The Rick Racer Amusements Web Portal’s Requirements Case Study

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Assumptions and Constraints
Document Overview
Methodology
System Features and Requirements
Non-functional Requirements
References

Introduction

Purpose

Rick Racer (RR) web portal will enhance the productivity and scalability of the Rick Racer Organization. The purpose of the system is to improve operations, processes, and collaboration. One of the functions to be implemented is tracking the stakeholders’ activities. Therefore, it will be critical in assigning the employees duties and tracking their performance. The system will provide the company’s management with an analytics dashboard, which will foster analysis for effective decision-making. Hence, the system will be used to track RR sites and employee trends. Another essential component will be to improve resources and knowledge management. Indexing relevant items related to operations will facilitate faster performance and improved employee turnover. As a result, employees will easily locate documents, such as policies, laws, or standards. The search functionality will be synchronized to fetch the needed information accurately.

The schedule and communication system will be instrumental in ensuring that employees and stakeholders cooperate. The portal will implement functionalities to forward information to the relevant stakeholders for quicker and informed decision-making. It will also foster communication by allowing broadcasting internal information to their relevant parties. Chat rooms will also be replicated to the system as workers must have a real-time communication mechanism. Additionally, the web portal will be designed to be available regardless of the geographical region instead of systems that are only accessible to local users. Due to the availability of a wide range of stakeholders, it will improve synchronization and information sharing processes. Finally, while the system will enable access to the organization’s information, such data as employees, suppliers, partners, and machines must not be available for editing from unofficial sources. The integrity of the official information must be protected by ensuring that official data is only viewed but not modifiable.

Scope

The proposed system addresses the company’s needs without altering the internal processes. The web portal provides a tracking solution, enhances the stakeholders’ management, and offers easier access to operational information and documents. The application will track maintenance information, employees’ activity, and crucial documentation. The search functionality will be implemented to ensure that employees or relevant parties have full-time access to vital files and documents. The web platform will also ensure that departments can announce or have virtual communication groups with their departmental members. The primary goal is to provide a solution to foster collaboration. On the same note, the portal ensures cooperation by creating stakeholders’ accounts and calendars. Thus, the online platform’s scope entails communication, tracking, and files and documents functionalities management.

Even though the portal enables searching internal documents, access to coworkers’ calendars, and real-time collaboration, it does not implement editing functionality for official information. Such data should be accessible, but write and update rights should be restricted to administrators. The platform functionalities entail sales and customer services, inventory management, maintenance, and employee administration. While the web application offers an interface for accessing official data from the official databases, this functionality does not warrant modification of employees, suppliers, machines, and partners’ data. In this regard, the rights to update official records are reserved for source systems, which should be secure. Therefore, access interfaces must be secure to prevent unwarranted or unauthorized access. As a result, the project scope entails developing secure access, as well as implementing corresponding tunnels protocols. The system will ensure the availability of official information by read-only functionalities. This information will also be used to create an analytics dashboard, which will provide business intelligence insights. While it is not the project team’s responsibility to assign duties and responsibilities to the employees, it is within the project scope to ensure rights and privileges for data access are maintained.

Background

Rick Race Amusements firm is charged with ensuring that stakeholders benefit from the enterprise, given the varied categories, and their contribution to its sustainability. The contractors should have access to relevant data to enable the fulfillment of their duties. Concerning the proposed solution, temporary or limited access should be provided to third parties attached to Rick Race Amusements.

Employees working for the company are entitled to but not limited to minimum wage. It is the responsibility of the human resource department to enact necessary performance rewards. It is expected that Rick Rose Amusements will maintain a Human Resource Information System (HRIS) to ensure effective workforce management. Corresponding data security and privacy statutes should be followed. Besides, employees’ remuneration should be based on their contribution to the company’s sustainability. It is the employer’s responsibility to provide cover to its employees as required by the law. Hence, the company should guarantee remuneration for the employees and ensure their rights are not violated.

The institution should also provide its customer with a secure but flexible platform. Consequently, Rick Rose amusement operations should be tailored towards offering the best services to its customers. As a result, the company would have a distinguished user experience, which would satisfy the customers and improve loyalty. Offering the best services to clients would assist the company in expanding its market share. On the same note, an exceptional experience is associated with a competitive advantage. Even though the firm seeks profitability, it should offer the best deals to its clients.

