What Different Methodologies Are Available

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Contents

Chapter 1 – Introduction

Introduction

In the world we live in today, more and more tasks that were previously done manually are being carried with the use of a computerised system. Using a computer to carry out a task means work can be done in a quicker and more effective manner making them less prone to human error. This is the same for a leave application system within an organisation or company. By introducing an online leave system there will be no more need for filling out paper work to apply for a day off helping to achieve the objective of moving towards a paper free office.

The purpose of this project is to create a website that allows for online leave application for the members of staff and administrators at LJMU University can use for booking leave or holidays. This system will increase the efficiency and effectiveness of leave application as well as being easy to use and administrate.

There is currently a paper based system in place. Each member of staff has their own paper card stored in a box in an office containing details of the days taken and remaining. When a staff member wants a day off they must ask their line manager and the cards are updated. On some occasions it is not possible to access these cards and people can take leave without filling in the card making the current system timely and prone to errors.

The proposed system will be an online leave and calendar application that will perform several tasks to help users manage their appointments and leave; staff will be able to apply for leave online, online leave approval or disapproval for line manager, staff members are able to view their own leave applications and see pending results, line managers are able to see leave status for whom they are responsible for, add appointments to a calendar etc. Line managers will also be able to add, delete or amend staff member details and have access to a number of report functionalities. The new system will make it an easier process to apply for and keep track of leave.

Statement of Problems

There are a number of problems with the current system:

The system is done manually with an ineffective leave booking system in place.

It can be difficult for staff members to apply for leave.

It is difficult to keep track of staff leave records as the system in place depends on every-one properly filling in the card, which is not always the case, so some leave is unaccounted for.

It can be complicated to check staff records to see when they were off previously and if they have any days booked in the future. Cancelling these days can be a hassle too.

It is difficult and time consuming if a line manager wants to see if a certain member of staff is off on a particular day, they have to physically look for that staff members card and check to see if it has been written down.

People can take extra days if mistakes in calculations have been made or if days off haven’t been recorded.

It can be difficult to see how many staff members are off on a particular day which can lead to too many being off at one time.

It is also difficult to see which dates being applied for coincide with key university times, such as exam time if a line manager is unable to see when this is, causing members of staff to be absent at important times.

Various problems may arise during the leave application process from not being able to access a card, possibly due to a line manager being off, which can also lead to a member of staff not getting the chance to apply for a day they need.

This system currently wastes a lot of paper and time which could be better spent.

Proposed Solutions

The new system will solve of the problems with the current system.

As this system will be online, staff members will be able to apply at any time of the day from a computer. There will be no need to gain access to where the cards are stored.

The solution will have a rules based system in place which will only allow staff to take the maximum amount of days they are allowed off each year.

Staff members will be able to view leave they have booked and have the option to cancel these days if they need to.

Line managers will have access to a number of reporting functions which will allow them to see who is on leave/available on a specific day, total days a staff member has taken and remaining and people who have any unused holiday allowance.

A rules based system will only allow for a certain amount of staff members to be on leave on the same day.

Line managers will be able to see a calendar when approving or declining leave so they can clearly see if it coincides with any important dates in the University calendar. Line managers will also be able to stop certain dates from being applied for completely so no member of staff can have those days off.

The proposed system will be more time efficient and is paperless which could save money.

Objectives

Work towards a paperless office

Provide an easier and more efficient way for staff members to book and manage leave.

Provide a solution which will allow line managers to easily make approve or deny the leave request.

Provide a system that will easily allows for line managers to carry out administration tasks.

Provide a report generation service to allow for different information to be viewed.

Make it easier for staff to manage appointments or dates.

Reduce the amount of time and effort it takes to currently apply for leave.

Scope

The proposed system is an online staff holiday calendar that will allow for managing leave. The system will be for booking days off in advance, and not keep track of absences. The system will include a front-end website, back end database and middleware to connect the database.

Each member of staff will have a personal username and password to login into the system. These details are to be stored in a username and password table within the database.

The software will allow for holidays to be booked. Each member of staff is responsible to a line manager and line managers are able to set the amount of days each member of staff receives. When a member of staff applies for a day off their line manager will be notified and be able to make a decision. The user will then be informed of this decision and be able to see the status of a request if it is pending. If leave is approved, the number of days is automatically deducted from that staff member total days left. Half days are allowed. If leave is declined the line manager is able to provide a reason why and the request is stored for future reference.

