Assignment 3 - UML or Feasibility Analysis

UML Law Firm or Feasibility Highway Patrol Accident System

You have your choice of doing either of the following two assignments.

Option 1: UML Law Firm

See problem 3 on page 410. You are currently working as a freelance systems designer and have been asked to do some of the design work for a case-tracking information system that is being developed for a local law firm which specializes in civil cases. The business objective is to implement a system that tracks a civil case from the time that the law firm begins working on the lawsuit through its final adjudication. (It may help to use Google to find law firm case managment software. If you find some, information from the software vendor may "give away" some of the objects)

What are some of the main objects and classes you would expect to find in a law firm that specializes in civil filings?

a. Describe each of these classes including their name and attributes using Figure 10-2 as an example

b. Describe any generalization/specialization relationships using Figure 10-4 as an example

c. Identify the object/class associations and create an object/class association table, using Figure 10-5 as an example. Make sure to include the multiplicity for each association.

d. Identify the aggregation relationships and prepare an aggregation relationship table using Figure 10-6 as an example.

Option 2: Highway Patrol

See problem 2 on Page 440. As part of this problem, you may want to seach the internet for systems that have been built for State Highway Patrols. I found an interesting system description at http://www.iacptechnology.org/Programs/UtahSpt.htm

You work as a system analyst in the headquarters of your state's highway patrol which has filed offices located throughout the state. Currently, traffic accident reports are handwritten in the field by the highway patrol officers, reviewd by their sergeant, stored temporarily, then batched and sent monthly to headquarters. Each one is entered into a legacy mainframe system by key data operators, then after the reports from the patrol officers in each contry have been input, a computer operator runs the edit program using JCL.

Reports with major errors or omissions are rejected and returned to the contry highway patrol office of origin for correction. After the edit program is comploeted for all the counties, an update program is run adding the monthly batch of traffic accident reports to the master file of reports. Statistical reports are generated quarterly and yearly. The entire process from the time the batched of reports are received to the point the master file is updated generall takes about three months. Executive Management is interested in replacing the system with something that is more modern, less labor-intensive, more accurate, and easier for users to access and that will reduce turnaround time for preparing statistical reports. Your assignment, as a member of the project team, is to prepare the feasibility study report.

a. What are some of the options or alternatives that you think should be considered? Identify at least three in addition to "do nothing".

b. Prepare a candidate systems matrix describing the charactieristics of each of these alternatives using the candidate systems matrix template shown in figure 11-6

c. Expand the candidate systems matrix using the template shown in Figure 11-7.

d. Evaluate each of these alternatives for operational, technial, and schedule feasibility using the techniques described in the textbook and using the template shown in Figure 11-9

Note: Since you have not done the analysis work already, you are free to "make up" the functions of your candiate systems. You need to feel free to "wildly guess" when assigning scores to various alternatives. There is more "guessing" in the real world than the text book implies!