软件工程代写 SWEN90016

SWEN90016 Individual Project v1.0

The University of Melbourne

Department of Computing and Information Systems SWEN90016 Software Processes and Project Management Semester 1 – 2018

Assignment One – Project Case Study and Analysis

Due on or before: Thursday, 29th March 2018 @ 1700 [05:00pm] Assignment Value = 20%

Details

This is an individual assignment. It deals with the topics of project management, software development lifecycles, process design and project plans. The main aim of this assignment is for you to develop a better understanding of various lifecycle models and their relationship to other aspects of the project. The task is to analyze the processes and project requirements of the farmX project, described in Appendix A.

Your analysis will need to develop an understanding of:

•   the key characteristics, features and requirements for the project;
•   the unknowns and risks in the project as identified at the start of the project; and
•   the goals of the project: what was the aimed for minimum deliverable.

  The Essay

  Consider the following proposition:
  “Considering the characteristics of the farmX project, an incremental software development lifecycle

  model is a best option for the project”.

  You are required to write a short essay — up to 1500 words [about three pages] — stating the key activities that would be undertaken to initiate the project and also whether or not you agree with the above proposition and the rationale for your stated position. Diagrams may be used and do not count as words. Your essay should discuss the following points:

1. Document the key activities that should be completed as part of the Project Initiation phase. Explain why these are important.
2. Describe characteristics, features, and requirements of the project that could make it a difficult project.
3. Identify what you believe to be the important risks that may impede the success of the project. Explain why.
4. Propose what you think is the most suitable software development life-cycle (SDLC) model and justify why you have decided on this model above all other models. Why is this most suitable?

Additional Information

1. There is no right answer here* and what you will need to do is to develop the logic and reasoning behind your choices.
2. You will need to extract the information that you need from the sources — it may not be obvious. If you Page 1 of 7

SWEN90016 Individual Project v1.0

truly cannot find what you need then you may make an assumption but please state your assumption clearly.

3. You will need to make a clear, logical and convincing defense of your position. To do this you need to first gather the information and you may do this in consultation with or sharing your ideas with fellow classmates — and then organize the information setting it out logically and then writing the essay.
4. Structuring and writing essays is an individual task and should not be done in groups.
5. You should use references in the form of section names and page numbers taken from farmX Case Study, or lecture notes, rather than reproduce large amounts of text in your essay.

Assessment

You are required to write a short essay — up to 1500 words [about three pages]. Your essay will be assessed on your understanding of the work covered so far and on your ability to apply what has been learned to the analysis of the project. A Marking Guide is provided in Appendix B.

Students are encouraged to take the initiative and look up additional project management approaches and process models, but in marking your essays we are after the quality of analysis not the breadth of models covered. That is, we are trying to keep the scope narrow and to concentrate on understanding that can be applied to other models. A detailed and thorough analysis of the subject material is likely to receive a higher mark than a submission that covers several models with a less convincing analysis.

The assessment takes into account your ability to critically assess the important strengths and weaknesses of processes used in the case study, argued on the basis of evidence from the notes and documents, and for you to make as best an evaluation as possible of the efficacy of these. Given the often-novel nature of software and the problems of keeping abreast of evolving technology, these skills are not only essential, but vital for software all engineers.

We understand that it is early in the semester and that not all of the material has been covered but the important point is to begin developing your analytical skills and your ability to develop the logical and technical thinking.

Submission

Submit the assignment using the Turnitin link on the subject LMS. Go to the SWEN90016 LMS page, select Assignment submit link from the subject menu, and then select View/Complete from the Assignment item. Following the instructions, upload a PDF file containing your essay.

The specification for your submission is as follows:

SWEN90016 Software Processes and Management — Assignment Essay Title Your Name
Your LMS login
Your Tutorial Time

Essay Body

Page 2 of 7

SWEN90016 Individual Project v1.0

Late Submissions

Late submissions without an approved extension will be subject to a penalty of 1% per day. Week- ends count as a single day. No assignment will be accepted more than one week late.

Word Limit: 1500 words

*As a software engineers, you will have to make reasoned choices. The real learning experience here is in developing the logic to justify a course of action or a set of choices.

Plagiarism

The University plagiarism policy applies — see the LMS for a statement of the expectations. You must structure and write the essay on your own. That is, the words on the page must represent your own ideas and understanding of the topic.

Two essays with similar structure and similar arguments may receive the special attention of the subject staff.

Page 3 of 7

SWEN90016 Individual Project v1.0

APPENDIX A – farmX Case Study

The Client Goal

Wilma Flint and Barnaby Rubble are the founders of farmX, a small start-up company with a $180,000 grant from the Australian government sponsored Rural Infrastructure Fund. Wilma and Barnaby are wheat farmers and technology enthusiasts, keen to tap in to the rural community spirit and the use of mobile devices like tablets, phones and smart watches and social media.

Their mission is to enable farmers to form unified trading blocs, to improve both the farmer’s economic prosperity selling grain and the farmer’s community connections. Their vision for the company is for a social media platform which unifies farmers during business transactions into a significantly big group of sellers, with a strong influence over negotiations of the price farmers receive for their crop from the large Bulk Grain Handlers agribusinesses, like GrainCorp. They are hoping the social aspects of the platform appeal to end users and the platform will build up loyalty with a significant proportion of Australian farmers.

Successful users of the platform will need the skill and information to intelligently monitor the national grain price fluctuations and analyse the market, so they can participate competitively in the grain marketplace.