A rules based system will be in place to stop staff from booking more days than they are entitled to, booking days that has the maximum amount of people have booked, or booking days that a line manager has blocked off as unavailable to take off.

This system could be integrated with the university e-mail and calendar, but this is not within the scope of this project. Staff members are however able to add key calendar events directly through the system to ensure forward planning.

The system will allow for different reports to be generated to view different statistics; when a staff member is on leave and which staff members are off on specific dates. Using a report generator the line manager is able to produce different reports for how many total days total have been taken off in a given month, people who have holidays left at the end of each year and how much, individual leave record etc.

A member of staff should be able to see only their own holiday breakdown, with line managers having the ability to view every-ones’ they are responsible for.

There is currently a paper based system in place, implementing the proposed system will have the benefit of saving time and money as it will make admin tasks easier and reduce the use of paper.

Chapter 2 – Literature Review

Methodologies

What is a methodology?

A methodology can be seen as a set of practices or guidelines, or techniques used to complete research or a project. Having a clear methodology to follow from the beginning of the project with clearly outlined directions, procedures and milestones can increase consistency throughout the project and improve efficiency.

What different methodologies are available?

Within the software development industry, there are often different options available to choose a suitable methodology that will provide a solution for a given problem. Although there are organisations and people that use a personal methodology, it is generally accepted that software methodologies generally fall under two categories; Heavy weight and Light weight. The heavyweight methodologies, such as the Waterfall Methodology can be seen as the more traditional methods and focus on detailed and specific documentation and inclusive planning. Lightweight methodologies, such as Extreme Programming (XP) are also referred to as agile methodologies and focus more on short iterative cycles and rely on the knowledge of the team carrying out the development.

Light weight development methodologies allow programmers to build solutions more quickly and efficiently, and with better responsiveness to changes in business requirements. Light weight methodologies mainly focus on development, based on short life cycles and simplicity.

With the rapid change in requirements, in terms of budget, schedule, resources and technology, agile models quickly and efficiently respond. Following are the main principles to implement an agile model:

Agile team and customer must communicate through face-to-face interaction, rather than through documentation.

Agile team and customer must work together throughout the development.

Supply the developers with resources needed and trust them to do their jobs well.

Agile team must concentrate on responding to change rather than just creating a plan and following it.

Emphasis on good design to improve quality.

Agile team must prefer to invest time in producing working software rather than producing comprehensive documentation.

Satisfy the customer by ‘early and continuous delivery of valuable software’.

An example of a lightweight methodology would be Extreme Programming.

Extreme Programming (XP)

This is a design model developed by Kent Black, Ward Cunningham and others. It has evolved from problems caused by the long developmental cycles within traditional models. The XP process can be characterised by short development cycles, incremental planning, continuous feedback and evolutionary design. The main XP terms and practices are:

Planning – the programmer estimates the effort needed for implementation of customer stories and the customer decides the scope and timing of releases based on these estimates.

Small/Short releases – Application is developed in small iterations with regular updates.

Metaphor – The system is defined as a set of metaphors between the customer and programmers which describes how the system works.

Simple Design – Great emphasis is places on simplicity within the design and code. Any unnecessary, complex and extra code are removed immediately.

Refactoring – this involves restructuring the system by removing duplication, improving communication and adding flexibility but not changing functionality of the program.

The use of the XP model is best for projects which are not large and involve a number of developers working within a specified time period.

Extreme programming, and other lightweight methodologies are better suited to larger projects, with the main emphasis being on customer involvement. This type of methodology depends heavily on good team-working.

With light-weight methodologies there is a lack of design documentation and they tend not to explicitly plan, measure or manage program quality.

Due to the nature of the project being undertaken, a heavy-weight methodology would be better suited.

Heavyweight development is usually based on a series of pre-defined steps, such as requirements definition, building the solution, testing and implantation. Such heavyweight methodologies are described in the following sections:

Waterfall Model

The Waterfall Methodology was originally defined by Winston W. Royce in 1970 (Waterfall Development Methodology, 2006) . (Spiral Methodology Diagram)

The original Waterfall Methodology is featured in Figure 1, below. These steps are as follows; Requirements determination, Design, Implementation, Verification and Maintenance. The Waterfall method makes the assumption that all requirements can be gathered up front during the Requirements phase (Kee, 2006). Communication with the user is front-loaded into this phase, as the Project Manager does his or her best to get a detailed understanding of the user's requirements. Once this stage is complete, the process runs "downhill" (Jeffrey A. Hoffer, 2008)

Figure 1 : ("The Waterfall Development Methodology", 2006)The design phase can be broken in to two sections; Logical design and physical design. During the Logical Design phase, the system's analysts makes use of the information collected in the Requirements phase to design the system independently of any hardware or software system (Hoffer, et al, 2008). Once the higher-level Logical Design is complete, the systems analyst then begins transforming it into a Physical Design dependent on the specifications of specific hardware and software technologies.

