Anaglate Eyram

Interim Report
For Senior High School Management System
Project

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Table of content
Content Page
Title 4

Background 4

Development 4

Learning 6

Comparison 8

Changes 9

Planning & Progress 10

Appendix A – Feasibility Report 12

Appendix B – Business Case 15

Appendix C – Current System Analysis 17

References 18

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1. TITLE
Senior High School (SHS) Management System

2. BACKGROUND
Ghanatha Senior High School runs a Senior High Schools. They operate a
facility in Accra with teaching staff dedicated to teaching and attending to
students’ personal problems. The presence of this school helps to educate
more junior high School graduates in the area; there is approximately 45
staff in the school.
After a series of interviews at Ghanatha Senior High School, it became
apparent to the author that there is no utilization of IT and there was vast
need for it. Ghanatha have used the traditional paper based system for
school administration for almost 20 years. This system incorporates
registering new students, recording fees paid, issuing books functions, but
lacks recording and reporting features, updating school database, help
functions, etc, beyond the creation of very simple lists.
In recent years student in take have decreased and Ghanatha has become
less resourceful, so the school see an urgent need to utilize contemporary IS
to assist with administrative activities and hopefully improve or at least
sustain their position in the school system. Ghanatha therefore needs a
management system to help them in administrative activities pertaining to
their system.
The system was designed and developed Using
• VB.NET
• Microsoft Access
• Word of Microsoft Office 2007
All front ends or user interfaces and all data queries were designed
using VB.NET. Because of its portability and support for SQL for
back-end transaction.
In designing the application interfaces, I will considered
• The user friendliness of the system interfaces.
• The colors that will be used to design the forms in the system making sure
they were consistent and more familiar to the user.
• The menu buttons on the forms will be organized properly (not
overcrowded) with keyboard shortcuts to ensure flexibility and easy
navigation throughout the system.

The database schema was designed and developed using Microsoft

Access, because of its security, ability to integrate with VB.Net and

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ready availability.

The database of the system comprises a number of properly

defined tables, each used for storing data peculiar to a particular
system’s activity. Each table has a primary key that is used to
uniquely identify it and a number of foreign keys are present in
each table to facilitate the interrelation between the various tables.
Data Validation to ensure that the right type of data is entered in
their correct data fields.
Data Base back-ups will also be considered to prevent loss of data.

3. Development
One of the aims of carrying out this project was to enable me acquire some new
knowledge and skills. Accordingly I have used the Unified Software Developing
Process which is one of the Software Development Processes that was treated in the
Object Oriented Analysis and Design module of the BSc (Hons) in Business
Computing and Information Systems course.

Currently the Project is at the Inception Stage of the project and some deliverables
achieved are:

1. Feasibility Study Report

It is important that there is a fair assessment of the viability of this project. This report,
as shown in the Appendix A aims at analysing the technical, economical and social
feasibility of the project.

2. Business Case
This discusses the potential cost and benefits that are associated with the project for a
specified duration of time. The initial cost of producing this software is quite high but for
subsequent years the cost to be incurred is likely to be lower since this will only be for
maintenance. The benefits however will begin from nothing through gradual
compounding benefits. The business case for this project will be over a four-year
period as seen in the Appendix B.

3. Current System Analysis

Yates D. and Wakefield Tony (2004, p. 40), suggest that an analysts examine the
current system, if there is one, and discuss with the users the problems with that
system and the requirements for a new one. This document therefore shows the critical
functions of the old system that will be affected by the new system after a series of
interviews with some Senior High School authorities. This document is shown in
Appendix C.

Objectives

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A few objectives in the project have also been released in this project. First I have
been able to identify area within the management of the school where there is
redundancy or lots paper work and I have marked these areas as the aspects that
could be automated. The admission of new students for instance involves lots of paper
work where students are invited to fill the new student form and return to the
administration. This is processed and the student is given a prospectus after parents
have paid his/her fees. On paying his/her school fees, he/she is admitted to the correct
class. Allowing administrator to access admission form in the application, fill and
update to database is eliminating the paper work in this process.

