The Learning Support Service - Assignment Example

USE CASE DIAGRAM FOR THE LEARNING SUPPORT SERVICE Figure i) A brief of the actors in the use case diagram: a. LSS branch office- LSS currently has eight branch offices. This role interacts closely with the Parent and the LSS head office roles and performs such use cases as "Process Assessment" and "Pick Up Leads". b. Consultant- this role performs use cases such as "Selling Learning Package" which involves selling the learning package to the Parent role. c. Parent- this role interacts with LSS to facilitate the delivery of service by LSS to the "Child" role. d. Child- the "Child" actor is the actor for whom the services of LSS are targeted. It is the role that does the actual studying and movement from level to level in the study program. e. Press- this is a secondary actor that provides a supportive role to the system to achieve the goal of the primary actors. It provides leads that LSS can pick up. f. Schools- this secondary actor enables the LSS office actors (LSS Branch Office and LSS Head Office) to send out mail to the "Parent" actors. g. Shopping Mall- this secondary actor enables the LSS office actors to pick up leads through canvassing in its premises. h. Information system- this actor consists of the sales and stock module functions to enable it control those manage and control those functions. ii) Brief description of the use cases: a. Process Assessment 1. Receive request for assessment by phone or by Assessment Request Form from parents 2. Send stage test 3. Receive and mark test 4. Send letter of congratulations and stage certificate Alternative: Last video in level 4a. Send level certificate along with a request for consultant to visit family. b. Pick Up Leads 1. Send out mail to parents of school children 2. Receive interest form from parent 3. Allocate form to consultant Alternative: Other options 1a. Visit shopping mall 1a1. Check press for adverts c. Send Out Mail Shot 1. Send a request to school to mail parents 2. Receive addresses of parents 3. Send mail to parents 4. Give school cash donation d. Replenish Local Office Stock 1. Receive Order Request Form from branch office 2. Send stock to branch office e. Order Stock 1. Send order for goods to supplier 2. Receive goods and invoice 3. Pay for goods f. Sell Learning Package 1. Book appointment with parent 2. Assess child's needs 3. Work out starting level on the learning program 4. Fill order form with parent g. Order Learning Material 1. Receive information about LSS services 2. Send interest form to LSS branch office 3. Book appointment with consultant 4. Fill order form 5. Pay for learning package 6. Receive learning package h. Administer Stage Test 1. Send assessment request to LSS 2. Receive stage test 3. Supervise stage test 4. Send test for marking i. Study 1. Study video and workbook 2. Do stage exam 3. Advance to next stage on passing Alternative: Last stage of level 3a. Advance to the next level if current stage is the last stage in the current level Alternative: Last stage of last level 3a. Finish learning program j. Manage Sales and Stock 1. Record customer details, where leads come from, consultant who made the sale and child's progress 2. Update stock level 3. Re-order automatically if reorder level is reached iii) For Process Assessment the primary scenario would be 1. Receive request for assessment by phone or by Assessment Request Form from parents 2. Send stage test 3. Receive and mark test 4. Send letter of congratulations and stage certificate The secondary scenario would be: 1. Receive request for assessment by phone or by Assessment Request Form from parents 2. Send stage test 3. Receive and mark test 4. Send letter of congratulations and stage certificate Also send level certificate along with a request for consultant to visit family if this is the last stage of a level. 1. A use case enables a systems developer to capture the functional requirements of systems. It does this by providing one of more scenarios that map to how the users interact with the system to achieve a business goal or function. Use cases provide a rich view for the systems developer when carrying out requirements analysis. (Fowler M. and Scott K, 47) They provide a developer a way of estimating and scheduling the effort that he will put in to develop a part of a system that will serve a particular business goal. It provides a divide-and-conquer approach to requirements analysis since the developer can focus on one part of a system at a time. A use case meets a specific business goal and thus the use case allows the developer to analyze requirement, one business goal at a time. An example is the use case "Buy Learning Materials". This use case spells out clearly the steps a Parent role takes to acquire learning materials for a Child role. Therefore, a use case provides a clear direction to a system developer. A use case is reusable because of the rich view it provides. A use case will therefore help systems developer not only during requirements gathering