Software Engineering Case Studies

Case Study 1-Ticket Sales System

Below are some initial ‘raw’ requirements for an online ticket sales system (theatre, concert etc.).

.1. Users must be able to browse for events by name or date or venue.
2. Searching for events by keywords should also be possible.
3. User will select ticket price from those offered and also specify the number of tickets
they require.
4. The system should display availability of the tickets within five seconds.
5. Users must be able to choose their seats and purchase tickets 24/7.
6. Only registered customers can buy tickets.
7. Daily reports of ticket sales must be generated. These must be retained for two
years.
8. All data is to be backed up nightly.
9. It should not be possible to double-book tickets (i.e. buy a ticket that has already
been sold).
10.Ad hoc reporting will be required, showing ticket sales over a week. It should be
possible to vary that time span and look at any duration up to six months.

Case Study 2- Document Management System

Some initial requirements for an online document management system have been captured below:

“The system must be available 24/7. Anybody will be able to browse the catalogue but will need
to provide their membership details (user names and passwords) if they wish to download or
upload documents. User names will usually be email addresses and passwords will be eight
characters long. If the details do not match any existing members they will be given the
opportunity to register. Users should also be able to register even when they do not want to
download or upload. It should be possible for the admin team to cancel membership but
members should not be able to do this themselves. The interface must comply with Disability
Access legislation. A weekly report of all registered members must be produced.”

Case Study 3- At the Vet

A Veterinary Surgery is (at last) implementing an IT system. Initial requirements have been
captured and a data model produced. Validate the class diagram against each

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requirement in turn and identify any requirements that are not fully supported, explaining
the problem in each case.
1. Once animals are on the system any appointments they need can be booked.
2. The system must record the name and date of birth of the animal and the Vet that
they will be seeing.
3. Vets often write prescriptions and the system must record the drug and quantity as
well as the animal for which the drug is prescribed.
4. It should be possible to see which Vet wrote which prescription and when.

Case Study 4- Acme Engineering

Acme engineering is a general light engineering company that specialises in metallic fixtures and
fittings. It manufactures various products to customer order, and also has long term contracts to
supply manufactured products to other companies. Acme is a “jobbing shop” involving
craftspeople making specialised complete products – it is not a production line operation. The
craftspeople work on early (6am – 2pm) and late (2pm – 10pm) shifts 5 days a week, and
sometimes do overtime on Saturdays. The factory is always closed on Sundays. Each shift has a
supervisor. The management team consists of the Managing Director, Accountant and Sales
Manager. They are assisted by two Administrative Assistants who work Monday to Friday,
8.30am to 5.30pm. The management team has decided that, in order to become more
competitive, it needs more and better information on the costs involved in manufacturing. It
wants to build up a database of time and cost information per manufacturing job, so that future
work can be priced more accurately. This will involve recording the time spent on each
manufacturing job, the costs of materials used, and the overhead costs. One problem is that
Acme’s craftspeople have always had a free hand to carry out their work however they like, as
long as the finished fixtures and fittings conform to specification and meet deadlines. The MD
has engaged an IT consultancy company to analyse the requirements and design a system to meet
them. The team will include a consultant with extensive experience of implementing
manufacturing control systems. Acme has provided the following list of requirements to the
consultancy company:
1. The system is to log the craftsperson, start and finish time and materials used for each
manufacturing job. This must be possible on all shifts, including overtime.
2. The data for time and materials used is to be captured on touch screens next to the
machines on the factory floor so that the craftsperson’s work is not disrupted. This facility is to
be usable in a noisy and dirty workshop environment.
3. The system is to calculate material costs and overhead costs incurred for each
manufacturing job.

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4. The system is to provide a “time spent” analysis (time to set up, time per step, rework time)
report of the work done by each craftsperson.
5. The managing director would like a data mining type function to drill down on
historic data and look at costs in total, or per product range, or per product type, or per
craftsperson, over a flexible period of time, or for an individual piece of work.
6. The sales manager has asked for secure remote access via VPN using a laptop to the historic
data on the system when working away from the office.

Case Study 5 Goatilicious, Company

Goatilicious, a small company based in Suffolk, has been making luxury goat milk ice cream for
nearly ten years. Its owner and Managing Director, Warren Randall, runs the business from his
farm where he and his staff rear the goats and make the ice cream which is sold to farm shops,
delicatessens, restaurants and schools across the East of England. The herd now comprises some
300 mainly Anglo-Nubian goats and is maintained by Head Goatherd, Malcolm Illingworth, and
five other stock workers who also undertake the twice daily milkings. Under the supervision of
Production Manager, Rachel Scott, the team of ten food technicians manufacture the ice cream
in over forty flavours (some as stock items and some made to order only) and package it in 5litre
napolis, for serve-over counters, and retail tubs of 1litre and 500ml as well as ‘spoon in lid’
convenience tubs of 125ml. The ice cream is stored onsite in walk-in freezers at -29°C and,
using the company’s own freezer vans, delivered to customers by the five drivers and Logistics
Manager, Rhys Hawksby. Ellie Martin (Office Supervisor) co-ordinates all of the company’s
activities from the office onsite, where she and her two office staff process customer orders and
invoices (and payments) and run the payroll as well as trying to keep on top of maintaining
levels of consumables such as feed and bedding for the goats and the various added ingredients
required to make the ice cream. Beyond a couple of simple spreadsheets and the COTS payroll
system there is no automation in the office and, following the recent expansion of the company
and in the light of Warren’s plans for the next year which include opening more channels to
market and increasing sales by another 15%, Ellie has been expressing concerns over her team’s
ability to cope. Under some pressure from Ellie, Warren has agreed to look into the possibility of
developing an integrated IT system to automate a lot of the office work and to assist with stock
control (and, possibly, herd management). Having discussed this with the Management Team
(MD, Production Manager, Logistics Manager, Office Supervisor), Warren has made a start on

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identifying requirements for the system but has quickly got out of his depth. He has decided to
limit the system initially to handling customer orders and invoices and has now hired you as a
Business Analyst to continue the work, known as the

First Step project. The new system will need to take customer orders and produce

invoices. It has occurred to Warren that it might drive up sales if customers could place

orders online as well as by phone and this is now a top priority.

