Introduction
In Abu Dhabi, like in most other developed cities, car rental is a thriving business. With modernization, technology has found its way into the business, especially in the form of computer usage in the assignment of cars to clients and in the tracking of the vehicles when the hand-over is complete implemented by world class rental service providers like Avis or Europcar.
This proposal focuses on the analysis phase of the project involving various steps. Typically the analysis phase involves the developer eliciting user requirements. This includes fact gathering, analysis and user requirements documentation.
Detailed scope of the proposed system
The project has been defined through a thorough requirements collection and evaluation process. Based on these requirements the development team commenced a detailed analysis to determine the viability of an online car rental system. Summarily the system will:
- Enable customers to login or register with the company.
- Submit vehicle type, and registration to check if it is available
- Access the hire requirements for the particular vehicle chosen
- Access the car hire contract form for perusal and signing
- Submit the agreed charges through a suitable form of electronic funds transfer after perusal of the car hire contract details.
- Pick the car from company premises and counter sign a copy of the agreement form.
Detailed description of the current system
The current system is mainly manual and inefficient and proceeds in the following steps:
- A client comes to the company office and makes enquiry
- The employee checks the file to see the available cars
- The list is passed to the client for perusal.
- The client makes a choice and fulfills the requirements including the payment of the hire charges
- The car is availed to the client after signing the car hire details form.
Detailed description of the proposed system
AutoXpress Car Rental will fundamentally help in the collection and storage of details about the client. As such, it will provide slot for the input of the customer’s name, government-assigned identification number, employment/business number and contact details. The following are the process of the system.
- The company employee will perpetually update the details in this master file to reflect the current state of the file. Among the details submitted will be the car description and make, capacity, type, registration number, and daily charges.
- The details from this file can be accessed online by a prospective customer either by car make or by registration number.
- The customer can proceed to find the charges or rate of hire for the particular car of interest.
- The system will also capture the registration details of the customer and avail a car hire contract form with the details to the customer for signing and eventual system validation.
- These details are captured and stored in the hire contract file.
- The system will also allow the customer to pay using their credit cards where the system will capture these details in the paid contracts file.
- The car can then be availed to the customer according to the hire contract and the customer will approve and sign a copy of the form that is carried back to the office for filing.
Every car is fitted with a global satellite positioning system for ease of tracking. A penalty fee is payable if the car is not returned to the hire office at the expiry of the contract or if it is damaged by the customer.
AutoXpress car rental system will employ a webmaster who ensures that the uploaded system is available 24 hours, and 7 days a week. The webmaster will liaise with the company management to update regulations for the hire service. A database administrator will also be employed by the company to manage the system’s database and ensure that data integrity and security is maintained.
The system will have a number of business rules governing the transactions. A logon process requires the customer to register once and acquire a username and password. Additionally, the transactions accepted by the system are strictly cash on delivery-based.
The system will rely on open ended architecture to enable scalability and adaptability. This will reduce costs incurred because of adaptive maintenance. Only registered customers can transact with the system.
Functional description of the proposed system
Based on the proposed plan for the online car rental system the following are the various levels of data flow diagrams depicting the main process as well as the logical data model for the process. The data flow diagram is a graphical representation of the processes within a system indicating the entities involved data stores and the process.
The following diagram represents a context level for the AutoXpress car rental system.
The following diagram represents a level 0 data flow diagram of the user access process to the AutoXpress car rental system
The following diagram represents a level one data flow diagram of the customer car hire service request process
Recommendation for the next phase
Following the analysis phase will be the design phase. Having gathered the user requirements for the proposed system, the system developers will embark on the translation of the system requirements into a working system. This requires a tendering process where the hardware and software needed for developing the system are acquired from short-listed vendors in a competitive tendering system.
The business analyst and programmer will then interpret the user requirements gathered during the analysis phase. The development team will closely liaise with the user representative to define and program the processes and define the database requirements for the proposed system.
The development approach used will be bottom up where individual components of each process are programmed and tested and approved separately before they are integrated and tested under integration testing. Finally the user representative will be called upon to participate in user acceptance tests to ensure that the developed system meet the initial user requirements.
The final system can then be approved and uploaded to enable online access and processing. In the development of the software, the first guiding pointer is that it will be used by individuals with varied computer understanding levels.
Consequently, it will only be prudent to ensure that its interface is as simple as is practically possible. The page layout will be made in such a way that unnecessary clutter is left out, in order to make the software less strenuous on the computer’s operating system. Simplicity will also provide for easy updating and error rectification.
The software will be designed in such a way that it can be used with almost any available operating system. The most obvious ones are Microsoft Windows (in all its formats) and Mac OS. The software should easily work in tandem with other drivers such as the ones providing the connection to the printer and the company’s database.
This will help in streamlining of operations, from the front desk all the way to the administration office. Any available software whose functionalities can be borrowed will be considered in the development of the AutoXpress car rental system. This will go a long way in ensuring that the time spent in development is kept at a minimum.
Another aspect for consideration during the design process is error detection and recovery. This is because customers will tend to go for products that will give them minimal incidents of crashes. The software will be more appealing if it can self-recover without requiring the user to go the extent of rebooting the system.
The coding of the software will be to a great extent open-ended in order to allow for further development and upgrading. The choice of the compiler, interface and database will be determined after an assessment exercise of the available variety in order to ensure efficiency and desirability.
Algorithms will also be settled on depending on immediate needs and requirements, with the provision of combination whenever need arises. Testing and maintaining the software will be dependent on established industry frameworks, with the initial process involving the direct participation of the targeted users.
Project plan
The following table highlights the stages of the project’s analysis phase and the respective durations of each stage. From this breakdown a definite work breakdown structure can be derived that will govern the eventual system development process and ensure a disciplined approach to the process.
The work breakdown structure helps the development team and project sponsor to monitor the system development process and ensure that it proceeds according to the cost, time, quality, and resources.
According to the project plan the analysis phase will take one week. It is assumed that the team will work throughout the week with no break at the weekend to meet the tight development deadline. Currently the analysis stage is at the documentation stage.