The implementation phase is when all of the code is written. The project requirements and specifications are generally used as a guide to program the application.

Royce had called for the verification phase to ensure the project was going in the right direction and meeting customers’ needs. However, in the real world, this phase is often ignored.

During the maintenance phase, the developed application is being used. As problems are found due to improper requirements determination or other mistakes in the design process, or due to changes in the users' requirements, changes are made to the system during this phase. (SDLC)

Design errors can be seen before any software is written, which can save time in the implementation phase due to not having to change any designs in the later stage.

A structured approach means it is easier to measure progress through the use of milestones and deliverables. Testing will also be easier as it can be done in reference to scenarios that would have been laid out in the functional specification.

However, it may be difficult for the end user to state their needs at an abstract level of a functional specification, and may only fully appreciate it when the application is complete. It can then be difficult and expensive to re-engineer at this point.

A project being developed following the waterfall methodology can take substantially longer to develop compared to using iterative models such as agile development methods.

Spiral Method

Also known as Boem’s model, using his model, process is represented as a spiral rather than a sequence of events with backtracking. The spiral has many cycles and each cycle represents a phase in the process. There are no fixed stages such as design or testing, instead there are loops in the spiral model that are chosen depending on what is required. Risks are explicitly assessed and resolved throughout the process. Figure 2, shown below, shows the processes involved in the Spiral Model.

There are four main phases of the spiral design:

Objective Setting – Specific objectives for the project are defined.

Risk assessment and reduction – Key risks are identified, analysed and information is obtained to reduce these risks. The aim is that all risks will be resolved.

Development and Validation – Once all possible risks are identified, software development can begin.

Planning – The project is reviewed and plans are drawn up for the next round of spiral

Figure 2: Iterations within Spiral Methodology

The spiral method places heavy emphasis on planning for verification and validation of the product in the early stages or product development. Each deliverable must also be testable.

However, the spiral method does not easily handle concurrent events and iterations. Any dynamic changes in the requirements can be difficult to enforce.

The spiral method, while generally taking less time to complete a project than using the Waterfall method does not work as well for smaller projects.

Due to the nature of the project being undertaken, the Waterfall methodology would be the best to follow to get the project completed within the given time frame. As it is an individual project, the waterfall does not depend on team work. There is also heavy emphasis on analysis and design which will make completing the end product much easier.

Design Implications

When designing a system that will is to be used within a university which will hold data and personal information, there are different things that will have to be taken into consideration, for example, data will have to be processed in accordance with the Data Protection Act and the website will have to be fully accessible to ensure all members of staff will be able to fully use the services provided by website.

Data Protection Act 1998

The University needs to hold personal information on both staff members and students to better enable them to provide an effective and efficient service.

NIST Special Publication 800-12 defines PII as "any information about an individual maintained by an agency, including (1) any information that can be used to distinguish or trace an individual‘s identity, such as name, social security number, date and place of birth, mother‘s maiden name, or biometric records; and (2) any other information that is linked or linkable to an individual, such as medical, educational, financial, and employment information."

The Act mainly works in two ways. It states that any person who records and handles personal information must be open about how the information will be used and must follow the eight data protection principles. It also gives people who have data stored about them the right to access any information stored about them.

When processing personal information, it is imperative that it is done in accordance with the eight data protection principles. These can be found in Appendix ***

The University will have to notify the Information Commissioner about what information they will be processing and how it will be processed.

References

http://lcss.glam.ac.uk/media/files/documents/2009-09-30/Data_ProtectionA.pdf

Accessibility

As the proposed solution is to be implemented within a University, the website will be used be a range of different types of users. The design of the system should take into consideration people who are visually impaired or have any other disabilities, making it fully accessible to them.

What is accessibility?