While Wilma and Barnaby are both avid users of technology, neither of them has a background in IT development. They’re looking to you to help develop the technology platform that will be the foundation for their business.

The central idea of the platform is for people to be able to record farm indicators in a ‘diary’. Each entry could be for a grain type, quantity and quality of crop harvested, a preparation activity (eg. fencing, fertilizing, weeding, irrigation) or recording an indirect measurement such as crop growth indicators, soil moisture levels or pests detected. Over time, users will be able to see how their farm has performed and track improvements. While there are similar platforms currently available, Wilma and Barnaby see their key differentiator from their competitors as the social media aspect of their vision. Users should be able to ‘connect’ with each other – friends or other people around the district who might have the same interests in the same crops. Similar to Facebook, Wilma and Barnaby would like people to be able to ‘like’ (or as they say ‘congrats!’) diary entries that their connected friends post, as well as write comments. Wilma and Barnaby have drawn a diagram of what they think their platform will look like from a technology perspective:

Page 4 of 7

SWEN90016 Individual Project v1.0

There are several key aspects to the platform that Wilma and Barnaby have already thought about:

User Profiles

Each user of the platform will need to register as either an active member or an observer. This will allow them to access the platform from the various devices, apps, browsers and other online services that the user may use. Their registered profile can be minimal, but all users have options to provide a range of farm and demographic information such as age, gender, location, crop, farm size and specify some productivity goals. They can also add a profile picture. An active user must provide their official National Growers Registration (NGR) number. Only active users can create diary entries, comments, events and connections. Observers can only search and read the profiles and events.

Diary Entries

The core of the farmX platform is the idea of a diary. For most active users, the most common entry added to their diary will be some kind of farm activity. This might be a harvesting task, receiving an official grain quality ranking, a selling task, a storage task, a maintenance task or an equipment upgrade. The platform needs to support a wide range of farm activities. Each type of activity may have several different data items recorded. The diary entry will be tagged by the system to so the content can be searched.

Wilma and Barnaby see the diary entries a bit like posts on other social media sites like Facebook. Active users should be able to comment on each other’s entries, a bit like this:

All will include a date, start time and duration. All will include an estimate of the cost of that activity based on the activity type and duration, given the average values for farmers in that location and market.

Some, like harvesting, will include the crop type, quantity and quality. This may optionally include map data of the farm paddock in a standard GPS file format (.tcx or .gpx).

Active users can make other entries for concrete farm measurements. For example, equipment upgrade tasks, fencing, fertilizing, weeding, irrigation. These items need fewer data items – consider just using a cost estimate, date and unit of measure.

Active users can also add entries for indirect measures – this would include the date, type of measure (growth rate, soil, pests etc.) and cost estimation. These entries are hoped to foster productivity innovations.

Finally, active users can also add text-based diary entries and attach photos or videos. This could also have a comment on how they’re doing against their goals, or some other piece of information they’d like to share with their friends.

Wilma and Barnaby envisage the following means of adding diary entries to the platform:

Page 5 of 7

SWEN90016 Individual Project v1.0

Manual Entry

Using a web browser or one of the apps that will be developed, users can manually add an entry to their diary. They should also be able to edit or delete any entries they’ve made. Wilma and Barnaby are curious about what the smart watches can do.

Syncing with Mobile Devices

Various monitoring devices are available on the market that track different activities or measurements. These include devices like wireless weather stations and fitness tracking wrist bands that track the number of steps a person takes a day. Other devices, like soil test kits, simply take measurements.

Most of these devices allow users to upload device data to the Internet and they would like to sync the platform to accept data from this uploaded source. The platform should then automatically create diary entries for activities or measurements captured by the devices.

Not all data that a device generates needs to be accepted, just the data that the farmX platform supports.

Syncing with other Farm Services

Many users will already have accounts on other farm platforms such as GrainCorp, (for selling grain online), or subscription-based applications like ProFarmer, (for comparing the daily variations in the buying price) or Australian Crop Forecaster, (for harvest predictions based on weather conditions). Some of these platforms allow users to export their data for syncing with other platforms. Similar to syncing directly with monitoring devices, these other platforms may provide more data than is actually needed on the farmX platform, so only the data that farmX supports needs to be imported.

Users should be able to set up a link from their profile to the services (and associated account information) they want to sync, and the importing of activities to their diary should happen automatically.

Social Interaction

Connecting with friends

As with other social media platforms, farmX users should be able to search for other users and active users can connect with all other users. For security reasons, connection requests need to be approved by the user who receives the request.

Connected users will see each other’s diary entries in their ‘feed’, allowing active users to comment on those entries and/or give ‘Congrats!’. All users can also delete connections and report anti-social behaviour. All users must agree to a Code of Conduct and offending users can be removed from the platform by the platform administrator.

Events

Active users can create events. An event might be a group sell of the district’s combined grain harvest, or some other kind of meetup. Events have a date, time and location. All users can view events, but the event creator can send invite their connections, and invited users can accept, decline or say ‘maybe’. Events can be commented on by all invited users.

Future Enhancements

When the platform does have a presence in the market then there may be an opportunity to earn revenue from it. They would like to offer an “eBay style” transaction processing facility for grail sales to the Bulk Grain Handlers for a small farmX handling fee.

Page 6 of 7

SWEN90016 Individual Project v1.0

APPENDIX B – Marking Guide

Page 7 of 7