Vision Document
Graduation Planning System
Team 5, Section 1 (Lehman, Weinstock, Ulman, Toffolo)
Revision History
|
Date |
Version |
Description |
Edited
by |
|
|
1.0 |
Initial
Draft |
Lauren
Toffolo, PMP |
|
|
2.0 |
Updates
to Use Case, Use Case Model diagram and feature effort and risk. |
Lauren
Toffolo, PMP |
|
|
2.1 |
Updates
per team and instructor review. |
Lauren
Toffolo, PMP |
|
|
3.0 |
Updates
per client review and new requirements from client meeting. |
Lauren
Toffolo, PMP |
1 Introduction
The project team will use this document during development of the Graduation Planning System (GPS). It is a high level abstraction of the needs and features of the application defining the problem and solution.
1.1 Purpose
of the Vision Document
This document collects, analyzes and defines high-level user needs and product features. Students and advisors at Rose-Hulman do not have an automatic way to generate scheduling into the future in order to generate “what if” scenarios related to graduation. The student or advisor must manually write out a schedule, reviewing the course catalog for required courses, class offerings, electives and pre-requisites. They desire the ability to generate a full schedule that allows various changes to scheduling and class load and to be able to know the ramifications on their graduation plans.
1.2 Product
Overview
The Graduation Planning System (GPS) will allow students to generate automatic long term scheduling to determine if they are on schedule for graduation and to generate “what if” scenarios if second majors are added, quarters are skipped, classes are dropped or course overload is scheduled. All scenarios may be saved and reloaded and the ability to check the legality of schedule will insure that the schedule is still valid. (Prerequisites have been taken etc.)
GPS will be integrated with Rose-Hulman Banner Web, and will pull student and course information from it through an interface using database calls to the Banner Web database.
An administrator, possibly in the registrar, will be assigned to maintain the application and will be responsible for loading student information from Banner Web (via a button in GPS), entering department head information and basic maintenance.
Department Heads will generally be responsible for major and minors in their area, entering course information, setting up student advisors, and creating and maintaining degree programs.
Advisors will be able to access the system and generate schedules for students that they advise.
1.3 References
Communication
Document – http://www.rose-hulman.edu/class/csse/csse371/Teams/section1/team5/Other
Docs
Problem Statement – http://www.rose-hulman.edut/class/csse/csse371/Teams/section1/team5/Problem
Statement
Detailed Use Cases - http://www.rose-hulman.edu/class/csse/csse371/Teams/section1/team5/Use
Case Model
Vision
Document – http://www.rose-hulman.edu/class/csse/csse371/Teams/section1/team5/Vision
Document
2 User Description
Main application
users will be undergraduate Rose-Hulman Students and Rose-Hulman Advisors. Additional users will be Rose-Hulman faculty
Department Heads and a system administrator.
2.1 User/Market
Demographics
The application will
not be available externally as a turnkey solution. It is Rose-Hulman’s position that this
application will be developed and supported in house. The application will be specific to use at
Rose-Hulman and no effort will be made to make the application general enough
for external use.
2.2 User Profiles
Rose-Hulman Student
This application user
is a sophisticated user with varied but strong computer backgrounds. They are familiar with web browsers and feel
comfortable in a computing environment.
The student will use the application to generate a schedule for their
use or their advisor’s use. This will
allow the student to review graduation plans if another major is added or
dropped, if they decide to sit out a quarter, or overload courses. It will also allow them to view and
substitute classes that are optional such as electives or courses that fall
into a selection of X number of courses from a list.
Students frequently
find it problematic to determine if they are on schedule to graduate given the
number of advance placement credits they may have acquired in combination with
their major and minor declarations. The
current use is to manually look up the information in the Course Catalog book
and hand write out possible schedules to determine how many hours must be taken
each quarter and if the student is on schedule to graduate. The student must also visit the Course
Catalog to determine if he/she has taken the required prerequisites and
determine if other courses may be substituted.