The number of people affected by accessibility is a lot greater when the number of people affected by accessibility is much greater when it is taken into consideration those affected by a not only a permanent disability, but also those with temporary disabilities, for example a broken arm, those who are situationally disabled, for example their environment prevents them from hearing audio or using a mouse and those with diminishing capacity.

Accessibility refers to the application of technical solutions to the design of a website to make it order to render it more accessible to users.

The WC3 Web accessibility Initiative says ‘Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can use the Web. More specifically, Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web, and that they can contribute to the Web. Web accessibility also benefits others, including older people with changing abilities due to aging’. If a site is designed, developed and edited correctly, all users can have equal access to information and functionality. For example, if a site was to use meaningful HTML coding and textual alternatives for images used, this would help blind users using text-to-speech technology.

What issues does Web accessibility address?

Visual Impairments – Including blindness, colour blindness, and low vision and poor eyesight.

Motor/Mobility Impairments – Difficulty in moving hands, can be caused by a number of things; tremors, moss of muscle control etc.

Auditory Impairments – Deafness or hearing difficulties.

Seizures – Can be caused by visual strobe or flashing effects.

Cognitive Impairments – Developmental disabilities, learning disabilities such as dyslexia, and other cognitive disabilities which can affect memory, attention, logic and cause confusion.

Assistive Technologies

There are different assistive technologies which can be used to help facilitate access and web-browsing:

Screen Readers – Specialised software which can be used by blind or vision impairment to use a computer. The software is used with other hardware, for example, speakers and voice synthesizers to interpret text and images from the screen to voice for the user.

Screen magnifiers – Software tools which enlarge the size of information that is displayed from the site. This can help facilitate access for those who are visually impaired.

Speech recognition – Speech recognition software can convert the users voice into commands, which are then sent to the operating system using a microphone, and used instead of mouse movements or key strokes.

Braille display – A hardware device combined with specific software which displays the screen content in Braille characters enabling blind users to access information on the computer screen.

Although the Equality Act 2010 does not specifically refer to website accessibility, it does make it illegal to discriminate against people with disabilities, and applies to anyone providing a service.

The Code of Practice: Rights of Access - Goods, Facilities, Services and Premises document published by the government's Equality and Human Rights Commission to accompany the Act does include websites as a service to the public which should be considered by the Act.

In December 2008, the WAI released the WCAG 2.0 which contains web which content accessibility guidelines with a goal of ‘providing a shared standard for Web content accessibility that meets the needs of individuals, organisations, and governments internationally’.

There are twelve guidelines that provide the basic goals that should be worked towards in order to make content more accessible to users with different disabilities, some of which can be applied directly to the proposed system.

Text alternatives for any non-text content so that it can be changed into other forms if people need it, such as print, Braille, speech etc. The text alternative should provide the same information as the non-text content.

Content should be adaptable and should be able to be presented in different ways without losing information or structure. This ensures all the information contained within a site is available to all people. Some information cannot be decoded by assistive technology, making it inaccessible. When information from the site is programmatically exposed, assistive technologies are able to present information in a form that is understandable to them.

Make it easier for users to see content by separating foreground from the background. People with visual disabilities can find it more difficult to separate foreground from background information. Information should be presented in a way that is as easy to perceive by making sure information in the foreground has sufficient contrast from the background.

All functionality should be available from a keyboard. If a function can be carried out using a keyboard, it will be able to be used by a variety of assistive technologies that create simulated keystrokes as their output, for example, speech input creates keyboard input.

Content should not be designed in a way that is known to cause seizures. Pages should not contain images or anything that flashes more than three times in any one second period.

Websites should be easily navigable. Ways to help users navigate, find content and determine where they are should be implemented. This is to help users find the information they need and also keep track of their location within the website or system. These tasks can be more difficult for people with some types of disabilities. It is important that a user can find out what their current location is and information about what other destinations are available. The use of static menus and titles on pages can help a user find where they are and provide a way to get to other pages within the website.

Content within the website should be both readable and understandable. Jargon and abbreviations should be kept to avoided to ensure every-one is able to understand the information being presented.

It can be difficult for some users to see the site as a whole. Screen readers present information as a steam of speech that can make it difficult to understand relationships. Presenting content in a predictable order and making the behaviour of functional and components predictable can make it easier for people to find navigation bars and other components.

Help users avoid mistakes with input assistance. Some people with disabilities may find it more difficult to create error free input as well as detecting errors they have made. Typical error detection, for example colour change may not be useful due to limited colour perception. This guideline aims to reduce user errors and increase the likelihood the errors will be noticed by the user.

