PROJECT INITIAL REPORT

Submitted for the BSc in Computer Science

18th November 2010

TITLE OF PROJECT:

Stock Control and Business Management

By:

Thinh Khuat

Student number: 200415643

Initial topic brief and introduction
“Stock Control and Business Management” is a project proposed by myself, based on a
case study of a real-life company name “Hoi Vu Limited”. The main target of this project
is to help the company with the stock management, and provide them other business
features, such as Customer management, Shipping management, Loans management
and so on. With this software, Hoi Vu Limited will be able to off load their employees,
concentrate them on other more important tasks. It also helps to reduce the human
mistakes might take place in their management, and provide their executives with a
clear report of how their business is doing.

Background context / overview

Hoi Vu Limited is a private company, which its main business is producing and
exporting gherkins to the worldwide markets. There are many stages to bring fresh
materials to final and ready products, and the purpose of my software is to help them to
manage this process better, in term of cost, efficiency and reducing human mistakes.
There is also a common risk of bribe, corruption and theft in Vietnam factory, where
management is loose. Therefore I hope my software will help prevent this from
happening by introducing a management module, including security features such as
signing in, signing out mechanism. With the appearance of this management module
alongside the database module, I hope my software will provide Hoi Vu Limited a much
better management of the stocks, and their everyday business.

Expanded specification and analysis

After acquiring the requirements from my client and doing some research, I have come
to a conclusion that they need 2 main modules for their software as specified below:

Database module:

Database module part of the software will be designed as a SQL database, using
database techniques to manage. It must satisfy these criteria:

 Every day, Hoi Vu Limited gets delivery of various kinds of fresh materials to
their warehouse. These materials needed to be processed into their database to
keep a stock record. The database module should be able to handle this, provide
them a clear, neat database of their materials stock. It should also be able to
report opening stock and closing stock every day.

 After the materials delivery process, the production process takes place in the
factory next to the material-warehouse. The warehouse manager needs to sign
off every batch of fresh materials delivered to the production manager. This need
to be recorded every time, and is supervised by the general director.

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 The number of fresh materials get delivered to the production will be compared
to a generated estimates to compare the efficiency of using them.

 At the end of every production day, the production manager needs to sign in the
system and report the number of finished products. Those products are then get
delivered to the product warehouse, and get signed off by the warehouse
manager. The software should be able to keep track of the stock inside this
warehouse, and generate the amount of available products for shipping.

The stock control should help the company to manage their materials and finished
products more efficient than the traditional manual way. It also helps to improve the
management, by telling the manager if they have enough materials for a production day,
or if they have too many finished products and should stop the production.

Front-end Application (including the management module)

The front-end application will be where the users interact with the stock database in a
friendly way. It also provides other management features I have mentioned earlier.

 The front-end application should be GUI oriented, provide easy-to-learn and

easy-to-use interface. All of the main functions will be processed into the system
by this main user interface.

 The application should have the ability to generate reports for the executives,
based on the database module. These reports should include any kind, from
stock report to customer report, loans report, and cost management report.

 The application should be able to maintain a database of customers, including

their full details, and link these details to other part of the software when
needed.

 The application should be able to manage the shipping of the company. Given
any time, it should report how many containers have been shipped up until that
date, how many are on the way, and to whom (based on the customer database
above), and how many are available to ship (based on the database module).

 The application should also be able to help dealing with the banks. It should
allow to record transactions, e.g. loans, money transfer, and so on. The details
should be entered manually by authorized personnel only.

 The application should be able to generate a business report at any given time
about the company’s situation, such as total expenses, any specific cost, the
remaining capitals, and up-to-date profit.

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Task List
Following is my task list. The tasks are divided into 9 stages alongside with an estimate
of time required to finish those tasks. Each stage will take place separately and orderly.
By the end of Stage 9, the project should be finished and ready to submit.

Stage 1 – Preparation
1. Obtaining user requirements [3 days]
2. Refine user requirements based on feedback [3 days]
3. Draft specification [5 days]

Stage 2 – Develop project plan

1. Establish the schedule [1 day]
2. Identify project risks [1 day]
3. Plan for project resources [5 days]
4. Plan for needed knowledge and skills [7 days]
5. Establish the project plan [3 days]
6. Project Initial Report Assessment [5 days]

Stage 3 – Further research

1. Further research on Business studies [7 days]
2. Further research on Database Techniques [7 days]
3. Further research on Software Design and Engineering [7 days]

Stage 4 – Modeling
1. Build final version specification [7 days]
2. Approve final version of specification from supervisor [1 day]
3. Project Interim Report Assessment [14 days]

Stage 5 – System design and analysis

1. Analysis specification [3 days]
2. Analysis data storage [3 days]
3. Analysis system activity [3 days]
4. Analysis system input and output [3 days]
5. Establish UML activity diagrams [3 days]
6. Establish Flowchart diagram for system [3 days]
7. Establish Entity-Relation Diagram for data storage [3 days]

Stage 6 – Design user interface

1. User, task, and environment analysis and modeling [2 days]
2. Interface design [4 days]
3. Interface construction [7 days]
4. Interface validation and testing [3 days]