Determining a
graduation schedule is very difficult due to the various forms of class
selections at Rose-Hulman. Students can
have a major and no minor, a major and a minor, a double major etc. The combinations are endless. Additionally, many majors and minors have
domain tracks or requirements such as “3 of these 5 and 2 of these 3”. It is very difficult to track manually and
determine all the options available.
Schedule generation
success to a student means the most flexibility and speed possible. The student will want to be able to access
prerequisites online, switch courses, view which courses of a set (3 of 5) are
offered in which quarter and see available substitutes. Additionally the student should be able to
check for a legal schedule, indicating that a prerequisite has not been taken
or other degree fulfilling requirements have not been met, or approval is
needed from the course instructor, advisor or department head.
Rose-Hulman Advisor
The advisor will
have the same capabilities as the student, except the advisor must select a
student before generating the schedule.
The advisor will be a Rose-Hulman professor, with at least one year of
teaching experience at Rose-Hulman and most likely will hold a PhD. The advisor will be familiar with web
browsers and feel comfortable in a computing environment.
The advisor has
similar issues as the student user, with the added issue of freshman
schedules. Freshmen are assigned
advisors that may or may not be in their area of study. It is sometimes difficult for these advisors
to help the student plan beyond the next quarter, and depending on the possibly
declared major, the next quarter may be difficult as well. This is because, while most freshman
schedules are the same, a few majors require freshmen to take certain courses
in their freshman year, that when outside of the advisors area of study, he/she
may not be aware of and therefore may miss.
The advisor will
generate schedules for students and needs the option of saving and loading
student schedules, and checking for legality.
The advisor should be able to select course substitutes, and use the
system as if he/she were a student after selecting a student.
Rose-Hulman Department Head
The department head
will be a Rose-Hulman professor who determines student advisors for students
who have declared majors in his department.
He/She will also setup degree programs, enter and remove courses and
maintain like times that course will be available.. The department head will be familiar with
browsers and comfortable in the computing environment.
This function will
be key to the function of the application.
All course information that is not pulled from Banner Web must be
updated in a timely manner for students to have access to real
information. It is assumed that the
department heads assistant will also need access to the department head account
and will do the majority of input although the department head is ultimately
responsible for the content in the system.
In the first
release, the department head will be able to enter courses that are definitely
offered in a quarter and courses that will most likely be offered in future
quarters. There will be no
differentiation between “will be offered” and “most likely will be offered”
Administrator
It is assumed that
the administrator of the system will reside in the Registrar’s office and will
be knowledgeable of web browsers, data entry, course catalogs, student
information and general Rose-Hulman scheduling knowledge.
The administrator
will be responsible for maintaining the system through loading of new students
and department heads.
2.3 User Environment
The user environment will be a browser-based system connected to the Rose-Hulman network and logged into the application. The system’s web interface must be compatible with Windows Internet Explorer and should also be compatible with Netscape Navigator. Compatibility with as many major Internet browsers as possible is positive.
The student and
advisor users must have an account and access to Banner Web and Kerberos, prior
to using the GPS application.
The application will
be integrated with Banner Web and will provide response time similar to other
applications on the Rose-Hulman network.
If Banner Web or the network is not available the GPS application will
not be available either.
Schedule generation
will occur within 5 seconds of a system request for generation. Edits to class offerings, viewing course
information, adding, changing and deleting administrative information will be
instantaneous. (Per client constraint)
2.4 Key User Needs
- The ability to view possible scheduling
into the future
- The ability to know the ramifications of
course overload, skipping quarters, adding majors, minors
- The ability to know the ramifications of
dropping or not passing courses
- The ability to view pre-requisites and
course substitutes online
- The ability to view course descriptions
online
- The ability for advisors to generate
schedules for all students they advise
- The ability to change a major and/or
minor and view the ramification on graduation date
- The ability to select a graduation date
and see how many and which courses must be taken in which quarters to meet
the scheduled goal.
2.5 Alternatives and
Competition
Currently no competitive product exists, but several teams are competing
inside the CSSE 371 class (sections 1 and 3) to build the appropriate
application.
