The Showtime Sound Lighting System Information Technology Essay

The Showtime Sound Lighting System undertaken as a project is based on relevant technologies. The main aim of this project is to develop software for sound & lighting System. This project has been developed to carry out the processes easily and quickly, which is not possible with the manuals systems, which are overcome by this software. Hence it provides the complete solution to provide customer services and time management. The software provides good services and remove the repetitions in order to nurture the needs of the customer by providing various ways tasks. Also, to improve time management to handle large volume of business.

Current Problems faced by the system

Currently, the traditional manual system holds the information on clipboards until it is entered on the computer system. The current system is the one that evolved as the company grew from a part-time, one-man business to a full-time operation with permanent employees. The system does not ensure that the services can be provided to the customer’s needs. They are using computers to store the information or customer data i.e. Proposals, orders and invoices, in MS-WORD documents and thus redundancy of data is created which leads to inefficient programming and also decrease in the productivity.

System Requirements

Showtime Sound & Lighting System is intended to help the user keep account of his customers in an efficient way. Thus provide good services and increase the productivity. It helps to handle the large volume of business, to provide good services to the customers, to remove the redundancy by providing various technicalities. The system is required to run in a more efficient way thus save time. If it is not feasible for customer to get the proper services then he has got no option left. The main aim of project will be to minimize these limitations and provide customer with better functionalities and services.

Requirements Specification

Requirement analysis is the first technical step in the software engineering process. It is at this point that a general statement of software scope is redefined into concrete a specification that forms the foundation for all software engineering activities that follow. There is no doubt that the presentation of specification has much to do with quality of the solution. Developers working with incomplete, inconsistent, or misleading specifications have to ultimately deal with confusion and frustration. The quality, timeliness and completeness of the software suffer as a consequence.

Software Requirement Specification is developed as a consequence of analysis and market surveys. Review is essential to ensure that the developers and customers have the same perception of the problem. Unfortunately, even with the best of the methods, the problem is that the requirements keep on changing conditions. So it is necessary that during the requirement specification, user should know competence of the software.

Requirements are prone to issues of ambiguity, incompleteness, and inconsistency. Techniques such as rigorous inspection have been shown to help deal with these issues. Ambiguities, incompleteness, and inconsistencies that can be resolved in the requirements phase typically cost orders of magnitude less to correct than when these same issues are found in later stages of product development. Requirements analysis strives to address these issues.

Take a long time to produce

Begin to limit the implementation option available

Are costly to produce

Requirements for both the system and the software are documented and reviewed with the customer.

Scope of Project

Today, the information technology has become the very advance and so the convenient means of handling the lots of information. The Showtime & Lighting System is an application for maintaining a customer’s account in a company. The system provides the access to the customer to create a request, validate & provide services to customers.

Project Objectives And Deliverables:

The objective is to design a tool which consists of all basic functionalities of an organization that holds all information of the customer using this application, value added services provided by the company that can be accessed by the users (customer and administration) through a user-friendly interface. There can be a possibility of online business.

Target Customer Base:

This system is made in such a way that this will be able to meet the basic requirements of advanced user as well as for the user those who are new to the system. Having a user friendly GUI, this application is a good option to used by a large section

Feasibility Analysis

Feasibility studies aim to objectively and rationally uncover the strengths and weaknesses of the existing business or proposed venture, opportunities and threats as presented by the environment, the resources required to carry through, and ultimately the prospects for success. In its simplest term, the two criteria to judge feasibility are cost required and value to be attained. As such, a well-designed feasibility study should provide a historical background of the business or project, description of the product or service, accounting statements, details of the operations and management, marketing research and policies, financial data, legal requirements and tax obligations. Generally, feasibility studies precede technical development and project implementation.

Technical Feasibility

Technical Feasibility centers on the existing manual system and to what extent it can support the proposed system. According to the feasibility analysis procedure, the technical feasibility of the proposed system is analyzed and the technical requirements such as software facilities, hardware facilities, procedures, inputs and outputs are identified. It is one of the important phases of the system development.

In technical feasibility the following issues are taken into consideration.

