FIT2005 Semester 2, 2012 Assignment #1 Task Specification and Administrative Information

Please read through this entire document before commencing work. Due Dates: The first task (questions for the client) is due by Friday 10th August (11:59pm). The remaining tasks are due by Sunday 2nd September (11:59pm). Submission Method: Submit the final work on Moodle using the assignment tool. Note: You may be interviewed about your assignment by your tutor/lecturer.

Overview of Assignment
For this assignment, you will perform some of the activities of the relating to the analysis/ design of software systems that are taught in the first part of the semester, and will do this work by considering an information system described in a case problem. This assignment contributes 37.5% to the value of the assignments component of your assessment in this unit, or 15% of the total assessment in this unit. The purposes of this assignment are: To give you experience in performing tasks similar to what will be required when you do the final year project unit, but on a system which is specified by the university staff and where you will receive guidance in interpreting what is required. To enable you to demonstrate your progress in developing skills in systems analysis To assess your progress towards the attainment of a selection of the learning objectives from study modules 2 through 4 of the unit.

Resources
You are provided with the following resources: This document, which outlines the tasks to be performed by you for assessment, and explains various procedural/administrative matters. A document describing the case problem (which is about a public transport journey charging system) A further document will be provided after task 1 has been submitted, giving further details. A globally-accessible Moodle Discussion Forum for asking questions of the staff, about issues relating to the assignment such as approaches to take, ways of interpreting the case problem, clarifying concepts which have been taught, etc.

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FIT2005 Systems Analysis, Design and Architecture

Instructions
1. Read through this document to understand the mechanics and administrative aspects of the assignment. 2. Read through the case problem scenario description of Public Transport Organisation. This will give you background information about the client organisations business operations, and explain their needs for a new software system to support their planned future operations. 3. Complete the tasks listed below and on the following pages paying attention to the submission requirements.

Tasks to complete
Note: The tasks are grouped into parts and questions here merely to aid in communicating to you what the assignment work entails. However, you do not have to present your report using these numbers. For example, some answers may be presented most appropriately in a combined/cohesive format. Part 1 - Due: Friday 10th August, 11:59pm 1. After you have read the problem scenario background document, identify a set of questions you would ask the client organization about the system which you are being asked to design for them. Assessment of this task will concentrate on whether you are asking appropriate, germane questions that would actually inform you of important details required for completing the remaining tasks of the assignment. Questions should be quite specific, and be aimed at refining the scope of the system. You should submit a minimum of 8 questions and a maximum of 15 questions. Please number each question clearly. The client organization will consider the questions received from everyone during week 4, and will respond to a selection of them, by releasing a single document that will be public to everyone enrolled in the unit. You should then take note of all the responses given by the client when in completing the remaining tasks. Part 2 - Due: Sunday 2nd September, 11:59pm 2. Identify a set of potential actors that will be needed to model the use cases for this system. For each actor, describe their actor-personality type (refer to Armour, Advanced Use Case Modeling: Software Systems, page 11) and describe their purpose. 3. Identify a set of possible use cases for this system by considering the actors and the requirements for the daily operation of the desired system as detailed by the client. Your submission should consist of a list which gives the name and primary actor and brief description of the purpose/objective/reason for needing the use case. You should

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FIT2005 Systems Analysis, Design and Architecture aim to be exhaustive in coming up with use cases to completely cover the systems needs. 4. Draw a set of use case diagrams showing the relationship of actors to use cases. 5. Select 4 use cases from the list and produce detailed use case descriptions for these, using the format presented in the Arlow textbook. You are allowed to do more than 4. Keep in mind that the marker will be considering your work to judge you in regard to the following: a. That you understand the structure of the detailed use case format b. That you demonstrate that you can write a use case that includes alternative flows for unusual (but still likely) situations. c. That you understand how inclusion use cases are written and integrated into other use cases. d. That you understand how to express the flow of a range of interactions. It is suggested that you aim to select at least one use case that involves creating new information within the system, and at least one which processes information that is already in the system (and thus probably involves generating some kind of output). If possible, try to select use cases which involve different actors (rather than all the use cases pertaining to a single actor). 6. Identify classes which may be required by this system. You should focus on classes which will represent important information and relations of those within the system, as well as classes may be required to coordinate key processes or to manage sets of data within the system. Do not worry about classes that are used to produce user interfaces or communicate with hardware. Make sure that each use cases trigger/start point is assigned to a particular class. The submission must include the following items: a. Write a list showing all the classes you have identified. This list should be alphabetically sorted, and each class should have a description of the purpose it will fulfill in the system. b. Create a set of class diagrams (i.e. with contents in a reasonably legible font size) to indicate the classes and how they relate to each other. Show key attributes that indicate what data the objects will store, and show key methods other than accessors and mutators of simple attributes that may be required for other objects to interact with that class. Role names should appear at the ends of relationship lines.

