interviews with an equal number of representatives of each group. The advantages and disadvantages of each method are discussed below.

Questionnaires

Questionnaires were chosen for this research because they are a reliable and quick method to collect information from multiple respondents in an efficient and timely manner. This is especially important when it comes to large projects, with several complex objectives, where time is one of the major constraints. This study was no exception and questionnaires were a quick and effective way for the me to reach multiple respondents within a few hours. A general disadvantage of the questionnaires however is their fixed and strict format, which eliminates the possibility for more in-depth or abstract observation. Again, this study was not an exception from this rule, as the questionnaires provided linear and clear results, but many elements from the research were left uncovered.

Interviews

In order to cover more abstract aspects of the research, I chose as a complementary method structured interviews consisting of several questions, which were distributed among representatives of each participant group. Interviews are often used as complementary research method in the social sciences, because they give the opportunity for a more in-depth, open discussion, and more informal, free interaction between the interviewer and the interviewee. Despite being considered a disadvantage because it produces subjective results, the flexible format of the interviews was a major advantage for this study, as some nuances of the research such as exploring “emotions”, and “creating memorable experience” could not be properly captured with the questionnaire design. Of course the results from the interviews are not generalizable, because of the subjectivity of data obtained. On the other hand, their flexible format contributed for a deeper explanation and understanding of the connection between an automated system and the business performance.

Description of Work

Assumptions and Constraints

· Creation of a login module which will allow access to the system on a need to know basis

· Creation of the product manager module which will allow the addition, modifying and deletion of a product’s information

· Creation of the supplier module which will allow the addition, modifying and deletion of a supplier’s information

· Creation of the client module which will allow the addition, modifying and deletion of a client’s information

· Creation of the sales module which will allow the addition, modifying and deletion of a sale’s information in addition to printing of invoices and receipts

· Creation of a module to generate the sales charts

· Creation of a module to generate records

· Creation of a module to generate reports

· The users remember their login details

· Each product has a unique identifier as well as a unique name

· Each supplier has a unique identifier as well as a phone number

· Each client has a phone number and unique identifier

· There is test data to view the generated charts

· Users specify a unique identifier or timeframe to generate reports and records

Milestones

Due Dates

· Finishing of the first 4 work tasks

· Completion of the rest of the tasks

· Testing phase

· 1st week

· 2nd week

· 3rd week

ID

Activity

Resource

Labor

Hours

Labor

Rate

Labor

Total

Material

Units

Material

Cost

Material

Total

Total

Cost

1

IDE Purchase

1

0

0

0

1

50

50

50

2

Third party library purchase

1

0

0

0

1

100

100

100

Quality Requirements

· Reliability - That the system is enduring and consistent in performance and will not be experiencing issues over the time that its being used.

· Availability – That the system’s resources will be always available which include the database and the third party libraries that are used.

· Customer experience – That the look and feel of the application is fluent and appealing to the eye as well as simple for a user to understand and use

· Customer service – That there are enough documentations as well as support in case a user experiences issues while using the application.

· Maintainability - That the system is easy to fix as well as maintain in case of issue or update requests.

· Secure – That the application stores and facilitates interaction of the data securely.

Acceptance Criteria

· Display charts to show the sales of a specified time

· Add, delete and manage data for products, suppliers, retailers and consumers

· Allow for login and access of different features on a need to know basis

· Generate records based on search criteria’s such as time and unique identifiers

· Generate reports based on search criteria such as time and unique identifiers

· Keep logs of what is happening in the application at all times

Technical Information

· The software will be coded in the vb.net language

· The software will use the ribbon forms form of design

· The software will use the dot-net-bar and devexpress third party libraries

Agreement Information

The application will be developed on the terms of the scope and within the agreed period and submitted for testing therefore.