Whether the required technology is available or not

Whether the required resources are available –

Manpower- programmers, testers & debuggers

Software and hardware

Once the technical feasibility is established, it is important to consider the monetary factors also. Since it might happen that developing a particular system may be technically possible but it may require huge investments and benefits may be less. For evaluating this, economic feasibility of the proposed system is carried out.

Showtime Sound & Lighting System requires only the software to be installed on the system and the information can be accessed by authorized user in the organization.

Economic Feasibility

An economic feasibility test focuses on returns and costs of a proposed plan in both the short and long-term. An economic feasibility study (EFS) should consider investment and operating costs, the time value of money, risk and uncertainty, quality of available data, and the sensitivity of assumptions. An economic feasibility study should demonstrate the net benefit of the proposed course of action in the context of direct and indirect benefits and costs to the organization and to the general public as a whole. An EFS makes a business case, prepares analytical worksheets and other necessary supporting documentation. An EFS should be required for both pilot and long-term activities, plans and projects.

For any system if the expected benefits equal or exceed the expected costs, the system can be judged to be economically feasible. In economic feasibility, cost benefit analysis is done in which expected costs and benefits are evaluated. Economic analysis is used for evaluating the effectiveness of the proposed system.

In economic feasibility, the most important is cost-benefit analysis. As the name suggests, it is an analysis of the costs to be incurred in the system and benefits derivable out of the system.

Showtime Sound & Lighting System requires the software to be economically feasible. It should be according to the cost & benefit analysis of the company.

Organizational Feasibility

The success of investment projects depend to a large extent on the capability of those responsible for managing them. The feasibility analysis should investigate the legal status of the organization, the level of staffing and the capability of the management and staff. Organizational Feasibility is conducted to determine whether a proposed business has sufficient management expertise, organizational competence, and resources to successfully launch its business. This also involves questions as whether it brings an excessive amount of change, and whether the organization is changing too rapidly to absorb it. It involves the questions as:

Is the current organisational structure able to provide the necessary support during the implementation phase? How can a managing scheme for the project be crafted out of this structure and effectively interface with it?

Will the system’s introduction create new needs that cannot be accommodated by the current organisational structure?

Is it possible to plan and implement all needed organisational changes in time, so as not to delay the system’s implementation and operation?

Showtime Sound & Lighting System requires the software to be designed according to the needs of the organization

Schedule Feasibility

The schedule feasibility shows the estimated time to complete the project. This includes the schedules of each process in a project and the total project time. This can change if unexpected challenges occur. A project will fail if it takes too long to be completed before it is useful. Typically this means estimating how long the system will take to develop, and if it can be completed in a given time period using some methods like payback period. Schedule feasibility is a measure of how reasonable the project timetable is. Given our technical expertise, are the project deadlines reasonable? Some projects are initiated with specific deadlines. You need to determine whether the deadlines are mandatory or desirable.

Showtime Sound & Lighting System requires the software to be built within the stipulated time in an efficient way.

Resource feasibility

This involves questions such as how much time is available to build the new system, when it can be built, whether it interferes with normal business operations, type and amount of resources required, dependencies, do you have enough resources, what resources will be required, what facilities will be required for the project, etc.

Showtime Sound & Lighting System requires the software to be built by skilled and expert resources. Not only should the software be handled further by expert resources.

Current Systems Specification

UML Case Diagram

This diagram displays the brief description of the current existing system.

In this SSL System receive request from customers, then the request is validated, it will check for the equipment availability, after the equipments available then generate proposal, after that generate order and then the bill is provided to the customer.

Major Description

This diagram describes all the scenarios in detail with all possibilities of the current prevailing system

SSL System gathers information from customers, put it on the clipboard, then validate customer request, then enter into the computer system maintaining the customer information. If existing customer then update the information otherwise create a new customer. After that, check for the mode of request. Whether it rental or information is for purchase or operators support. Accordingly the equipments availability is checked by the user. If the equipment is available and the associated employee is also available, the order is generated. Then the services are provided to the customer.

Structural Model (Class Diagram)

The below diagram displays all the classes and their relationship of the existing current system.