Organizational partners are entitled to official reports concerning the performance. They should be involved in top management. These individuals should have access to performance data, including revenue and profit. Nevertheless, these metrics are subject to mutual agreement between the involved parties.

Rick Racer Amusement should meet overall operational requirements as required by the law, including licensing terms and conditions. On the same note, the institution should fulfill labor statutes, which entail workplace safety. On the other hand, data security and privacy remain major concerns for 21^st-century corporations. Rick Racer Amusement should fulfill all legal requirements about user privacy and data security. The data storage policies should also meet the minimum storage necessities for digital information. It is the mandate of stakeholders to ensure compliance with all legal and industry standards.

Assumptions and Constraints

Assumptions

The development of the Rick Race Amusement portal is subject to technical assumptions and constraints. The following assumptions are recorded based on the available information, as well as the presumed operational model:

The current databases are compatible with the adopted approaches and web technologies.
Official records housed in the source databases can be replicated on the web portal without leaving security vulnerability trails.
The official data is accessible by web-based interfaces.
The current systems have reliable internet access.
The company meets the standard infrastructural requirements for a web-based platform.
It is assumed that fundamental user requirements were provided.
The company’s systems comply with relevant data security and privacy provisions.
The hosting platforms do not exhibit difficulties during interface configuration.

Constraints

The following constraints are based on the project requirements and software development lifecycle.

The development of the web application may take longer than estimated due to unforeseen inconveniences, as well as incompatible technologies.
Security measures during the implementation may require adjustment of official database resources.
The tracking aspects, especially the workforce, are affected by various modalities, including the unpredictability of maintenance duration and frequency.
The official systems’ failure to meet basic security and legal standards will inconvenience the development procedures and completion timeline as precautions or redesigning may be required.

Document Overview

This document outlines the features for the Rick Racer Web Portal Requirements. The document contains the methodologies for developing features and requirements of the system. High-level user requirements are critical as they provide the basis for developing other requirements. Data requirements and functional requirements are derived from high-level requirements. Functional requirements are developed from high-level strategic requirements. Non-functional requirements entail hardware, communication, and software interfaces, which facilitate system functionality. Hardware and software requirements are used in developing the environment for hosting the system. Other features related to operations, such as security, reliability, audit trails, validation, and error handling, ensure operational efficiency.

Methodology

The methodology for determining the web-portal requirements was conceptualized in several phases. They are based on the software development life cycle. The process of consolidating the requirements started with reading the Rick Race Amusement case study. The step was reading the assignment instructions, after which mandatory minimums were discussed.

The third step established how the user requirements can be developed, given the dynamics of each section. This phase necessitated research for terms and processes for consolidating system and user requirements. The fourth stage entailed re-reading the case study while taking notes while translating user statements to system functions.

The fifth step involved examining the system functionalities in the preceding phase, considering user wants and technical issues. The sixth step entailed discussion with peers regarding user requirements, as well as the design consideration of the portal. This stage was crucial in creating the list of functionalities, as well as modules required to implement the user needs. Consequently, the needs were mapped to the system requirements, and perspective gaps were addressed.

The seventh step demanded consulting an acquaintance who is a veteran web developer to ascertain the project’s assumptions and constraints based on the case study. In this stage, constraints related to budget, time, and technical specifications were addressed. The eighth step required taking notes to be used for final user requirement document creation. The ninth step clarified the technical terms that were not familiar and their usage in writing the user requirements document. The final phase entailed writing the document based on the recorded notes.

System Features and Requirements

System Context

The web portal will fulfill the user requirements for the Rick Racer Amusement, given the functional requirements. Since the user requirements imply the design considerations, it is imperative to consider the web portal based on distinct functional needs. The users will require a platform to access the institutional information content and data from their source databases. The synchronization of the operations and financial information will also necessitate a connection with local systems. These needs can be fulfilled whether the web portal is hosted in-house or on the cloud. However, the database connection, as well as security configurations, must be implemented. The web application avails information from source databases to the relevant parties, such as partner organizations and customers who may need to access current information.