USE CASES

a. Login to the application b. Viewing and Registering Students

Viewing and
Login to the
Registering
Application
Students
Scenario Scenario
User 1. Open program User 1. Open program
2. Enter user name and 2. Login
password 3. Click the File menu item
3. Click Login 4. Click Open

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ACTIVITY DIAGRAM

Start

Enter User Name

Enter Pass Word

Correct
No User Name
Correct
Pass Word

Display Main Form

Display Menu

Yes Display
Open?
Registration Form

No

View Yes Display Data Grid

All? Form
No

Yes Display Login

Logout
Form

No
No
Exit?

End

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4. Learning

Apart from the few objectives that have been met in this project, there have been some
skills and new knowledge that I have acquired and used within the development of the
system.

New Knowledge and Skill Acquired

• Process of Admission – Though the system that manages the results of the
junior High School graduates post them to their Higher institution it does not
guarantee them automatic admission into the class/grade of their choice. The
principal will first check if there is vacancy in the particular class. Then the student
will take examinations in Basic English Language and Mathematics before he/she
will be admitted into the class if the mark gained in both is above 50%. Any mark
below 50% means the student will be admitted into the class of his/her capability.
The administrative staff will handle this process until the student is allocated a class
and the teacher is then involved. This has been used in the requirements elicitation
stage.
• Curriculum & Syllabus Settings – One objective initially outlined in the project
proposal was that the new system would help in setting the curriculum for every
class. It was revealed by the principals that the syllabus is usually determined
solely by the Ghana Education Service (GES). This is also helped my
requirements.
• Feasibility Documentation – Practically this is the first time I have produced a
feasibility study report. (See Appendix A)
• Business Case – In the preparation of cost/benefit there are a number of
methods that can be used. For example, Cash Flow, Net Present Value, Internal
Rate of Return, etc. I chose the Net Present Value because it takes into account
the time value of money.
• Unified Process - The Unified Process (UP) is a popular iterative and
incremental software development process framework (Unified Process, 2007). The
UP attempts to fulfill all the best current practices of a software development
process in a form that is suitable for a wide range of projects. The four main phases
of the UP are:
o Inception – Feasibility study, Risk assessment, Business Case, etc.
o Elaboration – Analysis and Design, Requirements Specification.
o Construction – Implementing the design and testing the system.
o Transition – Introducing the system to the user environment
• Security Obstacle Mitigation Model (SOMM) - is concerned with developing
trustworthy information systems that uphold the security requirements of
confidentiality, integrity, availability, and authentication by countering obstacles that
obstruct trust assumptions made by the analyst. The SOMM will be employed in my
analysis and design of the system.
• Cyclomatic Complexity – According to R. Pressman (2005, pg. 427), this is a
software metric that provides a quantitative measure of the logical complexity of a

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program. It will be used to determine the number of independent paths in the

program’s code so that I know the number of tests that must be conducted to
ensure that each statement of the program has been tested at least once.

Comparison

A plan is a statement of intent and a best guest of how and when things will be done,
as mentioned in C. Bentley (2002). There will always be uncertainties however. This
section compares the planned with the actual situation.

Expected Situation
After the submission of the Project Proposal it was expected that I would conduct a
Feasibility Study into the SHS Management System. This was to begin the following
week (Week 8). The next two weeks was supposed to used for analyzing the old
system through an assessment of how the SHS is managed, interviewing of
stakeholders to know what were good and bad about the old system and their
expectation of the new one (Week 10). These expectations were then to be
transformed into the specifications out of which a complete system analysis would be
conducted and subsequently the design (Week 13).