In this diagram, different classes have been generated with attributes and methods. First is customer class with attributes and methods – getcustomerdetails(), addnewcustomer() and updatecustomer(). Then the class event is created with methods addnewevent(), updateebent(). There is 1 to many relationship between customer and event. Employee class is created with methods getemployee(). One customer can deal with only one employee at a time depends upon the availability of employee. Then order class is generated with methods – generateorder(), generatebill(). One employee can generate many orders at a time.

.

Activity Diagram

This diagram shows all the activities of the prevailing system.

In this diagram, first get the request from customer, check for the equipment availability, then process the request mode i.e. whether it is rental request, or request for purchase or request for the operators support. After taking the decision the information is first written on the clipboard, and then stored in the computer. After checking the time requirement and employee availability, the proposal is generated. Once the proposal is confirmed, the order is generated and the services are provided to the customer.

Structured Design Models

A Context Analysis Diagram

A Context Diagram confines project scope to an agreed limit by obtaining agreement from the customer on the data flows that are included in the scope of a project. The Context Diagram focuses on relationships with external entities and identifies the information that is exchanged between these external entities and the business system under review. The external entities themselves are outside the scope of the project but the data flows between the entities and the business system are within the project scope.

Customer

SSL

SYSTEM

Customer Provide services

Generate Proposal

Equipment Availability Information request

Equipment details validate request

Generate Order

Request Type request details validate proposal

A LEVEL 0 DFD

On Level 0, a DFD shows all the data flows from the system to the external entities, with the whole system being represented as one large process. A Level 0 diagram is sometimes created to show the interaction of the system with external entities, some of which may also be systems.

Process Request

CUSTOMER

CUSTOMER

Information Services

A LEVEL 1 DFD

Customer

request information

Collect information on clipboard

Process Request

Provide Services Update Information

Generate Order

details

check for equipment

Generate proposal

Process Equipment availability

validate information

equipment available

Employee availability &Schedule Timing

Mode of request

rental,purchase,operator

support

A LEVEL 2 DFD

1.2

Check for equipment availability

1.1

Process Request

Customer send request details

1.3

Process Request

Type

provide services equipment details

1.4

Generate order order details

A Level 1 DFD

A Level 1 DFD normally shows very few (8 – 10) processes, and is intended to explain the basic functioning of the system. A Level 1 diagram should show all the processes of the system and the external entities that the system actively interacts with (and in some rare cases exchange of data between those external entities, when absolutely necessary).

A Level 2 DFD

This level is a decomposition of a process shown in a level-1 diagram, as such there should be a level-2 diagram for each and every process shown in a level-1 diagram. In this example, processes 1.1, 1.2 & 1.3 are all vital of process 1. Together they wholly and completely describe process 1, and combined must perform the full capacity of this parent process.

Proposed System Specificaion

UML Model

Detailed Use Case Model

Problem Situation

Showtime Sound & Lighting (SSL) Inc is an organization deals with the equipments related with sound and lighting systems. SSL deals with wide range of customers. Many local organizations, churches, and entertainment businesses have contracts for support of sound, projection, and lighting in their facilities. SSL provides different types of services such as provide equipments on rent, for purchase; they also provide operators support to the customers. To produce a large amount of business, they frequently upgrade the cost of equipment but this leads to their loss. They also occasionally upgrade damaged or obsolete equipment.

Currently SSL system is divided into four major business activities in providing services and products to its customers.

Collect and process customer information and requests. A customer provides a request to SSL. If the request is from an existing customer, it is compared to previous requests. This process requires information from the customer file. The information of the customer is then updated. If the customer is new, a customer file is created that records the newly obtained customer information.

Match customer requirements with equipment availability. The customer’s order information is collected, specifically listing the customer’s needs. Customer requirements can range from a simple set of items to purchase to a request for consulting services resulting in recommended alternative system solutions to a request for a full set of equipment complete with operators. After availability of equipment, the order can be generated.

After that match the details with customer time requirements as well with the availability of employee. There are two types of employees working in the organization i.e. Permanent employees and contractors which are again full time & part time. If the employee schedules match with the customer requirements, then the proposal will be raised.