Furthermore, the portal can enable tracking and availing data to the concerned parties. Files and documents can be indexed on the web-portal database based on their relevance, departments, or categories, hence fast access. About the communication, respective modules will ensure access to the company’s news, memo, and chat system. The news can be posted to specific locations on the platform, especially when they are meant for a particular group of people or departments. The chat rooms will require administrators to add members to enhance real-time communication. Therefore, the portal will fulfill all the needs, including read-only access to official information, communication to support collaboration, and synchronized information access to the stakeholders’ platforms.

Based on the contextual evaluation of the requirements, the web portal should be hosted on the cloud, whereas the official databases remain in-house. A separate web-based database may be maintained for storing portal-related data. The purpose of cloud storage is to enhance scalability since cloud technologies ensure the availability of domain resources, automated backup, and enhanced recovery options. The portal will be accessible to all stakeholders, but levels will be required at different privileges and user levels. Each category of the stakeholders, namely external customers, internal employees, and partner organizations, will necessitate distinct access levels. External customers will have the least privileges at the user level since they will access either the information belonging to them or publicly available content, such as events or status.

The data will be synchronized with internal systems, which will ensure the accessibility of real-time information as much as it relates to user activities. Similarly, the partner organizations will have their access interface from which they will view updates of the company’s activities and real-time events.

The organizational workforce will use the platform for several purposes, including communication, tracking, and management. While the proprietary information, including financial and inventory systems, will not be modified, it will be available for the relevant parties. As a result, database connections will be established between the internal systems and the web portal, depending on the required data for display or synchronization.

Strategic High-Level User Requirements

User Requirement ID	Requirement Definition
U1	The system should have functionality for tracking pinball machine activity in terms of customers, financial performance, and maintenance. Consequently, the sites where the machines are located should be identified and allocated names and IDs. Maintenance activities should be scheduled and recorded to enable tracking in terms of activity and revenue generation. The performance metrics, which will be found in the analytics dashboard, must include activity, customer, maintenance frequency, and financial coefficient. The tracking activity will require the designated user to add the corresponding events and dependencies for programmatic synchronization. Hence, the module must correspond to accounts and respective user privileges, as well as levels.
U2	The portal requires tracking of the employees based on their location, duties, activities, and schedule. Thus, employees, including the maintenance team, must be assigned duties on the schedule management interface. Thus, the employee management module will have different user account levels and privileges. The HR personnel in charge will be able to schedule workforce maintenance activities, which will be critical for displaying available workers and productivity.
U3	Partner organizations will require to see their sites’ performance, depending on financial, maintenance, and customer information. Partner user account type will be created for accessing site and machine information. The stakeholders will be able to see synchronized information regarding each site’s performance. The accounts for each stakeholder will contain their associated sites or machines, as well as overall performance and financial performance information will also be fetched.
U4	Most users, including employees, partner organizations, and some customers, will require user accounts to achieve their roles or obtain services. Hence, user levels for each category of employees, partners, and customers must be established. Rights, privileges, and access levels should be distinguished.
U5	Departmental and organizational level, broadcasting of news, memos, or calendar events requires an interface to display the information. Departmental or the organizational head will have the right to update the system, which will be available to the corresponding user group.
U6	Messaging or chat systems will require a dialogue box on the user interface to ensure that every user can contact individual departments that must be identified and linked. Similarly, the chat room will be embedded in this functionality, and the departmental heads’ accounts will have additional features for creating chat rooms.
U7	The customer service and sales module will allow customers to access the portal from the public domain. For them to see real-time information, they must have access to the read-only events and activity schedules. Hence, the portal must fetch and display relevant operational data, as well as machine-site information.
U8	The search functionality will be used by employees to search for essential files, hence speeding up the operations. Files and documents will be indexed according to their relevance and categories. This classification must develop the system based on departmental requirements used resources and user-specific needs.
U9	Occasionally, users will require email communication, which will require the implementation of the functionality. This service will be associated with domain user accounts so that every employee, once logged in to the system, or will read the email. This function will also be synchronized with the user account, allowing access to the email from the portal interface.
U10	The analytics dashboard will be essential for displaying crucial statistics for decision-making. These statistical reports will be presented in the form of charts and graphs. Financial, machine, employees, maintenance, activity, sales, customer, and sites information will be available for processing with business intelligence tools embedded on the portal.