Actual Situation
Careful looks at my deliverables show that I have not been able to achieve my plans
especially the later deliverables due for week 13. During week 7 when the Project
Proposal was to be submitted, I spent the whole of the week visiting schools to solicit
the necessary support I will need if I had to undertake this project. This gave me no
time to views the lecture videos and study for the other three modules in that wee and I
then dedicated the following week for that. Then the Feasibility Study which went well
for one week. The activity of studying the old system was also a problem area because
I needed permission from principal before I could assess any information about the
schools. The interviews that were scheduled with the stakeholders also took a little
longer because it was the beginning of an academic year and schools were busy with
preparing their schools for the year. The requirement elicitation stage was therefore
delayed by a week (Completed on 11/20/2007). I therefore tried to outline the
requirements specification but again had to hold on because examinations were
getting close by and I had to use two weeks to prepare myself for it. This means as at
12/14/2007 I had been only been able to produce the requirements specification but
not the design of the system as proposed.

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Changes

Some knowledge gained emphasised that individual schools do not set their own
curriculum. It will not the necessary therefore to include this is the new system. Also
the schools will wish that their account systems are completely separated from the
management of the academic aspects of the school. This new system does not need
to manage the accounts then.

Initially the software development process, I wanted to use was the Dynamic System
Development Method. This has now changed with my better understanding of the
Unified Process. No changes have been made with regards to the analysis and design
methodologies to be used throughout the project. The UML is still a formidable
designing technique for modern programs.

The VB.Net Languages is still the programming language to be used in this

development because of its ease of use as well as Microsoft Access for the database.

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5. Planning and Progress

Below is the time plan for the rest of the project development:

ID Task Name Duration Start Date Finish Date Predecessor

(in days)
1 Produce Requirement 5 Mon 4/30/10 Thu 5/6/10 0
Specification
2 Produce System Analysis 7 Fri 5/7/10 Mon 5/17/10 1
3 Design Modules 8 Tues 5/18/10 Wed 5/26/10 1, 2
4 Write the codes for the 70 Thu 5/27/10 Wed 9/1/10 3
program
5 Testing 13 Thu 9/2/10 Mon 9/20/10 4, 2
6 Produce System 8 Thu 9/23/10 Mon 10/4/10 5
Documentation
7 Project Report 5 Mon 10/23/10 Fri 11/2/10 6

The refined project schedule still does not include the weekends when I get busier.
There have been some gaps let also to ensure that tasks do not each into others time
allocation. The continuous execution of the project will be monitored against this plan
to check for any uncertainties.

The Gnatt chart is as follows. This was produced with the Microsoft Office Project 2003
application.
Screen shot 1

Screen Shot 2

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Screen Shot 3

Appendix A:

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APPENDIX A

Feasibility Study Report

Terms of Reference
Most Senior High Schools are managed manually by their principals and head
teachers. The manual system involves lots of paper work and bottlenecks that makes it
inefficient. This project is to evolve an automated Senior High School Management
System that better runs the academic management of the school.

Currently the management of these institutions is done manually – from registration,

lesson schedules, and instructors’ appointment for subjects, allocation of classes etc.
This of course comes with its attendant problems of inaccuracy, high probability of
error and lack of speed.

Prospective students will normally have to fill the admission form at the institution
where they were posted, fill the form and return it to the principal of the school. This is
followed examining the prospective student to know his/her standard of knowledge and
to help allocate a particular programme for the student. When this program has been
agreed by the parents, the fees as pertaining to the program is paid and the student is
admitted. This process as well as the entire educational cycle the child goes through is
largely manual and this is what the new SHS Management System seeks to remove.

The reason for undertaking this feasibility study is to assess how viable the new project
is and to find out its cost and benefit implications.

Technical Feasibility
The new SHS management system will not need any special hardware component
apart from the normal PC equipments that are used already in many homes and
offices. To develop this project I will need a laptop with a minimum 40GB hard drive,
512MB memory space, 1.50MHz processor speed and with a CD/DVD RW drive. This
I already possess and therefore pose no problem. The laptop will also be facilitated
with internet access and all the necessary software products that are going to be used
in this project (i.e. VB.Net Development software and Microsoft Office suite).

Implementing this system will not require any huge investment either. The school will
need a Pentium 4 or higher specification machine to server as its server and the
central point from where the system is used to manage the academic lifecycle of the
school. There will also be a number of work stations sited in the staff common room of
the school from where the teaching staff will be able to view the students enrolled into
a class, enter the students’ grade and view the students’ performance. These can be
simple Pentium 3 machines since the server will be doing most of the processing and
data services.