The requirements Warren has identified so far are:

1. All new customers need to be added to the system easily.

2. The system must record customer orders (not payments yet) up to about 50 per

day. These need to be retained for five years.

3. Office staff can do 1. & 2. and so can customers themselves, via the website.

4. The system should generate (but not send) invoices automatically as orders are

received.

5. Office staff (only) must be able to revise the details of an order and a new invoice

should be generated as a result.

6. Weekly reports of unpaid invoices will be needed by the MD

7. Office staff must be able to print invoices or email them to customers.

8. The Production Manager would like to be able to view all customer orders so that

she can plan production.

9. It should be possible to vary the payment terms on the invoices

10.It all needs to interface with the payroll system (MD’s requirement)

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Case Study 6:- Use Case Description

Rachel Scott has proved difficult to get hold of but she has sent you an email explaining how she
thinks customer orders should be captured on the new system.

Email received from Rachel Scott: Sorry I couldn’t make the meeting today but thanks for the
ToR you sent – it’s at least enabled me to put together the information below for you. Currently
customers ring us up with their order. First we look up the customer on our file cards. Obviously
we need this to be done by the IT system in future. And, of course, Warren wants customers to
be able to do all of this themselves in future so no more file cards! So, I guess, we’d better
identify customers by their reference number. We need to present the customer with a list of our
standard flavours (assuming they don’t want to order something unusual that we don’t keep in
stock) and let them choose what they want. Then they’ll need to select the size tubs they want
and the quantity, obviously. N.B. not all flavours come in every size tub. Once that’s all done
and as long as the items are actually in stock we’ll let the customer know how much we’re
charging them and get them to confirm their order. Finally they’ll select their delivery date. We
run vans in different directions each day so, depending on where the customer is, we can deliver
only on particular days of the week, if you see what I mean. Tuesdays are Norwich, Bury and
Felixstowe – that sort of thing. Any questions, let me know.

Rachel

Case Study 6-Submission System

we will look at a submission system that is to be used to manage submissions, that is, the
students’ papers for assignment tasks. The requirements for this system are as follows:

• Every course in the system has lecturers assigned to it. This is done by one of the course
administrators, who is also a lecturer. As part of a course, lecturers may create tasks and assess
papers submitted by students. Therefore, the lecturers award points and give feedback.

• The course administrator defines which lecturer assesses which papers. At the end of the
course, the course administrator also arranges for certificates to be issued. A student’s grade is
calculated based on the total number of points achieved for the submissions handed in.

• Students can take courses and upload papers.

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• All users—students and lecturers—can manage their user data, view the courses and the tasks
set for the courses (provided the respective user is involved in the course), and view submitted
papers as well as grade points. However, students can only view their own papers and the related
grades. Lecturers can only view the papers assigned to them and the grades they have given. The
course administrator has access rights for all data.

• A course is created and deleted by an administrator.

• When a course is created, at least one administrator must be assigned to it. Further course
administrators can be assigned at a later point in time or assignments to courses can be deleted.
The administrator can also delete whole courses.

• Information about users and administrators is automatically transferred from another system.
Therefore, functions that allow the creation of user data are not necessary.

• All of the system functions can only be used by persons who are logged in.

Case Study 6-Data Type Stack

The final example in this chapter is the modeling of the data structure Stack. Elements can be
placed on the stack using the push function and removed from the stack using the pop function.
The order in which elements are removed follows the LIFO principle (Last In, First Out), which
means that pop always delivers the element that was last placed on the stack with push and
removes it from the stack. Further functions that the class Stack should support are the
determination of the actual size of the stack, that is, the number of elements on the stack, and the
query about whether an element is on the stack at all.

Case Study 6-Student Information System

Many important administrative activities of a university are processed by the student office. Students
can register for studies (matriculation), enroll, and withdraw from studies here. Matriculation involves
enrolling, that is, registering for studies.

• Students receive their certificates from the student office. The certificates are printed out by an
employee. Lecturers send grading information to the student office. The notification system then
informs the students automatically that a certificate has been issued.

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• There is a differentiation between two types of employees in the student office: a) those that are
exclusively occupied with the administration of student data (service employee, or ServEmp), and b)
those that fulfill the remaining tasks (administration employee, or AdminEmp), whereas all employees
(ServEmp and AdminEmp) can issue information.

• Administration employees issue certificates when the students come to collect them. Administration
employees also create courses. When creating courses, they can reserve lecture halls.

A university consists of multiple faculties which are composed of university various institutes. Each
faculty and each institute has a name. An address is known for each institute.

• Each faculty is led by a dean, who is an employee of the university.

• The total number of employees is known. Employees have a social security number, a name, and an e-
mail address. There is a distinction between research and administrative personnel.

• Research associates are assigned to at least one institute. The field of study of each research associate
is known. Furthermore, research associates can be involved in projects for a certain number of hours,
and the name, starting date, and end date of the projects are known. Some research associates teach
courses. They are called lecturers.

• Courses have a unique number (ID), a name, and a weekly dur7 | P a g e ation in hours