MyNCI: Student Information Tool: IEEE Website Requirements Specification Document

MyNCI is a student App for the National College of Ireland located in the IFSC in Dublin. This project will require the gathering, analysation and documentation of the functional and non-functional requirements for the development of the App. The reasoning for this project is to do with the current App available to the student body to download. The Apps demographic is the student’s union. The App is broken and has a connectivity problem making it unusable to students. Another reason for picking this project is due to a feeling that students may be at a disadvantage not having access to an NCI app in comparison to other 3rd level colleges. College students in DCU, UCD and TCD have access to a college affiliated apps called. The applications are available on the Google play store and Apple store. The apps give students access key features including time tables, modules, customisable calendars and other features. In recent years’ Higher education officials are concerned at the high dropout rate and students not progressing past the first year in math related and IT courses which in NCI is relative to the majority of the courses. This included 1 in 6 not progressing to the second year between 2012-2014. The project I am currently working on will be targeted towards the under-grad and post-grad student body from first year to masters. The project will involve a huge amount of stakeholder input. Various different elicitation techniques will be used to gather information from the stakeholders. The initial task of gathering the requirements will involve a large volume of input from various elicitation techniques that have been proven effective. Brainstorming sessions with stakeholders will be implemented from a very early stage to obtain different potential ideas that come forward. The brainstorming session will be concluded with a document analysis procedure that will allow a report for the findings to be produced and analysed. Interviews will also be a dominant part of the project. Interviews will allow the main stakeholders to voice their opinion on major requirements that they feel will be crucial or essential on the App. Numerous interviews will take place involving four different stakeholders. The use of surveys in the project will also be utilized for requirements elicitation. The survey will be used on a much bigger scale compared to the interview process which will only target four stakeholders. The survey process will allow me to identify numerous amounts of features desired in the app and how the stakeholder ranks their priority to the MyNCI app. During the life span of the project the business need and elicitation techniques may be changed or added due to a change in direction of the app. This may be due to requirements being ejected or new requirements added due to the Agile approach being used as opposed to the traditional waterfall approach. Prototyping will also be utilized using wireframes and also requirements workshops. Part of the elicitation techniques used will help in the appearance of the app and how the features acquired though the requirements will look on the App. This part of the project will be developed though prototyping of the app. The features that will feature on the MyNCI app will be prioritized using techniques such as MoSCoW analysis. The project will benefit from the use, understanding and development non-functional requirements analysis, Agile methodologies and prioritisation techniques such as MoSCoW analysis