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Economic Feasibility
This will consider the financial viability of the new system and the benefits that may be
accrued from the development of the system. As mention in the technical feasibility
section, the school does not require any huge investment in hardware and software.

There are a few PCs in the staff room as at now and the authorities will need ¢900
(Nine Hundred Ghana Cedis) to buy some additional three PCs in addition to what is
present. Another ¢500 to purchase the server required to host the files and site that will
be part of the project. They will not need to employ a systems administrator since they
have already hired a Computer instructor for the students and he has some experience
in the management of a desktop application. Some training will however will be
required for the future Systems administrator and the other staff (both teaching and
non-teaching staff) to make them familiar with the new system. This is not expected
involve high cost anyway because most of the staff are computer literates.

The school management authorities have pledged that they are committed to the
project and will bear all these and many other costs that comes with the development.

The summation of its cost from the initial year of implementation shows that it is very
high and with no benefits. After implementation however the will only be maintenance
costs but this time with rising benefits. The net benefit at the end of four years will
therefore show that the project is economically viable. This is clearly illustrated in
details the Business Case (Appendix B).

Social/Operational Feasibility
The implementation of the new system will be great improvements into the operations
of the school. The school authorities will not have to deal with the crowding of the
administration block during admission periods and they will consequently reduce the
number of additional administrative staff they contract during such periods. The
interface for the various functionalities are simple Graphical User Interface enhance
with help facilities to assist even the computer novice who can read English to know
his/her way around. Management and staff of the school will therefore have no
problems using this system since they meet these requirements. Accuracy and speed
are going to be main features of the new system. The teaching staff will also have less
paper work to do because they will already have a database of their student already
available to them and they will always get this from their PCs in the staff room to help
enhance their work.

Recommendation
With all these aspects of feasibility explained it can be noticed that the Senior High
School Management System is a viable one as it will greatly improve the admission

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process, reduce some pertinent cost and increase the speed and accuracy with which
the admissions process is done through the automated system.
Appendix B
The Business Case
The Business Case essentially draws out the cost and benefits analysis of the
proposed project. This could be viewed as an Investment Appraisal where both the
cost and the benefits are all quantified in monetary terms. Any cost or benefit that can
not be quantified is not included in the Business Case.

One way of doing the cost/benefit analysis is by doing the cash flow model. In the
model below the cash flow is illustrate from the year of development (year 0) where the
initial cost is heavy through to year 4 where the cost is only going to be that of
maintenance. Hence the reductions in cost as the years go by.

The benefits of the initial year however is zero (0) since there will be not benefit readily
accrued in the development year. From first year of operations the benefits are realized
and gradually rise through to the forth year.

Cash Flow Model

Cash Flow (Value in Ghana Cedis (¢)) for SHS Management
System Project
Year 0 1 2 3 4
Costs 3500 40 50 50 50
Benefits 0 1100 1700 2300 3400
Net Benefits -3500 1060 1650 2250 3350
Cash Flow -3500 -2440 -790 1460 4810

This model lack some accuracy however because it does not present the true picture
to management. It does not take into account the time value of money. It is a fact of life
that money in-hand today is not of the same value as money expected tomorrow
because it may depreciate according to the interest rate of the economy. There is
therefore, the need for management to use a model that will factor in the time value of
money. This Model is the Net Present Value (NPV) and is shown as follows:

In the model the interest rate for the economy has been used to determine how much
the value of the cedis will depreciate (i.e. Discount Factor) and therefore the real worth
of the benefits (Net Present Value) at the end of the fourth year.

The formula for the Discount Factor is given as 1/ (1+i)n, where i is the interest rate
and n is the number of years.

The Discounted Net Benefits is given as Discount Factor * Net Benefit.

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The first NPV will be the same as its Discounted Net Benefit since there will be no
benefits at that stage. The subsequent NPV will be given as the NPV (of previous
year) + Discounted Net Benefit (of current year).

