Information Systems Analysis & Design
Assignment
Due date: Week 5 Friday (5 Apr 2024) 11:59 pm AEST
Weighting: 30%
Length: 1,200 to 1,500 words (penalty will apply if the length is outside this limit)
Assessment 1 is an individual assessment. In this assessment, you are assigned tasks which
assess your course knowledge gained between weeks 1 and 4 about different facets of
systems development. All students will have to write a “professional” business report
showing the answers to the required tasks listed below.
Please note that ALL submissions will be checked by a computerized copy detection
system, and it is extremely easy for teaching staff to identify copied or otherwise plagiarised
work.
• Copying (plagiarism) can incur penalties, ranging from deduction of marks to failing
the course or even exclusion from the University.
• Please ensure you are familiar with the Academic Misconduct Procedures.
Required Tasks
1. Considering that the requirements (or expected system features) of the new system are
fairly “standard” and certain (i.e., clearly stated in the Business Case document), suggest
the most appropriate systems development methodology for the new system and give
justification why you choose this methodology (4 marks).
Note: If you give more than one methodology, you will receive zero mark for this task.
2. Briefly outline the main concept of your chosen methodology in Task (1) above
(4 marks).
3. Suggest some effective means to collect (or identify) user requirements of the new
system (4 marks). When collecting information from different users, you need to
consider that they may come from different cultural backgrounds (e.g., Indigenous
culture in Australia). Suppose that, in RNE College, some end users are Indigenous
Australians, what aspects you need to consider when collecting information from these
Indigenous Australians? (3 marks)
4. As the project leader, you need to form a project team for the development work. Who
will you invite to join this project team? Why? (5 marks)
5. Suppose, now, the College’s CEO is more ambitious and prefers to develop a new
information system which contain many system functions (not only those mentioned in
the business case). Also, at this stage, the CEO does not have a “complete” knowledge of
what functions to be included in the new system. In this case, suggest an appropriate
systems development methodology that you will use and discuss the main concept of
this methodology (3 marks). Explain the rationale behind your choice (4 marks).
Note: If you give more than one methodology, you will receive zero mark for this task.
You must include a reference list (including at least five relevant references) at the end of
your submission. Also, proper in-text citations using the Harvard citation style are
needed (3 marks). The reference list is excluded from the word count.
The total mark of this assignment is 30.
Hint: This Assignment 1 does not use the financial information given in the Business Case
document.
Deduct 2 marks for every 100 words outside the word-limit range (1,200-1,500 words).
• Late submission penalty: 1.5 marks penalty (5% of the total marks (i.e., 30)
Case Study
Rural Nursing Education (RNE) College
RNE College was established about 8 years ago as a private nursing college in the Northern
Territory (NT), Australia. It has two major missions: (a) To provide quality nursing
education in the NT. (b) To provide first-hand remote nursing support to people living in
rural areas of NT.
RNE College has three campuses. Its head campus is in Darwin (the capital city of the NT)
and its two satellite campuses are in Palmerston and Alice Springs. Each of these three
campuses has signed an agreement with a private hospital (geographically near the relevant
campus) to provide internship and training to the nursing students.
Mission (a):
Lecture and tutorial classes are conducted in the head campus, and they are live-video
streamed to the two satellite campuses forming a virtual classroom. The instructors and the
students at the satellite campuses can directly communicate with the lecturer at the head
campus when a virtual class is in progress. At any time, there will be about 100 students in
the main campus and about 40 students in each satellite campus participating in a virtual
class. The latest forecast of RNE College is that these numbers are expected to double in the
next three years.
Before the start of each weekly lecture and tutorial, the head campus’ lecturer will upload
the relevant PowerPoint teaching slides and tutorial questions into the relevant College’s
unit webpage for students to view and download. Normally, two days after the weekly
lecture/tutorial, the lecturer will upload the recorded class videos into the relevant
College’s unit webpage, so that students can watch the streaming videos (without
downloading them) or download the videos into the students’ own computers to be
watched later.
Mission (b):
RNE College provides a tele-healthcare service to the community in a radius of about 150km
from the main campus and each satellite campus by having numerous mobile teams of
nursing students (this service forms part of the students’ professional-experience placement)
for each campus. Each mobile team travels around in specially equipped vehicles called the
“home-care vehicles”. Each team can scan/photograph and send the reports of the patients
immediately to the corresponding private hospital and communicate with the medical staff
there via the communication networks in the home-care vehicles.
Currently, the above two major missions of RNE College are supported by a primitive PC based
system which was developed 8 years ago when the college was first established. The
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the College has requested the College’s IT Department to
develop a new, more powerful (or sophisticated) integrated system in-house. This new
system should have the following components or features:
• Two centralized databases should be established. The first database stores all the data
related to mission (a), and the other database stores all the data related to mission (b).
Both centralized databases should be physically located in the head campus.
• First database (nursing education):
o Student enrolment details are stored in the first database.
o There should be system functions which allow:
§ The lecturer to upload the PowerPoint teaching slides, tutorial questions, and
unit assessment documents into the relevant College’s unit webpage.
§ The lecturer to setup a teaching schedule for the current teaching semester, so
that video recording of the weekly lectures and tutorials held at the head campus
will be automated executed. Furthermore, the videos of these lectures and
tutorials will be automatically uploaded into the relevant College’s unit webpage
once they are ready.