but also as a guideline during development. It can also form the basis of systems documentation much latter. The use case diagram for LSS above reveals the different components of the system under development allowing the systems developer to develop the system in a modular manner. He can start with the use cases that are considered more urgent/important by the users. Use cases provide alternative scenarios thus enabling a systems developer to accommodate many behaviors of a system. This provides for the development of a robust system that will not fail because of a circumstance that had not been foreseen. An example is the use case "Process Assessment". There is the main scenario describing student advancement from stage to stage and an alternative that accommodates a case where a student has finished a level. Use cases provide for scoping during systems development. They can easily be added and removed from a system. Therefore it allows for developing a system in stages with deliverables at each stage. The systems developer can focus on the use case "Pick Up Leads" and when done move on to another use case and so on. Since use cases are not written using technical jargon they form a bridge between a systems developer and the users. This will therefore remove misunderstandings and ambiquities. The variety that diagrams and text descriptions that describe a use case ensures that it is clearly understood. Even the names of use cases are self-descriptive. "Sell Learning Package" can therefore be understood just as it is. Use cases also provide a rich view because the specifications do not use a special language. This provides for flexibility such that requirements analysis is not done with a specific implementation platform in mind. The systems developer is left free to think out of the box. It is possible to make use cases concrete by turning them into stories or scenarios. This captures a part of a system in a way that can clearly be understood. The systems developers can involve the user interface design early enough because use cases reveal the interaction/interface between users and a system. The user interface designers benefit from the diagrams and scenarios to understand this interaction. Design deliverables created using a CASE tool can be integrated with use cases and use case diagrams to give a complete requirements, design and implementation repository. All the use cases in the use case diagram in Figure 1 form a part of the repository. 2. Class diagram for the LSS System: Study Program Level Stage subject isGCSE isForPrimary isForSecondary No LevelNo Subject StageNo Level 4. A class diagram describes the types of objects in the system and the various kinds of static relationships that exist among them. The relationships are of two types: associations and subtypes (Fowler M. and Scott K, p50.) An example of association in the class diagram above is that of local branch office employing a number of consultants. An example of a subtype is the salesman Use cases reveal conceptual view of actors and the use cases that they perform. Class diagram goes beyond the conceptual view because it can be drawn at a conceptual, specification or implementation level. A use case diagram informs the construction of a class diagram. A use case diagram being simplistic in nature exposes the different actors that may end up being objects in the class diagram. Actors are basically roles that different users play in the system and end up being similar to associations in the case of class diagrams. Example in the use case diagram of Figure 1 are the LSS Head Office actor ends up becoming LSS Head Office class, LSS Branch Office actor ends up becoming the LSS Branch Office class, the Consultant actor case becomes the Consultant class, Parent actor becomes the Parent class, and Child actor becomes the Child class in the class diagram. Since it wont take much to identify actors in a use case, it therefore simplifies everything when it comes to developing class diagrams. The different use cases that actors perform end up becoming operations in the class diagram. The Consultant actor in the use case diagram performs a use case called "Sell Learning Package". This use case becomes an operation of the Consultant class in the class diagram. The Parent actor in the use case diagram performed the use cases "Order Learning Materials" and "Administer Stage Test". This use cases end up being operations within the consultant class in the class diagram. Therefore, the use case diagram forms a good basis for drawing the class diagram because a use case reveals the different components of a system and how they relate to each other. Both use cases and class diagrams endeavor to bring out the relationship between the sequence of steps describing interactions and the roles of users with respect to a particular system. Reference: Fowler M. and Scott K, UML Distilled, Pearson Education 2000, Second Edition, p50 Fowler M. and Scott K, UML Distilled, Pearson Education 2000, Second Edition, 39-64 Read More