Data Requirements

Data Requirement ID	Requirement Definition
D1	The tracking for machine activity will require data from multiple sources, particularly finance, customer, site, and maintenance, as follows earnings in dollars, average customer visits, site name and ID, and maintenance frequency value.
D2	The employees’ tracker will require the following data: date, site assigned, location, and expected duration.
D3	Partner organizations will require sites name and IDs for machine sites, earnings in dollars, maintenance frequency value, dates, and average customer visits.
D4	The user accounts require the full name, email, contact information, location, and user group.
D5	Department and organization messaging system will need user group, user category, department name, departmental user group members.
D6	The Messaging system will require department name and ID, destination user ID, and department user group categories.
D7	This functionality will require connecting to the local databases, which must be implemented securely. Customer service and sales will require emails, customer name or Id, machine events, site, and location.
D8	The following data will be required for email communication: email and name.
D9	Search functionality requires file names, categories, and departments.
D10	The analytics dashboard requires revenue amount in dollars, site, location, employees, maintenance frequency, charts, graphs, customer number, and sales total.

Functional Requirements

Functional Requirements Group 1

Functional Requirement ID	Requirement Definition
F1-1	The pinball machine’s functional requirements are based on the available data to be presented to the users. The user has to log in from where the information from the database is presented.
F1-2	A table is available on the user interface based on the user group, displaying performance metrics, namely customer level, site location, financial information, and maintenance frequency.
F1-3	The records are displayed on the table, while statistical inferences are presented in the graph to indicate performance for key performance indicators.

Functional Requirements Group 2

Functional Requirement ID	Requirement Definition
F2-1	Employees tracking functionality requires the in-charge personnel to log in with the privilege of user group credentials.
F2-2	The employees’ activity interface is presented. It provides the departments, number of employees, and their activities in tabular form.
F2-3	The user can select view activity over a period to filter activity for a particular time.
F2-4	The user can select the category of user activity, such as maintenance, to see the corresponding performance.
F2-5	A button for assigning activities is displayed on the left side of the computer screen. After clicking assign duties, the system prompts the user to select the department, then the activity. Available workers are displayed, and the in-charge selects the person and indicates duty description, such as performing maintenance at Westwood. Then, the user selects the timeline.

Functional Requirements Group 3

Functional Requirement ID	Requirement Definition
F3-1	For partner organizations to see site performances, They will be required to access their group accounts from which financial, maintenance and customer information will present in a tabular form. On the right side, corresponding graphs indicating site performance, maintenance, and revenue will be presented.
F3-2	They will also have dialogue for comparing site performance, as well as selecting duration for which to see the performance.

Functional Requirements Group 4

Functional Requirement ID	Requirement Definition
F4-1	For partner organizations to see site performances, They will be required to access their group accounts from which financial, maintenance and customer information will present in a tabular form. On the right side, corresponding graphs indicating site performance, maintenance, and revenue will be presented.
F4-2	Users will be required to input their emails and password on the login page. They will be redirected to their user-group interface, indicating their levels, such as customer, manager, maintenance, or partner.
F4-3	Accounts functionalities, as well as available information, will be presented from the page with links for account management, statistics and performance, emails and messaging, and log-out buttons. From these interfaces, users will be able to access their data.
F4-4	Users who are not logged in will be redirected to the home page where public information is displayed, including available sites, partner information, customer services, and available opportunities.
F4-5	During the registration of the accounts, a prompt that requires the selection of the user group will be displayed. The user will be required to indicate their category, after which the administrator will activate the account following verification.

Functional Requirements Group 5

Functional Requirement ID	Requirement Definition
F5-1	User accounts whose broadcasting capabilities are enabled will see a button labeled “create a broadcast” The user will be required to select the type of broadcast they want to create, such as news, notice, or memo, from a dropdown menu.
F5-2	After selecting the desired broadcast and clicking “create,” a text field with editing tools will be displayed, enabling the user to type or paste, and then format. After clicking “send,” the user will be required to state the location, user group, or the public domain.
F5-3	After selecting the destination, the send button will be available, and the broadcast will be successful. This entry will be moved to the available broadcast history section.