Implementing these measures within a system or website will help make it accessible to every-one. This will mean people with disabilities will be able to make full use of the website and will have access to the complete content.

Workflow Systems

What is workflow?

Workflow can be seen as ‘The automation of a business process , in whole or in part, during which documents, information or tasks are passed from one participant to another for action (activities), according to a set of procedural rules’. (WFMC, 1999)

A participant may be:

A person or an automated process.

Local, or in a separate remote location.

A workflow approach to analysing and managing a business process can be combined with an object orientated programming approach, which tends to focus on documents and data. In general, workflow management focuses on processes rather than documents.

What is a workflow management system?

A Workflow Management System is a system that defines, creates and manages the execution of workflows through the use of software, running on one or more workflow engines, which is able to interpret the process definition, interact with workflow participants and, where required, invoke the use of IT tools and applications. (WFMC, 1999)

What are the benefits to using Workflow Management Systems?

According to the WFMC, almost 90% of time it takes to carry out tasks within the business setting is classified as transfer time and only 10% is used for the actual completion of these tasks. The goal of workflow management systems is to eradicate lengthy business cycles so less time is required to execute a task is minimised and the transfer time between tasks is eliminated completely. Other benefits of workflow management include:

Improved efficiency through the automation of business processes resulting in the elimination of unnecessary steps.

Better business process control due to the standardisation of work methods and creating audit trails.

Improved customer service as consistency in the processes leads to greater predictability in customer response levels.

Improved flexibility as software control over processes enable future redesign in response to changing business needs. (Understanding Workflow, 2011)

From the example shown in figure 4, below, we can see how the automation of processes improves efficiency and reduces the potential for errors. There is much less chance for human error to break the process. If a manager forgets to respond to a request, and its status does not change from ‘pending’ after a predefined time period, the system can detect this and send a reminder.

Figure : Automated holiday request workflow system

What does Workflow do?

Workflow can be used to dispatch work and send notification based on pre-defined processes.

Manage the business process on the organisational model and provide support for approval authority, delegation and substitution.

Manage deadlines and priorities

Workflow can help streamline and effectively automate business processes by, for example, prompting users to complete information that is relevant to the current stage of the business process, creating tasks for follow up, displaying help prompts to the current stage of the process, follow escalation paths if set processes are deviated from, sending reminder e-mails or messages etc.

Workflow Modelling Techniques

Workflow management involves:

Process modelling, which requires workflow models and techniques for capturing and describing a process.

Process re-engineering, which requires the techniques for optimising the process.

Workflow implementation and automation which requires the methodologies and technologies for using information system and human performers to implement, schedule, execute and control the workflow as described by the workflow specification.

Performing process modelling involves workflow specification which typically includes a set of concepts that are useful to describe processes, their tasks and the requirements that can perform the tasks. (Mentzas, 2001)

Workflow is typically performed with a workflow specification language. These languages will support the specification of; task structure (control flow) and information exchange (data flow) in a workflow, for example specifying a task that needs to wait for data from other users, exception handling, for example specifying what happens if a task fails, task duration for example, the completion time of a task, and priority for example specifying priorities for task scheduling.

Constraint or rules based workflow specification languages typically specify the workflow and data flow by routing values or constraints. Conditional routing involves scheduling a task based on data values and allows one task to branch into multiple others that can execute in parallel. Rule-based routing is more powerful than conditional routing and can involve complex rules stated in the language.

Graphical user interfaces provide workflow specification and graphical task specification. Icons used within the GUI are supported by workflow task and the ability to sequence the tasks by using arrows and connectors.

There are three basic categories of workflow specification:

Communication based techniques which assumes the objective of business process re-engineering is to improve customer satisfaction. It reduces every action in a workflow to four phases based on communication between a customer and performer; preparation; negotiation, performance and acceptance.

Activity-based techniques which focus more on modelling the work instead of commitments to other people. These techniques model both the tasks involved in a process and their dependencies.

Hybrid techniques which can be viewed as a mixture of both communication and activity based techniques.

Chapter 3 – Analysis

Interview With Martin Hanneghan

Carried out 13th November 2012

What do you feel the purpose of this project is?

To make life easier. Keeping track of leave is an admin task and necessary to ensure every-one receives the proper amount of leave entitlement. The current system is paper based so this would reduce the paper work and allow for an audit trail.