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FIT2005 Systems Analysis, Design and Architecture

Asking Questions (other than task 1 submission)

If you have any questions about any aspect of what the assignment is asking you to do, please post a message to the Assignment 1 Queries forum in Moodle. Do not be afraid to ask, because maybe other people also were wondering the same thing as you. However if you have a general question about concepts or techniques that were covered by a particular study guide, try to ask the question in the general study forum. Be sure to check the postings that others may already have made before you make a posting. Staff will generally ignore any message (or give blunt/angry responses) if it repeats a question previously answered. It is important that you regularly check all the forum postings over the period in which the assignment is being done, even if you feel you have already completed some tasks. (You may like to subscribe to receive emails of all postings to the forum.) When you post a message to the forums, please try to use as the topic of your post, some short phrase that pinpoints the aspect which is the substance of the concern. Using message topics such as Task 6a do not really say what the concern is (but does narrow the focus down). It is better to point out what the concern is, e.g. Task 6 what is key processing? is much clearer. This allows other students to decide whether that thread is relevant for them to read or not. You are not allowed to post partial or complete solutions to the forums.

Recommended Software
There are various software tools which claim to allow you to produce UML diagrams. Each has its issues though, and they are not always easy to use. For this reason, we will not mandate that you must produce computer-printed diagrams we will accept neat hand-drawn diagrams (if you scan them into the computer). However, Monash University has a license to allow students to use Visual Paradigm for UML. This software is able to be downloaded from the web at: http://www.visual-paradigm.com/download/vpuml.jsp, for which a licence key is provided on Moodle. On-campus students should find that it is installed on machines in the PC-labs on campus. Visual Paradigm is fairly accurate in following the technical details of the UML specification. Be aware that some demo-version or limited-license versions of software deface the saved image files with watermarks. Try the export/save function early in the process of doing the work, to determine whether or not you will have such a problem. Visual Paradigm will place a small watermark which says Monash University at the top of each diagram (as shown in some diagrams in lecture slides or the study guides) markers will not be worried about this small watermark.

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FIT2005 Systems Analysis, Design and Architecture

Submission Instructions
These remarks apply only to the final submission. All work for this assignment that you wish to be marked is to be placed into a single PDF document. (If you cannot make a PDF file, your lecturer may give you permission to submit in some other format.) Each page should be numbered. The first page needs to have a table of contents, stating where the various diagrams or lists/task answers can be located. You must include the text that comprises the box headed as Student Statement from the Facultys Individual Assignment Coversheet document. Inclusion of this text in your submission will be deemed to be equivalent to you signing a paper version of the coversheet. For the questions for the client to answer task, you just need to ensure that the questions are placed in a file that is submitted on Moodle.

Guide to how the assignment will be assessed

The marker will consider your submission against a predetermined marking scheme, to determine a grade for your work. You will be told this grade, and be provided with some feedback about aspects that could have been done better, or pointing out where something was done wrongly. There is a range of criteria which will be used to assess your work. Each one is considered and given a rating on the following scale: Excellent, Good, Satisfactory, Poor or Not Demonstrated. The criteria do not have equal weighting, and the ratings are not equally spaced; however in general, achieving satisfactory ratings (or better) for most criteria would result in a P grade for the assignment, and getting Excellent for most would result in a HD grade. The criteria used to assess your submission include the following: 1. Ability to consider a business problem, to formulate appropriate questions to ask a client organisation in order to identify and scope the system requirements 2. Ability to identify a set of potential actors for a system 3. Ability to identify use cases that are required to be supported by the system 4. Ability to develop detailed use-case descriptions for use cases that are required to be supported by the system (including making appropriate use of advanced aspects of use case analysis). 5. Ability to produce a use-case diagram to summarise the different actors, the relationship between actors, and how these actors can possibly interact with the system 6. Ability to identify sufficient and appropriate classes to represent information and to coordinate processes for a system. 7. Ability to select appropriate responsibilities to assign to classes 8. Ability to appropriately identify and model the relationships between different classes 9. Ability to correctly use the notation for UML class diagrams 10. Ability to correctly use the notation for Use Case diagrams 11. Appropriateness of the structuring of the produced work into a cohesive report.