Customers want SSL to bid. To prepare the bid SSL must compare needs with equipment and personnel availability. Equipment and personnel requirements must be planned for and reserved in the event that the proposal is accepted. This is often the case for organizations that must obtain approval from finance committees. When the organization accepts the proposal, the order is then created, and the equipment and personnel are scheduled to support the event. After that the service provides to the customer.

In current environment or system there is no proper database being maintained. All the information gathered from the customer is stored on the clipboard and then written on MS-WORD to convert and store data electronically. In this way, the data can be repeated. It means the same order, information of the customers, etc. can be repeated which is not an efficient way of programming. Moreover, redundancy leads to the confusion in the system. There can be the confusion that which equipment is available, or which of the equipments has been given to which customer etc. Then Provide services and products. The process entails the actual support of the event. SSL management prepares a list of all support needed for the event so that the technician delivers everything SSL has agreed to provide. This list is essential because the support needed for a large gathering must be on hand and functional at the time of the event. All order information is provided to the technician. This allows the technician to load all necessary equipment and to ensure that the proper contract workers, if required, are available for the event. At the conclusion of the event, the technician must report that the order was successfully completed. If any overtime was required, the technician must report this as well so that the contract workers are properly paid. The technician also evaluates the performance of the contract workers; this information helps SSL decide which workers to hire for future events. Finally, the technician notes any equipment problems that may require immediate attention or routine maintenance.

Comparison and Analysis

SSL provides different types of services such as provide equipments on rent, for purchase; they also provide operators support to the customers. To produce a large amount of business, they frequently upgrade the cost of equipment but this leads to their loss. A manual system stores the information on clipboards and later on enters the information in computer system. In this way an efficient data and accurate data cannot be stored for later use.. Moreover there can be redundancy of data that leads to confusion. The system currently does not ensure that customer information is readily available to support daily operations, nor does it provide information needed for decision making by management. As a result, much of the information in the set of customer files is repetitious. The business currently does not have a system for assigning customer numbers or cross-referencing documents. Locating information about a specific order, previous customer service provided, and other business activities are time-consuming and difficult. This deficiency in turn has a negative impact on servicing customer. All order information is provided to the technician.

On the contrary, the Proposed “Showtime Sound & Lighting System” is a system based on relevant technologies. The main aim of this project is to develop software for sound & lighting System. The software provides good services and remove the repetitions in order to nurture the needs of the customer by providing various ways tasks. Also to improve time management to handle large volume of business.

The traditional manual is being overcome by the information stord in proper databases in the proposed system.Currently, the traditional manual system hold the information on clipboards until it is entered on the computer system but in the proposed system , the data will be stored in the databases for all the functions and activities take place in the organization. There should be more permanent employees which are of full time to increase the productivity.Collect and process customer information and requests. For this a separate customer database should be created with the relevant fields. Cust_id should be the key field. That it stores only unique records, not more than one same record can be stored. A customer provides a request to SSL. Check for the existing customer in customer database and update the information.. If the customer is new, add his information in the database through addnewcustomer() method.

Match customer requirements with equipment availability. The details of the equipments should be stored in another database called item .If the equipment is available then (check for the availability from the database) then validate request. In validation, check for the genuine order being placed by the customer. After this check which type of request is being made, i.e the order is for rental, purchase or the operator’s support is needed. Again this information is also stored in separate database. If all the information is stored in separate database, then there would be no chances of redundancy and smooth functioning of the system. As far relationship is concerned, relation can be with the cust_id. Many customers can place the orders at the time and all the details should be stored in their respective databases. Only one equipment should be provided to one customer. For the availability of the equipments, check the database and update the database side by side. Match the requirement with the employee availability and also with the time required. Update the database of the employee for the same to validate the request. The customer’s order information is collected, specifically listing the customer’s needs. Order should be generated and the details should be stored in order database along with its type and the shipping details of the customer To increase the productivity and goodwill , the company should appoint more and more full time skilled employees. In this way they can provide good services to the customers.