Typically, a programmer’s day varies from day to day. Everyday will always consist of meetings and conferences, but the time that the programmer will actually get to spend on writing and compiling programs is never a sure thing. Because programmers must always deal with the rest of the team and also with customers and managers, less time is left for actual programming. On average, a programmer will spend between 2-4 hours a day in meetings and consultations, 2 hours dealing with bug reports and answering emails and other overhead tasks, and 2 hours doing actual work on the program itself.

A systems analysts day changes depending on the stage of the project. At the start, the analyst will spend much more time in the office producing feasibility reports and plans, but then as it progresses and the projects goes ahead, then much more time will be spent gathering more information from the client and allowing them to get involved in the project. This is in order to keep the client up-to-date and allow the analyst to organise all the teams working on different sections of the project.

Sources: http://www.jobsite.co.uk/cgi-bin/bulletin_search.cgi?act=da&aid=3336

http://www.prospects.ac.uk/p/types_of_job/systems_analyst_job_description.jsp

Task 2

Post implementations review- This is a review carried out after the finished product has been implemented and is in use. This allows the developers a chance to understand how well they met the client’s needs and if the program created suited the purpose. This then gives them knowledge to use in further projects, and how to improve them.

Structured Walkthrough

This is a process whereby the team review the previous product and allow them to reflect on how well the project was carried out and if all relevant points on the spec where met.

Before

Before a structured walkthrough, a person or team must be appointed to gather the information needed to carry out the structured walkthrough. This involves feed back from the end user and all data on the spec to be gathered in order for it to be cross-referenced with the actual data.

During

During the structured walkthrough each point within the spec is examined and the board of people involved vote on how well these points were met by the development team. This allows every one to decide if the system should be kept in place or if it needs to be brought back for further development. The sort of things identified in a walkthrough range from simple spelling mistakes to bugs that cause either system lag or system crashes. This allows the team to understand what problems there are with the system that they may not have realised during development.

After

After a structured walkthrough, the person who has conducted it must then write up a formal report detailing all points raised and any notes he observed himself, and then forward copies of this to everyone from the meeting. This will allow them to identify the parts that concern them and begin fixing any bugs or problems that concern them.

Scrum meetings and the roles of “chicken & pig”

Scrum meetings are meetings held every day within a project. These help everyone involved to maintain focus, and give them a chance to update everyone on their progress, along with allowing them to set the next goals that must be achieved. These meetings allow people working on the project and people directly involved in the project to have a set time to meet and that no organisation is needed to arrange meetings every now and then.

Roles within the meeting

Chicken

Chickens are the people who are not involved with the development of the product. This is usually managerial types from the end users or clients who want the software produced. These “chickens” are in the meeting, but are not allowed to talk during the meeting. The meeting is purely for the benefit of the pigs in order for them to brainstorm and tackle issues. The chickens are there to observe.

Pig

The terms “pigs” describe those involved in the production and development of the program. During the meeting, there role is to pass information on what they have accomplished thus far, and what they wish to accomplish that day. They then discuss any problems that any of them have, allowing all the team to be on the same standing point and understand what needs done and when. This helps to keep focus throughout a project and allows each person in the development process to communicate and update each other.

Part 1

A breakdown of the questions asked and why:-

“1. What group do you fall into here at Jordanstown?”

This question is to help Ms. Carter to gain certain key knowledge of the person taking the survey. This is because if you understand what group they are in within the Jordanstown community, then you can use this to understand how often they will be there. With a 1^st year student, you know that there is potential they could be there another three years, whereas a fourth year student will soon be finished and most likely will not be there for the opening of the store.

“2. Are you a vegetarian?”

This question will simply help Ms. Carter to get a rough estimation of the numbers of vegetarians within Jordanstown and establish a potential marketing view on how many people are going to want a solely vegetarian cafe.

“3. Have you ever tried vegetarian food before, and if not would you be open to the idea?”

This question was designed to find out how many of the people have tried vegetarian food. It then helps us to find out firstly if the ones who have not tried vegetarian food would be interested, and then for those who already have then we can find out if they enjoyed it or not.

“4. Do you believe a vegetarian Outlet should be available here at Jordanstown?”

