Club IT Technical Issues - Essay Example

? Club IT is a modern club that needs an upgrade in its web presence as well as Internet solution so as to be as competitive as the other clubs around it. They also need an uplift with their website so that they can enable their clientele to access the club’s portal. The uplift should utilize e-commerce as most of their customers find online shopping comfortable. It is also noted that the website is mostly controlled by the staff and, therefore, to make it more efficient, it should allow their vendors to be able to view or keep track of how their goods are used. Vendors will have the ability to restock for the owner at the appropriate time. In the paper, l am using the traditional systems development life cycle which “provides the user with a tentative system for experimental purposes at the earliest possible time.” (Kellen and Night, 2001, pg 51 ) Keywords: website optimization Club IT Technical Issues Club IT has done a very good renovation of its club and have in turn attracted a very good clientele to their club which is a big step. The technical aspects of club improvement include hardware and operating systems, networking, data management systems, and applications software. The lack of a good quality Internet is a big hurdle. During my observation night, l had to deal with slow Internet which was a dial up type in a cramped room. This really slowed down my research that evening and putting into consideration the type of clients that this club attracts, it needs an improvement. If the club can acquire a better type of Internet, it would also service Club IT’s customers who mostly are Net Generation and Millennials. These customers regularly use mobile technologies such as Blackberries, PDAs, camera phones, and other wireless communication devices. Club IT should also consider having wired and secure network connections for their offices. The club owners should also consider expanding their offices and using fewer machines in their offices. The club produces its own merchandise which is displayed on its website. Although this is a good thing, they should include a shopping cart and snippet code to ensure easy location of required products. Since most of their clients shop online, this would increase traffic to their website and attract their competitor’s customers and get the niche they need to gain the competitive advantage over the rest. For the site to be secured, the user should be provided with a unique username and a password which is alphanumeric to ensure security. His password should expire after a period of one month to ensure that they are not hacked easily. Relocation of ticket sales should be made so that they can also take advantage of these resources. The company’s website has limited its access to only the administrators. This has served as a shortcoming to its vendors who could play key role in developing the cost benefit of the company. By giving access to its suppliers they will be able to notice the various market changes as well as enable them to find an array of reports that provide analysis of how their products are selling. In the future, the club owners will be able to exchange information with the vendors directly ensuring that they have the competitive advantage over their competitors. Over time, this type of system enables the website owners to keep track of their individual sales and their respective curve chains. Each department should get their own portal on the website to enable accountability. The different departments should also be accessible to each other to make it simple to communicate with each other e.g. the accounts department accessing the staff portal to pay them. The staff should also be given unique passwords and usernames which cannot be compromised. A virtual firewall should be implemented to avoid unauthorized access. Recommended project development methodology The recommended development methodology is the linear methodology. This type of methodology divides the project into sequential phases which emphasizes budgets, planning as well as time schedule. Each cycle with an identification of stakeholders and their win conditions, and end each cycle with review and commitment. (Boehm, 2000) This methodology maintains tight control over the life cycle of the project, the user approves of the work done on a certain phase before proceeding guaranteeing constant progress. The model “can be used to realistically model important aspects of a system during each phase of the traditional life cycle.” (Huffaker, 1986, pg 16) Waterfall Initial investigation Requirements definition System design Coding and testing Implementation Maintenance Requirement phase This is the first stage of the software development, the information gathering techniques will be issuing of questionnaires to the relevant and involved parties and also from the literature review that is getting information from books and journals. Data collection instruments The data collection instruments that will be used will include:- i Literature review ii Questionnaires Data analysis Data will be analysed as soon at is acquired from the relevant parties. The independent variables will be 1 Change in number of menus and menu items 2 Change in color 3 Change in the placement of the information on the screen. Dependent variable will be: 1 The time the end user will take to learn and understand how the system will work. Specification phase The systems specifications will be clearly stated and the system functions will be specified that is the functional and non functional requirement of the system. Design phase This stage will involve designing the main structure of the system. The design of this project entails selection of development tools and production of detailed procedures that describe how the design process was carried out and implemented in the new system. The design process will involve three designs, namely, Interface design This will include the designing of the layout of the web pages on the screen, which is the design of the forms and other pages. Processing logic This will be used to show how the data will flow in the system. Flow charts, pseudo code and also the system flow charts will be used. Database design The database should automatically generate the relationship between all the entities in the database. The normalization of the database will also be done that is from zero normal form to the third normal form. References Light Night and Vince Kellen (2001). System Development Methodologies for Web Enabled E-Business: A customization Paradigm Paul Beynon-Davies; Kane Thompson Centre . (1998)Rapid Application Development: A Review and Case Study Darryl Green and Ann DiCaCenterino. (1998).A Survey of System Development Process Models: For Technology in Government Read More