Functional Requirements Group 6

Functional Requirement ID	Requirement Definition
F6-1	The messaging prompt will be located on each user account, but additional functionalities, such as “add a group,” will be based on the user type.
F6-2	The prompt will contain a text field with a send button. Once the user clicks “send,” the text field’s information will be sent to the target user.

Functional Requirements Group 7

Functional Requirement ID	Requirement Definition
F7-1	On the portal’s homepage, a link for customer service and sales is displayed. Once the customer logs in, they are directed to the activity and events page displaying sites and machines available.
F7-2	The user can click on each site or machine button for further actions.

Functional Requirements Group 8

Functional Requirement ID	Requirement Definition
F8-1	The search functionality contains filter dropdown menus below the “search” button. It is available for all users, but each user is entitled to particular results.
F8-2	The filter contains search by type of file, name, size, or date. After selecting the preferred filter and inputting the search values, results are displayed in a tabular form based on their relevance.

Functional Requirements Group 9

Functional Requirement ID	Requirement Definition
F9-1	Email communication on the portal will be accessed using the “mail” button. Clicking the button redirects the user to the compose section, and a recipient field is displayed.
F9-2	After typing contents and clicking sends, the email is sent. It is important to note that the portal domain is used to send the emails and not all users have the company’s emails.

Functional Requirements Group 10

Functional Requirement ID	Requirement Definition
F10-1	The analytics dashboard will provide various functionalities, including a comparison of sites and performance trends. After visiting the reports section, a dropdown menu with site names will be available. Compare and measure period performance is the major performance metric that will be displayed.
F10-2	Check buttons for finance, maintenance, and performance will be available from which tabular data and respective performance graphs will be displayed.

Non-functional Requirements

Interface Requirements

User interfaces will assist in the navigation of the web-portal content, as well as better user experience. The portal should have a mobile website or responsive themes for all functionalities. Navigation should be arranged according to the standard requirements for usability and accessibility. The navigation links and menus should be logically arranged, whereas web pages’ colors and fonts should be visible.

Hardware Interfaces

The website will support phones, tablets, and computer devices since the interface will be responsive. As a result screen, the display size will be adjusted depending on the screen being used to access the content. Therefore, all users, regardless of their devices, screen sizes should access the portal.

Software Interfaces

The Rick Racer web portal will be interfaced with the database systems housed in the official database and the local host repository. These interfaces will be implemented using the Oracle database, whereby local host configurations will be used to transmit data from the same server. The remote database server will be configured to transmit l data for view on the portal.

Communications Interfaces

The web protocols and web services configurations will be required to configure the web portal. In essence, remote IP addresses for database servers will be configured for access to official systems. Additionally, the specification of port numbers will ensure persistent, as well as secure communication between the data-sharing interfaces. Domain configurations must be mapped to ensure 99% availability of the resources. The cloud and in-house communication interfaces should be configured to ensure the availability of all the resources required to provide web portal services.

Data Conversion Requirements

Data can be in the form of a format that may not be useful since modern database systems cannot read it. In such situations, programmatic approaches will be required to convert the data into readable formats. This process will entail obtaining the data from the legacy system. The other requirement will be tracking changes that may need modification. The fetched data is passed for scrubbing and migration, then transferred for production. The process entails obtaining the data from the legacy systems, passing it through a scrubbing environment, and storing it to the desired system.

Hardware/Software Requirements

The portal will be hosted in an environment that exceeds minimum requirements. The recommended operating system will be Windows 10, and the CPU must be 64 bits, whereas the clock speed for the processors should be higher than 2.8 GHz. GPU should either be Quadro T 1000 or GT 1660, and the recommended resolution will be 1920 x 1080. The disk storage should be more than 4 GB, as the system will store application data. The internet should be of high bandwidth to ensure the faster transfer of information. These factors will also be considered for cloud services and webserver configurations. For a webserver, higher specifications will be required to foster timely data processing.

Operational Requirements

Security and Privacy

Breach of security may result in the following consequences:

Loss of data hinders operations, especially when users cannot access their personalized information.
Disclosure of sensitive information may subject the company to litigation.
The legal stipulations require companies to preserve data privacy. Failure to comply with the statute subjects a company to legal action.
Corrupted software can be dysfunctional and inconvenient to service users.