This question was included in order to understand the number of people who think that a vegetarian option should be available within the Jordanstown community regardless of whether they would eat from it or not.

“5. How many Friends do you know who are vegetarian?”

This question is included to help us widen our results beyond the survey taker. We can ascertain from this the numbers of potential vegetarians within Jordanstown that may have not taken our survey.

“6. How much would you be prepared to pay for a vegetarian meal?”

This question will help Ms. Carter to understand the sort of prices her meals will have to run at in order for her to attract customers, and help her compare this to the prices she would like to run them at in order to make a profit and then see if the project is profitable.

“7.On average, how many meals would you eat a day in Jordanstown?”

This question is to establish how often the survey taker eats within Jordanstown, and this could help make estimates as to how often customers within Jordanstown eat, and how often they may purchase from her shop ideally.

“8. Which Store do you usually eat at in Jordanstown?”

This question helps her to understand which outlets are most popular within Jordanstown, and could help her see which sort of deals she would be competing with in order to attract customers.

“9. Do you think you would personally eat out of a vegetarian cafe?”

This is to determine if the survey taker would eat out of this outlet.

“10. Do you have anything else you would like to say about the idea of a vegetarian cafe?”

This is just to allow the survey taker to give some feedback which could be anything such as expressing their wish for a vegetarian cafe.

Layout

The layout of the questions is mostly simple one worded answers, where the person taking the survey just simply ticks a box to answer, and two or three include textboxes where the person can enter a value. The quiz is designed to be quick and simple but with effective results.

Sequence

The sequence of my survey first determines the type of person they fall into, meaning long term or short term potential customers. The quiz then goes on to find out how they feel about a vegetarian outlet and if they would be prepared to pay for it and how much. It then goes on to establish the other stores that they eat out of and then finally offers a chance for the taker to put down anything they would like to say.

Part 2

I think an observation of peoples eating habits within Jordanstown would be needed in order to help determine what people in Jordanstown eat.

Timing and Duration

I think that an observation of an entire school day would be in order. In my eyes, a perfect way to do this would be to have a team of seven people observe each outlet within Jordanstown for one day. By having one person sit the entire school day in each of the outlets, they could observe and record the number of customers in each store along with the sort of items purchased. This would allow them to understand everything bought by students. This would have to be done on a day where the most students have classes on that day, and the university is most populated. This observation would last roughly from 9am-5pm.

Method

I think that a team of seven observers should be included in the research of this project. This would involve each of them taking a store within the Jordanstown campus and then recording customer that enters and the items purchased. This would probably be done by having to assume a place within the outlet that is within eyeshot of the tills and this means they can see what is being bought and record the types of food being bought and the times that this occurs. I would suggest an excel spreadsheet with an auto number customer field, items bought field and time purchased field. This would be relevant information and enough to draw a conclusion from later on.

Possible problems or difficulties

Some possible problems can occur in this method. The first would be that it could be a day where less number of students could be in due to a trip or something to that effect. Or it could also be a day where a certain deal is on in one particular store, such as a certain sandwich in Streat being half price, which could influence people’s normal purchasing habits. These sort of factors need to be brought into consideration, especially when only doing the observation under the duration of one day. If it were possible, the observation could be continued for two days. Another problem is co-operation from other outlets. They may not want you in observing their customers, as it is rival business. Also, the customers themselves may not want to be observed for their own personal reasons.

to:                 Seamus O’Kane

from:           Ryan Emberson

subject:     Economic Feasability study

date:            16/10/2009

cc:                  n/a

Economic Feasability Study of ABC Bakeries

Dear Mr. O’Kane,

I have been appointed to conduct the economic feasibility report on your proposed idea of an internet based sales division within your company. For this I am going to need some certain elements of information to come to a proper professional opinion as to whether or not this idea is feasible and to allow your company to make the decision on whether or not you want to continue with the idea. I will give you a quick rundown now on what we will be looking at and what elements of your business I will need information on.

