Chapter 3 :- Research Design and Methodology

This section discusses mainly about the methodology used in the project. This project uses Unified System Development Process (USPD) as the methodology and it covers project tools and hardware requirements, project schedules and project organizations. A proper methodology is required so that the overall feature and idea could be implemented correctly.

3.1 :- Project Methodology

Methodology is one of the vital parts in any research. Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary (Albert Sydney Hornby, 1995) has defined methodology as a set of methods used in a particular area of an activity. This methodology is suitable for this project because it makes it easier to understand the way the project flows.

The objective that object oriented design with unified approach is chosen because it is the best way to display or inform the user what is happening in the project using charts and diagrams. Furthermore, the project consist of four main phases in Unified System Development Process (USDP) before designing the tool. The development cycle for the USDP comprises of four phases that is inception, elaboration, construction and transition.

3.2 :- Development of Methodology

Inception Inception is the first phase in Unified Software Development Process (USDP) methodology. The inception phase is the smallest phase in the project. This phase basically consists of determining the scope of the project, understanding the requirements and the purpose of the project. The following are typical goals for the Inception phase:

Establish a justification or business case for the project Establish the project scope and boundary conditions Outline the use cases and key requirements that will drive the design tradeoffs

Outline one or more candidate architectures Identify risks Prepare a preliminary project schedule and cost estimation

Elaboration

This is the second phase in USDP. It captures all the requirements for the project and will address the risk factor to establish and validate the project architecture. The process that will take place in this phase is creating use case diagrams, conceptual diagrams (class diagram), and package diagrams (architectural diagram).

The architecture is validated primarily through the implementation of an Executable Architecture Baseline. This is a partial implementation of the system which includes the core, most architecturally significant, components. It is built in a series of small, time boxed iterations.

By the end of this phase the project architecture must have been stabilized and the executable architecture baseline must demonstrate that the architecture will support the key system functionality and exhibit the right behaviour in terms of performance, scalability and cost.

The final elaboration phase is the planning (including cost and schedule estimates) for the construction phase. At this point the plan should be accurate and credible, since it should be based on the elaboration phase thus since significant risk factors should have been addressed during the elaboration phase.

Construction

Construction is the largest phase in this project. The remainder of the project is built on the foundation laid in the elaboration phase. The project features are implemented in a series of short time boxed iterations.

Each iteration results in an executable release of the software. It is a customary to write full text use cases during the construction phase and each one becomes the start of a new iteration. Common UML (Unified Modeling Language) diagrams are used during this phase includes activity, sequence, collaboration, state (transition) and interaction overview diagrams.

Transition

The final project phase is transition. Here the project is deployed to the target users. Feedback is received from an initial release may result in further research that should be incorporated over the course of several transition phase iterations. The transition phase also includes project conversions and user training (if required).

3.3 :- Tools & Hardware

This project uses Microsoft Office 2007 to develop all the documentation and as well as Microsoft Project to develop the Gantt Chart of this particular project. Besides that, a major part of this tool is going to be developed using Java script programming language.

This is because most of the medium now uses Java programming so seeing on its compatibility this programming language is chosen. It shall be used in all windows operating system.

3.4 :- Project Schedule

Here the timeline of the project is described in detail as every aspect of the project is shown.