Security measures required:

Physical security will prevent physical disruption from third parties, causing physical damage or the installation of malware.
Access by user roles or types ensures that only authorized people access and modify information.
Data owners or persons in charge should have access to information while some users, such as public users, are entitled to read-only. For instance, the system administrator should have access to all information, whereas regular users can access their personal information. Departmental heads should have full access to their records.
Security measures should be accredited and certified to ensure that the company is compliant with data and industry-specific laws.

Audit Trail

Functional Requirement ID	Audit Trail
F1	User login trail
F2	M assigned tasks
F3	Partner group user access
F4	New user registered
F5	M created a broadcast message
F6	User x sent message y
F7	Customer x logged in
F8	User downloaded document X
F9	User x sent a message
F10	The user accessed the dashboard for partners.

Reliability

State the following in this section

State the damage can result from the failure of this system—indicate the criticality of the software, such as:

Complete or partial loss of the ability to perform a mission-critical function – break down of the company’s entire infrastructure.
Loss of revenue – Corrupted or hacked financial system
Loss of employee productivity -Poor system performance.
In critical systems, perhaps even loss of human life – Burning hardware.

What is the minimum acceptable level of reliability?

The accessibility level should be 0.6-0.7

State required reliability

Mean-Time-Between-Failure -200 hours
Mean-Time-To-Failure- 250 hours
Mean-Time-To-Repair -4

Recoverability

Answer the following questions in this section:

The unavailable application should be restored within the shortest time possible following system failure. The failure should be addressed within four hours after being detected.
After the database is corrupted, it can be restored to currency within 6 hours.
If the hardware, onsite backup, and data are destroyed, the system should be restored within 24 hours.

System Availability

The application should be available to the users around 99% of the time. It should be available most of the time, especially the peak hours. While the system may be unavailable at particular hours of the day, it is least acceptable whenever access is affected during the day. For each geographical region, the system should be available starting 6.30 am to 5.30 pm.

General Performance

The system should have the following general performance:

Response time for queries and updates should be approximately 17 Ms.
Throughput should be approximately 20 Mbps
The expected rate of user activity per day should be around 70%

Capacity

The company is expected to have a high capacity due to the regulations that require data to be stored for around five years. Considering the projected growth for data acquisition, the company may store up to 100 TB per year. Hence, it is recommended that the company have the capacity for storing up to 500TB.

Data Retention

The company should follow standard procedures for maintaining data, which is a minimum of three years. While the length for the storage of critical information may vary, some forms of information must be retained according to legal requirements. For this reason, user records, audit trails, and system information should be maintained for at least three years.

Error Handling

The system should return exceptions whenever errors occur to ensure that end-users do not experience incomprehensible messages. Handled errors may be returned with HTTP code, but they should display a message for the end-user. In sum, error handling is meant to notify the user whenever the system experiences challenges.

Validation Rules

The regular expression methods will be required for the proposed system to reduce server-side errors. Passwords and emails are bound to be validated before login to avoid server-side errors or prevent malicious activities. Input data should be examined for validation by implementing relevant expressions.

Conventions/Standards

The platform should meet the general use standards as required by the law and standard practices. One of the requirements is ensuring that the system meets ISO standards. Privacy laws are also relevant for web portal data security. The financial systems will maintain GAAP standards, whereas web development content standards must be implemented for the web portal. In sum, corresponding statutes guide the standard practices for web portal development.

References

Hu, L., Yue, D., & Ma, Z. (2019). Availability analysis of a repairable series-parallel system with redundant dependency. Journal of Systems Science and Complexity, 33(2), 446-460.

Kumar, A., Saini, M., & Malik, S. (2015). Performance analysis of a computer system with imperfect fault detection of hardware. Procedia Computer Science, 45, 602-610.

Lima, R., & Fontoura, L. (2018). An approach for system of systems requirements management (S). Proceedings of the 30Th International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering.

Barcelos, L., & Penteado, R. (2017). Elaboration of software requirements documents by means of patterns instantiation. Journal of Software Engineering Research and Development, 5(1).

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