As it stands, your business is primarily funded through mainstream supermarkets, and your profit margin is beginning to decrease over pressure from your customers to drop your prices. I first need to determine consumer demand for your product. In order to determine the popularity of your product among consumers I would like a copy of your quarterly sales reports to help me understand times when your bread is most popular, and which products that you sell are most popular. By working out the general demand of your product, this will help to understand your product will sell through the new medium.

Firstly, determining the cost of setting up this idea will be looked into. In order to do this, we will be looking at how the online system will be operating. We will research the possibilities of who will create and maintain your site first, then move on to your means of advertising to ensure that customers that do eat your bread know where to get it, and that new customers can also learn of your site. This will all be done through research into different providers of these services to determine the average cost of site building, maintenance and advertising. This will be one of the most expensive parts of the system as setting it up is costing you money with no return until it is finished.

The next area of interest is production costs. We will look at how much it will cost your business to produce the breads and on what scale it will need to produce. This means that we will need to establish if you wish to provide locally, nationally or inter-nationally, to grasp the scale of production and if your production areas can handle the amount of business proposed. For this part of the assessment, we will need to look at the cost of producing the bread, the cost including raw materials, staff and all costs included in the actual making of the bread, along with the flexibility of the production line, to ensure it can meet variations in demand. We will need information on current staff abilities and quantity to enable us to see if more staff will be required or if staff will be made redundant.

After this we will look into methods of delivery such as how each package will be shipped. This includes looking into the possibility of a private delivery method such as purchase of vans and drivers to deliver your product, or looking at possible couriers and other companies that can deliver for you. This means research will have to be carried out on how much the set up and maintenance of your own delivery system will cost in comparison to using an external delivery method. We will then need information on size and weight of the bread, in order to assess how much an external delivery company would charge to deliver your product.

After set up, production and delivery, we must look into two more sections, maintenance and publicity. In terms of maintenance, we must look into the cost of running a website including hardware and software costs, such as a web server to host the website from, and web authoring software to create and maintain it, along with the cost of a website engineer to maintain and update the website. Then we must look at the costs of public relations (PR) and advertising of the website. This can be done in a variation of ways. We must look at where we can inform current customers of the change so that they know they can buy your product online, to ensure we keep all current customers, then also look at how we can advertise to new customers and try and grow the customer base. We must research the price of different types of advertising, such as small advertising through leaflets and flyers, and adverts in the newspapers, to advertising online and on each individually product on the wrappers of the products. Each of these ways must be analysed in detail.

So to summarise, the key areas we will be focusing on are as follows:

v  Interest in product

• Sales reports on all products
• Production reports
• Product list

v  Setting up of site

• Website designer costs and fees
• Cost of web servers and hosting fees
• What will need to be included in your website (services available such as online payment, information of products, history of company etc)

v  Production

• Information on costs of raw materials
• Information on production lines capabilities
• Information on how flexible the production line can be
• Staff information such as skills and availability along with staff numbers

v  Delivery

• Methods of delivery
• Internal or external delivery
• Weights of products and dimensions

v  Maintenance and PR

• Software prices including authoring tools
• New staff that are needed for maintenance and updating
• Advertising types and costs

Task Two

Dear Mr. O’Kane,

As we have previously discussed, your company has decided to proceed with the plan of creating an E-Commerce site for your business. I have been asked to create a list of staff for the project and give you a brief description of why.

The list is as follows of what sort of staff I believe you will require:-

• Systems Analyst
• Web Designer
• Graphics Designer
• Software Engineer
• Beta Tester
• PR Officer
• Financial Adviser
• ABC Bakeries Rep

Systems Analyst- This member will play a key role in deciding how your system should work. They will be responsible for the research into different aspects of the system, and planning the whole layout and flow of the system, and providing a key platform for the designers to begin on.

Web Designer- This member of the team will be responsible for determining and designing the layout of the website. They will decide what information should be shown on each page, and the way the user will be able to interact with your website, ensuring it is easy and understandable for your customers, but also practical.

Graphics Designer- This member will be responsible in creating suitable logos and menus for your website, to ensure that it is suited to your business and matches your companies look, as well as helping you come across as a very professional business.

Software Engineer- This member will be responsible for all of the programming and scripting elements of your website, and will also be used to upload your website onto a web server and ensure a clean running website.