The Net Present Value

Net Present Value (Value in Ghana Cedis (¢)) for SHS Management
System
Year 0 1 2 3 4
Costs 3500 40 50 50 50
Benefits 0 1100 1700 2300 3400
Net Benefits -3500 1060 1650 2250 3350

Discount Factor (Rate=15.5%) 1.00 0.87 0.75 0.65 0.56

Discounted Net Benefits -3500.00 917.75 1236.86 1460.28 1882.42
Net Present Value -3500.00 -2582.25 -1345.39 114.89 1997.31

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Appendix C
Current System Analysis

The requirement specification is one of the most important stages in the lifecycle of
software developments. According to Shelly, Cashman and Rosenblatt (1998), the
purpose of this phase is to learn exactly how the current system operates, to determine
and document what the new system should do through a series of fact-finding
exercises.

A number Senior High School authorities where interviewed to know how the school is
run on a daily basis. I also sent out questionnaires to other stakeholders to know which
part of the manual system they are not happy with and which aspects they will want to
be automated. Some observations were also made whiles in the school.

At the beginning of every academic year, graduates of JHS are being posted to the
school by a posting system to the school’s administration for an admission. They
student are invited over by the school to be assessed to help allocate them with a
program and fill an admission form. On the form the parents state all details of their
wards including their names and addresses, date of birth, previous history of
education, the program they like to offer, any peculiar medical condition or disability,
place of residence, nationality, language and whether they have siblings who already
attend the school.

After the assessment, the principal of the school will schedule a date of reporting for all
students. This is however different for the different classes. The parents of admitted
student are then asked to pay their wards’ school fees after which they are given the
prospectus. This contain information about the rule and regulations of the school, what
mode of dress is acceptable, who to contact when parent have issues to solve about
their wards’ academic performance and the basic items needed to facilitate the
learning process for the various students.

Module leaders are assigned by the principal. Once the students have be admitted by
various class list for the academic year is prepared and given to their class masters so
that they will know the number of students to expect and how to schedule the lessons
as well as make provision for the necessary equipments that may be needed to
enhance teaching and learning. When studies begin, teachers are given the curriculum
set by the Ghana Education Service for their respective classes and subjects. They will
then use this as the basis for structuring their lesson notes for the particular term and
how they deliver the content of the curriculum.

Class leaders mark the students register of their classes and note which students are
present or not. Whenever they conduct class exercises for they record the marks of

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each student in a continuous assessment book where the performance of each student
is measured. Students who are not performing well will have their parents invited to the
school for advice. At the end of the term, teachers will set examinations on what
lessons have been taught for the various classes. These are marked after the students
have done them and the marks are added to the continuous assessment. The
examination marks together with the class exercises will tell the position of the student
and the end of the term. It is out of this same continuous assessment book that the
teachers will construct the terminal report for each student. These terminal reports are
then mailed to the parents of the wards. The high level Use Case for the Current
System is given as:
SHS System

Allocate
Class to new
Fill Admission
Student Form

Evaluate
Admission
Request Pay Fees

<<includes>>
Principal
Conduct Exams Parent
for New Take Entrance
Students Exams

Pick up books
Assign
Module New Student
Leaderss
Take Lessons
Structure
lesson outline
for a term
Take
Set Exams Terminal
Teacher Student
Exams

Mark Register

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Reference:
Unified Process, 2007. Retrieved – 14th May, 2010. From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Process

Yates D. and Wakefield Tony, 2004, Systems Analysis and Design, 2nd edition,
Prentice Hall, London.

V Page, M Dixon and I Choudhury, 2007, Security Risk Mitigation for Information
Systems, BT Technology Journal, Vol 25 No 1.

C. Bentley, 2002, Managing Business Projects, 2nd edition, NCC Education Limited,
ISBN: 1-90234-353-0.

Shelly, Cashman and Rosenblatt, 1998, Systems Analysis and Design, 3rd edition,
ISBN: 0-7895-4266-8.

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