3 Product Overview
3.1 Product
Perspective
Administrator
3.2 Product Position
Statement
This system is for Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, who requires an integrated online scheduling tool to deal with the growing complexities of creating a four-year plan of study. The scheduling tool is an online, web-based application, which will contain a database of all courses and degree requirements at Rose-Hulman and will allow students and advisors to access that information and use it to review possible schedules. There is currently no other scheduling aid available and most scheduling is done on a case-to-case basis by meeting with student advisors. Our product will fill this important gap, saving students and faculty time and reducing the chance of scheduling errors.
3.3 Summary of
Capabilities
The basic function of this program will be to aid students in planning the courses that they need to take in order to graduate from Rose-Hulman in the amount of time and with the degrees that they desire. It will also aid Student Advisors as well as Students by providing a single source for course information, providing scheduling suggestions, and by streamlining Student/Advisor interaction.
|
Customer Benefit |
Supporting Features |
|
Students will be able to easily plan their course schedule for their entire time at Rose-Hulman |
·
Ability to
identify course sequences for all majors including prerequisites. ·
Ability to
generate suggested courses and setup a timeline. ·
All schedule
editing tools (substitute/add/delete classes, allow quarters to be skipped,
preview “what-if “scenarios). ·
Integration
with Banner Web (allows system to recognize transfer/AP credits, take into
account student’s declared major). ·
System will be
able to automatically create a schedule based on the data from Banner. |
|
Students will be able to work out complicated schedules possibly involving double majors, co-ops, overloads, and/or transfer/advance placement credit much more easily than before. |
·
System will
recommend possible substitutes for any course. ·
Student can
customize the parameters of his/her schedule (how much to overload, what
quarters to skip, what majors and minors to schedule for, and/or when he/she
should graduate by). ·
Department
heads can access and make adjustments to student schedules, thus streamlining
the process of getting a plan of study approved. |
|
Advisors will be able to easily keep track of the plans of study of their students. Students and advisors will also be able to communicate more efficiently. |
·
Advisors will
be given access to all their advisees’ accounts so they can look at their
scheduling scenarios. |
|
Department Heads will be able to easily distribute information about new classes and majors. |
·
Department head
has access to modify course offerings and need of prerequisites. ·
Students can
access information about all courses on the system (description, course
number, pre-requisites), immediately after Department Head makes changes. |
3.4 Assumptions and
Dependencies
This system is heavily dependent on being able to interface with Banner Web. It gets the majority of its data about the student users from its database. Also, since Banner Web will still be the official online registration tool, this scheduling tool must be able to interface with Banner Web via database calls.
The program is also dependent on maintenance by Department Heads and System Administrators. In order for the system to provide accurate scheduling information, it must have the most current information on courses and degree requirements. Since some courses are available every fall quarter or usually in the fall quarter, the department head will need to verify that all courses that are available for the next quarter are in the system at least two weeks prior to the registration period. The Administrator must perform basic maintenance functions to insure that student information is loaded at least annually.
3.5 Cost and Pricing
The costs of the system include both upfront development costs as well as continuing costs to keep the system up to date so that it can provide the latest scheduling information.
4. Feature Attributes
All features were ranked and prioritized by the team and client. Negotiations were made with the client to postpone some features until version 2.0 or 3.0 of the product. The following attributes were used:
Priority (Cumulative Team vote, client vote with client
having higher weight)
Critical – Must be included
Important – Of high priority but the application would be usable without this feature.
Useful – Of medium priority.
Nice – Of Low Priority
Effort (Design, development and testing time)
High – Significant Work, estimated to be more than one week
Medium – Estimated to be at least one week
Low – Estimated to be less than one week
Risk
High – Risk is high to implement feature on time and correctly and within budget
Medium – Risk is significant and may impact delivery date, budget or correctness
Low – No to small risk to product delivery date, budget or correctness
Target Release
1.0 Will be included in the first release
2.0 Postponed until after initial implementation
3.0 Postponed until more detailed requirements can be gathered and a new release schedule determined.
Use Case
Name of the Use Cases used to describe the feature requirements. Supplemental Spec is used to indicate the requirements are contained in the Supplemental Specifications document.
Notes
Important information regarding the feature.
5. Product Features