Beta Tester- The beta tester will be responsible for checking every possible input and output from your website, also known as white box and black box testing. This is to identify any problematic areas of your website and to prevent your website from being uploaded before its working correctly. This is because customers can be deterred from using a website and may just search for a new one if a website is on line and doesn’t work.

PR Officer- This person is responsible for the reputation and promotion of your business. They will ensure your website and company remain in good standing, whilst also luring new customer to your company through different forms of advertising.

Financial Adviser- This person will be there to watch over your teams expenditures and to make sure that you do not exceed any budget that has been set for the team.

ABC Rep- This person will be there to help fill in the gaps on the intricacies of the business and make sure that it fits in with the ABC image.

In my opinion, the enrolment process at Jordanstown overall was quite well organised and was quite a good system, with a few downfalls but nothing too major. In certain areas such as the manual aspect of data entry where students were filling in forms and then handing them to Dr. Ayre to be signed individually. It is certain areas such as this that I find tend to slow a system down.

At the beginning of the enrolment process we were all taken into a lecture hall and briefed on the overall aims of the course along with rules and regulations. This part of the system seemed to flow well as they took everyone in at once and were able to do it all in one sitting. But then when it came to filling in forms and then having your details checked, this became very confusing and time-consuming. We had to fill in our detail form and then all line up to have the form signed by Nicola Ayre. Because she was the only one able to sign it, there was a large queue, and many people who were last to get off their seats or were at the back of the hall had to wait a long time to get there sheets signed, not to mention the fact that this must have been the worse part of the system for Dr. Ayre. After this we were taken out to the foyer area, where we had to have our details on education and acceptance checked by the office staff. At this time there were roughly two hundred students being enrolled on this course, and there were only two members of staff checking form. This again meant a long wait for everyone to have their forms checked as there were between 6-10 different documents to be checked in order to complete this part of enrolment. This then was followed by another queue to have your photo taken by one member of staff through which each student had to go to. This was the main part of the process that I found to be most time consuming. After this we were asked to proceed to the LRC for our online enrolment. Here I felt that the system gained credit. This part of the process was very simple, and very easy to navigate, and I believe that even first time computer students would have had no problem with it. We had to go through each page entering/checking our details to ensure they were correct, and then verify how we would be paying for our fees and how which modules we would be taking. Each page was well laid out and very easily understood. For the final part of the enrolment process, we were asked to proceed to the main hall, in which all we had to do was sign two sheets for student finance and then get a photo taken and be given our student cards. In this hall there were multiple stations to go to meaning it was quick and effortless and the cards were printed very quickly.

Speaking in terms of how easy the system was for me to use, I must say very. Everything was very well laid out and the day was planned to the detail, with all different aspects carefully time inspected that no one was going to have to rush to be seen. At the start I was shown how to get to the hall, then once in the hall, we were led / instructed how to get to the next stages of our enrolment. The online part was very well laid out in large boxes with multiple choice answers in most instances making it hard to go wrong.

During enrolment I realised that for the most part it was either paper forms that we had to fill in or online forms that other members of staff were filling in for us, bar the online enrolment section. So I think that even if a student was from a non-IT background, they would have found it easy to make their way through enrolment, including the online part, as it was so well laid out and explained that even if they hadn’t used anything like it before, they would have been able to understand it. I don’t believe that this made the system harder to use, and in fact believe that it made the system so much more simple.

In respect to the manual and computer based parts of the system tying in together, I didn’t notice how they did in our eyes. I’m sure that in the background the manual pieces of information that we were filling in were then being entered into a computer system on down the line, but from our aspect we were filling in certain parts of information in on the computer and then other parts in computers. The process made sense though as checking our documents would have to be done by a person because equipment costs of some sort of OCR would be way too much for such a small part of the process.

The only part of the system using an interface was the online enrolment section, and when it comes to user interface I think it was all very well done. Each step of the online system was shown at the top letting you know your progress the entire way, along with tips at the side if needed and every option was explained and all the buttons and options were large and colourful to allow you to easily determine what was going on. Each different section was presented on a new form to let you know that each part was separate. No matter what user was using this I think they would have found it easy to use and I believe that the system was well designed.