To improve workflow using reminders e-mails etc making it easier to see and access information.

To ensure rules are better enforced to stop staff from taking more days than they are allowed, to ensure only a certain amount of staff can be off at one time. To make it an easier process for staff to request leave.

What specifically does it need to do?

It needs to allow for staff to book holidays. The system should allow the administrator/line manager to set the amount of days each member of staff gets. Each member of staff is responsible to a line manager. Allowances are set on a yearly basis starting from September each year. When a staff member requests a day off their line manager should be notified and be able to make a decision. A user is able to see the status of a request if is pending. If the line manager approves leave the number of days to be taken will be deducted from that staff members total days left and those days will be blocked off. Both full and half days are allowed. If leave is declined the line manager should be able to provide a reason why and the request is stored for future reference.

The system needs to allow for line managers to view when different staff members are on leave and be able to see visually who is off on specific days. An option to produce different reports should be available for information like how many total days total have been taken off in a given month, people who have holidays left at the end of each year and how much, individual leave record etc.

A member of staff should be able to see only their own holiday breakdown, with line managers having the ability to view every-ones’ he is responsible for.

What are the expected features for both staff and administrators?

Are there any special requirements for users?

The design of the system should take into consideration people who are visually impaired or have any other disabilities. Remote access would also be useful so members of staff can access and book leave entitlement from home.

What is the current system in place? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the current system?

At the minute there is a paper based system in place. A staff member asks their line manager for leave and records any days taken and remaining on their own paper card which is stored in a box in an office. Sometimes it is not possible to access to these cards and people can also take leave without filling in the card. This method is prone to error.

What information needs to be held in the proposed system?

Staff details, phone numbers, room numbers, username and passwords, the number of days taken and remaining for each staff member, approved and denied requests

How is new information added into the system? For example if there is a new member of staff.

Line managers should be able to add a new user to the system.

Are there any pages you feel necessary?

A login screen for users should be the first screen and then there should be requests page, calendar and reports…

Anything that needs approval?

Requests will automatically be declined if a user doesn’t have the correct leave available for example if they don’t have enough days left or if no more staff members are able to have a certain day off. Automated e-mails or notifications should be generated.

What security measures do you feel necessary?

The system should be protected by each member of staff having an individual username and password.

System Requirements Specification

1. Introduction

1.1 Purpose

This Systems Requirement Specification will form the requirements specification for the staff online holiday and holiday booking system. These specifications for the services available will be derived from an interview carried out with Martin Hanneghan. This document will provide a description of all the functions, specifications, constraints and other information needed to provide a description of the system. It will also form a baseline for a test plan to be implemented.

The system requirements document is intended for use by the designer and developers of the proosed system and also the end user.

1.2 Scope

The proposed system is an online staff holiday calendar that will allow for managing leave. The system will be for booking days off in advance, and not keep track of absences. The system will include a front-end website, back end database and middleware to connect the database.

Each member of staff will have a personal username and password to login into the system. These details are to be stored in a username and password table within the database.

The software will allow for holidays to be booked. Each member of staff is responsible to a line manager and line managers are able to set the amount of days each member of staff receives. When a member of staff applies for a day off their line manager will be notified and be able to make a decision. The user will then be informed of this decision and be able to see the status of a request if it is pending. If leave is approved, the number of days is automatically deducted from that staff member total days left. Half days are allowed. If leave is declined the line manager is able to provide a reason why and the request is stored for future reference.

A rules based system will be in place to stop staff from booking more days than they are entitled to, booking days that has the maximum amount of people have booked, or booking days that a line manager has blocked off as unavailable to take off.

This system could be integrated with the university e-mail and calendar, but this is not within the scope of this project. Staff members are however able to add key calendar events directly through the system to ensure forward planning.

The system will allow for different reports to be generated to view different statistics; when a staff member is on leave and which staff members are off on specific dates. Using a report generator the line manager is able to produce different reports for how many total days total have been taken off in a given month, people who have holidays left at the end of each year and how much, individual leave record etc.

A member of staff should be able to see only their own holiday breakdown, with line managers having the ability to view every-ones’ they are responsible for.

There is currently a paper based system in place, implementing the proposed system will have the benefit of saving time and money as it will make admin tasks easier and reduce the use of paper

1.3 Definitions, acronyms and abbreviations

Term

Description

GUI

Graphical User Interface - Interface that allows a user to interact with software

Roller ball mouse

Standard track ball or optical mouse