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Stage 7 – Software development and testing (each stage of programming and
testing are running parallel)
1. Software development - core structure programming [21 days]
2. Testing 1 – core system testing [7 days]
3. Software development - Database programming [21 days]
4. Testing 2 – database testing [7 days]

Stage 8 – Comprehensive testing and optimisation

1. Testing with real data [3 days]
2. Gathering self-feedback [1 days]
3. Optimisation based on self-feedback [5 days]
4. Testing by user and gather feedback [3 days]
5. Optimise system based on user feedback [7 days]

Stage 9 – Final Stage

1. Final full system testing [3 days]
2. Final Report Assessment [15 days]
3. Prepare for project presentation and software demonstration [3 days]

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Time Plan

Oct 2010 Nov 2010 Dec 2010 Jan 2011 Feb 2011 Mar 2011 Apr 2011
ID Task Name Duration
3/10 10/10 17/10 24/10 31/10 7/11 14/11 21/11 28/11 5/12 12/12 19/12 26/12 2/1 9/1 16/1 23/1 30/1 6/2 13/2 20/2 27/2 6/3 13/3 20/3 27/3 3/4 10/4 17/4 24/4

1 Stage 1: Preparation 1.5w

2 Stage 2: Develop a project plan 3.1w

3 Stage 3: Further research 3w

4 Stage 4: Modeling 3.5w

5 Stage 6: System design, analysis 3w

6 Stage 7: User interface design 2.3w

Stage 8: Software development

7 8w
and testing
Stage 9: Comprehensive Testing
8 2.7w
and optimisation

9 Stage 10: Final Stage 3w

10 Finish the project 0w

Figure 1: Gantt chart

Risk Analysis
Below is my table of risk analysis based on real life risk that might take place to me or
my project. It includes the severity and likelihood, categorized to Low (L), Medium (M),
High (H) and Action to avoid, Action to recover in the situation that risk does happen.

Table 1: Risk analysis

Severity Likelihood
Risk Item Action to avoid Action to recover
(L/M/H) (L/M/H)
Back up regularly and
Data Loss H M Recover from backup
safely
Multiple backups –
Loss of backups H L Use alternative
online & offline
System
Maintain/Repair Use spare machine /
software/hard H M
Workstation university machine
ware failure
Alter time plan for
Tasks finish Complete tasks ahead specific tasks that
H H
later than plan of plan required longer than
expected
Perform deep
Insufficient research by books or
H H N/A
knowledge online. If not enough,
see supervisor
Take good health Apply for time
Illness H M care. Allow extra time extension due to
between each task physically illness
Save work regularly.
Work lost due
H L Always have UPS or Use university machine
to power failure
battery installed
Operating Retrieve the latest
system crashes save and double
H H See supervisor for help
after new check the
implementation implementation
Show work to
supervisor weekly,
Project stolen H L back up data safely Use backup
and securely (both
online and offline)
Bibliography

Books

Barfield L, 2004, The User Interface: Concepts & Design, Bristol, Bosko Books
Bynum A, Rogerson A, Computer Ethics and Professional Responsibility, Edited by
Bynum T, Rogerson S, Oxford, Blackwell Publishing
Cooper D, Champman C, 1987, Risk Analysis for Large Projects: Models, Methods &
Cases, London, Wiley
Deitel H, Deitel P, 2005, Visual C# 2005: How to Program, 2 nd Edition, United State of
American, Pearson Education
Faulkner X, 2000, Usability Engineering, New York, Palgrave
Hammond S, 1994, Business Studies, 3rd Edition, England, Longman
Hannigan B, 2003, Company Law, Southampton, LexisNexis Butterworths
Marcouse L, Gillespie A, Martin B, Surridge M, Wall N, Brewer M, Hammond A, Ruscoe C,
Swift L, Watson N, 1999, Business Studies, Edited by Marcouse L, Kent, Hodder &
Stoughton
Roger S, 2005, Software Engineering: Practitioner’s Approach, 6 th Edition, Singapore,
Pressman
Yarger R, Reese G, King T, 1999, MySQL & mSQL, Edited by Oram A, Liggett J, Sebastopol,
O’Reilly
Ethics Check List

Section B

Outcome: Please tick as appropriate

a. This project does not involve other people in the collection of information
and therefore does not require an ethical review
b. This project complies with the entire 12-point ethical checklist and
therefore does not require ethical review.
c. This project does not comply with all of the twelve points above and
therefore does require ethical review and the completion and submission of
an ethical approval form.
d. This project does not comply with all of the twelve points above, however
the supervisor already has ethical approval for this research

If you have ticked “c” you will be expected to apply for ethical approval. Further
advice is available from both your project supervisor and the Department’s
Ethical Officer, as well as by reading and completing the necessary forms
contained in the Department’s Guidelines for Ethical Procedures; available online
at:

http://intra.net.dcs.hull.ac.uk/sites/home/staff/ethics/Ethics
%20Committee/Forms/AllItems.aspx

Project Title: ______________________________________________________

Student’s Name: __________________________________________________
Student’s Registration Number: _______________________________________
Student’s Signature: ________________________________________________
Supervisors‟ Signature: _________________________ Date: _________