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The Cashless Public Transport Charging System

A CASE STUDY
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We are PTO (public transport office), the government authority in charge of managing the public transport system across all modes of travel (including bus, train, ferry). Due to the large geography over which transport is provided, including in the city district, and regional districts, and between districts, and due to the different modes of travel available in different locations, there are currently various different ticketing schemes in operation, including very simple pay-as-you-board schemes in some rural districts, through to a sophisticated system in the city where you receive a paper card ticket on which is encoded details about the tickets validity for a specific date and route. We want to unify the way in which public transport is ticketed in all locations and over all modes, by moving to a system using technology such as MIFARE1 which is a stored-value card that allows people to link the card to their credit card or to load-up the card with money at a designated safe-payment point before using it to travel. (The card is re-usable.) The fees we charge transport users currently are be based on the origin and destination of each trip. Localities are divided into zones, and people are charged based on how many zones they travel through between the origin and destination. This will not change when we switch to using the new technological solution. As an example, the following list shows the train stations on the Northern Line, which travels from the Northern section of the state through to the capital city. It shows what zones the stations are located in: Woodlands Forest Edge Old Goldfields Dusty Plains Golden Beach Water Spring Greater Lakes Eltham City West Junction City Central Zone 20 Zone 16 Zone 14 Zone 10 Zone 8 Zone 7 Zone 4 Zone 2 Zone 1 Zone 1

The zones closer to the City consist of many more places than the zones in regional/rural areas (such as Woodlands in the above). The reason for some zones being skipped in the above list is due to the distance between the stations. On other transport routes, you may find zones 5 and 6 included, where the distance of those stops will be closer to the capital city than Water Spring is, but further than Greater Lakes is.
1

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIFARE for further description.

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The cost of the ticket will depend on how many zones are travelled through. Someone who boards a bus in Zone 2 and gets off in the same zone, will be charged for a one-zone journey that is wholly within zone 2. However, someone who boards the same bus but travels through to a place in zone 1 will be charged the price of a two-zone journey that covers zones 1 and 2. If they boarded the same bus at the same place, but travelling in the opposite direction, and got off in zone 3, they will be charged a the price of a two-zone journey that covers zones 2 and 3. All prices are set using a single-journey as the starting point. For example, a single short journey in zone 3 will cost some reasonable amount set by us annually (e.g. this year it is $3). If the persons journey includes additional zones, then for each additional zone we add another charge which decreases slightly for each zone (e.g. $2.90 for the first additional zone, $2.80 for the second, $2.55 for the third). However, if zone 1 is included in the journey, there is an additional premium charged for the journey (another $2). Thus the ticket which covers zones 1 and 2 will cost more than the ticket which covers zones 2 and 3, even though both are for a two-zone journey. In contrast, a 4-zone ticket that covers zones 4 through 7 costs the same as a 4-zone ticket that covers zones 7 through 11. We want to offer discounts to regular travellers as an incentive for people to use public transport. A journey is defined to last for four hours after the start of the journey so if they need to change from a bus to a train they are not charged a new fee if the change occurs during the four hours2. But, if people make a second journey later in the day (after the four hours) and it is between the same zones, we will charge a discounted fare for the second journey. Additionally, if the person has travelled in the same manner for more than 4 distinct days in the one week, we will not charge them for journeys in the same zones for which they have already been charged, for the remainder of that week. Ticket Checking Officers (TCOs) roam around the various transport modes checking that peoples cards have been activated for the current journey that people are making. A passenger activates their card by tapping it against a reader that is affixed to the entry gate of train stations, or which are placed at the entry door of the bus, or the on-ramp of the ferry. The TCOs carry mobile versions of the readers with them and ask passengers to tap their cards. If the card is not activated for the current zone, then the passenger is issued with a fine. We expect to make the stored-value cards available at Transport Information Offices (TIOs) spread across the state, where people will be able to purchase the cards from our staff. We want the travellers to be able to use a web site to check on their journeys and the charges, and to be able to update their details.

If the next leg of the journey takes them into a new zone, then they will be charged the difference between what they have already paid, and what they now are expected to have paid.

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What we expect from you:

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We want you to design a system that would enable us to keep track of all the details of issued cards, and the journeys which the card-holders make, for the purpose of charging them for their travel. We need the system to be able to produce statistical reports about journeys and fines. We also want to keep track of the placement of all the assets/devices related to the operation of the journey charging system. If we have not been clear enough in what is within scope or not for this system, please ask us questions, and we will be happy to answer them.

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