§ The lecturer and the instructors to record the students’ scores of each assessment.
• Second database (mobile nursing team):
o Details about each mobile team (e.g., team members and the rural area covered by
the team) are stored in the second database.
o Details about the patients visited by mobile teams are stored in the second database.
o The medial advice/treatment for each visited patient as suggested by the private
hospital is stored in the second database.
Suppose you are a senior systems analyst of RNC College. You are assigned by the CEO as
the project manager of this new systems development project. You are responsible for
leading a project team to internally develop a new system with the above-mentioned
components/features, together with any closely-related system features (even though they are not
specified above) you can think of.
Financial Information
Currently, the annual income of RNC College (mainly comes from students’ tuition fee) is
$1.32 million and the annual operating cost is $0.43 million (at Year 0, which is the current
year). It is anticipated that, after implementing the new system, annual income will increase
by 5.8% (with respect to Year 0), and at the same time, annual operating cost will reduce by
8.8% (with respect to Year 0). 1 The annual discount rate is 5.0%.
As the project manager, you need to estimate the total development cost of the project, after
considering all the relevant costs such as: (i) IT staff cost involving in systems development,
(ii) hardware cost, and (iii) expenses for user training (assuming that user training will only
be offered once before system cutover). Note that there may be some other costs in addition
to (i), (ii), and (iii) given here.
The life span of the new system is estimated to be 6 years (after system cutover), and the
annual system maintenance cost is $7,000. It is assumed that the development work will be
completed at the end of Year 0, and the new system will be available in the beginning of
Year 1.
1. Note that the annual increase in income (denoted by $x) and the annual reduction in operation
costs (denoted by $y) are not “cumulative”. In other words, the value of x and y will be the same
every year (e.g., Year 1, Year 2, …) from system cutover to the end of the life span of the new
system.
The CEO has the following three requirements that must be met, otherwise he will not
approve this development project:
(a) The maximum budget for developing the new system (not including the annual system
maintenance costs for subsequent years after system cutover) that RNC College can
afford is $0.3 million.
(b) The break-even period (or payback period) must not be longer than 30 months (i.e., 2.5
years) after system cutover. In other words, the break-even point must occur at or
before the middle of Year 3.
(c) The total Net Present Value (NPV) for the project must not be less than $0.3 million.
Report Writing: Sections of a report
What is it?
Reports analyse and present information in a structured and logical manner that involves sections. The information in reports is presented using headings and sub-headings.
Reports are structured with sections and headings so that they can be efficiently scanned by a reader. To help readers scan the text, there are guidelines outlining the information to include in each section.
How do you do it?
The sections contained in reports can vary according to purpose and discipline area, so it is important to carefully check unit or assessment requirements regarding report formats. There are similarities, however, regarding the nature of the information required in common sections of reports, so it is important to adhere to the following guidelines.
Preliminary sections | Front matter
Title Page
The title page for a report includes the title and submission date of the report, as well as details of who prepared, and who it was written for. You may also need to include unit code, unit name, word length and due date.
Executive Summary or Abstract
The purpose of this section is to present the reader with a brief, but comprehensive summary of the content of the whole report. A report may require one of these, but not both.
• Abstract: usually about 200 words summarising the whole report, covering the problem being addressed, the aim of the report, methods used, the results or conclusions drawn, and any recommendations made.
• Executive Summary: usually 10-25% of the length of the report, covering background information, the aim of the report, methods used, key findings, and the recommendations.
Table of Contents
• lists the sections of the report in the same order that they appear in the report, and provides page numbers for each section to allow the document to be easily scanned
• should be formatted using Microsoft Word’s ‘Table of Contents’ tool.
Lists of Tables and Figures (only required when multiple Tables and Figures are included)
• provides a list of the tables and figures included in the report
• includes the title/number of each Table and Figure in the order they appear, and page numbers.
Body of the report
1.0 Introduction
The introduction should generally include three key types of information, which can be presented as one paragraph or more, using the following sub-headings:
• Background: sets the context and provides any background information required for the reader to understand the report.
• Aim/Objective: explains the aim/s or objective/s of the report.
• Scope: tells the reader which areas/ideas are covered in the report, and how the report is structured.
2.0 Discussion
• discusses information relevant to the topic, similarly to the body of an essay. The discussion can include table and figures to support the evidence presented. The information provided in the discussion should lead to any recommendations made
• should be fully referenced throughout
• should be organised logically with headings and subheadings.
3.0 Conclusion
• includes a summary of the major findings • addresses the purpose of the report as outlined in the introduction
• may include recommendations as a sub-heading.
4.0 Recommendations (if required)
• should state what actions should be implemented based on the findings of the report
• can be presented as a bullet point list, in order of priority.
Supplementary material | End matter
Reference list
• includes all resources cited in the body of the report, listed in alphabetical order
• is formatted in the referencing style specified by your unit.
Appendices
• include information that is relevant and of interest to the reader, but not necessarily essential
• occupy more than half a page
• should be labelled with letters or numerals (e.g. ‘Appendix A’, ‘Appendix B’, ‘Appendix C’ etc), with each Appendix starting on a new page. Each Appendix also requires an appropriate title and reference if appropriate.