ISYS 2395 Business Systems Analysis & Design
Case Study: Team Work (Sprints and the Team Report)
RMIT College of Business Semester 2 2020
The Melbourne PetBit
A Melbourne firm called Tech4Pets manufactures and markets little digital tools for pets and their owners. They have come to you to design them an app to be called PetBit. This app, downloaded on devices, belonging to owners, will be connected to a little gadget also called the PetBit! The gadget can be attached to the collar around a dog or a cat.
The gadget will be fitted with a camera and a sensor, which can be accessed and controlled by the owners on their apps. So, owners can set the fitted cameras to record what their pets are upto when they are on their own. The gadgets can be connected to the Internet either via WIFI or the data network (for which a tiny SIM card can be inserted). If the gadgets go offline, the video recordings can be synced once they are online. The gadget also collects data on temperature and moisture prevalent in the surroundings the pets frequent into. In addition, it monitors and records distances travelled and calories used in the same manner as the FitBit for humans.
The PetBit has an additional feature, especially for cats, who can be a threat to native birds and animals, in that it can emit an almost inaudible sound that alerts these animals about the presence of a cat (very similar to bells tied to a cat collar). The sound can also be audible to alert other species, such as insects and little reptiles. Furthermore, the gadget can also emit sounds that protects the pet from other bigger and more aggressive pets. If the pets are chipped, the PetBit can also receive signals from these implants. This will allow owners to gather information about the health of their pets.
Owners will mainly operate the PetBit gadgets through the PetBit app on their phones, tablets, or computers, though a web version can also be made available as a supplementary tool. The app should also be able to conduct some number- crunching and generate statistics about the health of the pets. The data from the app can then feed into an algorithm, sitting in the cloud somewhere, that should be able to analyse vast amounts of data and generate some comparison reports based on aspects like the breed of the pet, or age and sex. Moreover. the algorithm should be able to generate reports using selective qualitative data, such as by comparing statistics related to the pet’s siblings and parents.
NOTE:
Tech4Pets is run by Sachi, Cat Guzman and Dogg Deep, so they are your clients. Throughout the project, you will be conducting interviews, during the online tutorials, to gather the requirements for the PetBit app. The interviews will generate additional information about the design specifications for the app.
As Business Analysts, working in a team, you can start by exploring the FitBit and other pet apps to get a preliminary idea about how such apps are designed.
Check out:
https://www.fitbark.com/ https://www.wareable.com/xiaomi/xiaomi-petbit-price-specs-release-date-6201
Also, keep in mind that this document just provides with preliminary information to get the project started. Further in-depth information will be needed in order to design
the app, which requires interviews with the clients. Moreover, the clients will be releasing additional information from time to time. This is quite usual in real-life projects, i.e. clients seldom tell you everything you need to know at the outset of the project. In addition, the information they provide can be ambiguous. It is the job of the Business Analyst to extract in-depth information from the clients and address issues of ambiguity by consistently engaging the clients in clarifying the information they provide.
Also note that all your sprints (4 in total) and the team report are based on this case study. Each of these assessments has a set of questions that you will be working on.