Final Year Project Knowledge Management System

APPENDIX B: PROJECT SPECIFICATION FORM

A. Project TitleKnowledge Management System “Unleashed the Power of Knowledge Assets”

B. Brief description on project background

In the pre-knowledge economy, the business world tend to measure their business performance only

with tangible assets (such as cash equipment, machinery or any physical inventory) due to the fact

that knowledge assets are intangibles and are hard to measure in monetary term. As we move into

knowledge driven economy, knowledge is one of crucial intellectual asset for any today business

organization. For that reason, most of the organization today has began realized the importance of

intellectual asset. In general, knowledge assets, intellectual property, intellectual assets, intellectual

capital and intangible assets are basically refer to the same thing which was representing a collective

of knowledge, creativity, skill, idea and innovative power of a company’s workforce.

At this point, we might well be scratching our head and begin to start thinking of “What do you mean

by knowledge? According to Ikujira Nonaka and H.Takeuchi, the author of The Knowledge Creating

Company stated that knowledge is justified belief or it can be defined as one’s individual asset that

contains of beliefs, ideas, facts, rules, strategies, approaches, or any other things of value that

facilitate us for our day to day decision making. Besides, we frequently hear that “Knowledge is

Power”. However, according to Dr. David J. Schwartz the author of The Magic of Thinking Big

stated that this statement is only a half-truth because knowledge is power only when we put to use

and use it constructively because knowledge is acquired and accumulated in the mind of individuals

through experiences, learning, observation, experimenting and sharing. By owing to the lack of

understanding of what knowledge is and the lack of systematic management approaches for its

utilizations, knowledge always suffers from under management. For that reason, it is a vital resource

that requires a proper management. But we might again start wondering “How can we actually

manage our knowledge since it contained in our mind?”

Generally, there are two types of knowledge which is tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge. Tacit

knowledge is a knowledge that is implied which could be obtain through the process of socialization

and gain from experience rather than through any formal education or training and one thing for sure

there is no proper system for its storage. In other word, we can not manage tacit knowledge since it

contained in one’s individual mind. In other side, explicit knowledge is a knowledge that is written

down and easily to transfer and communicate to others since it expressed in words and numbers that

preserve in the form of books, databases and documents (such as white papers). Clearly, the written

documents facilitate the transfer of explicit knowledge to other people, thereby helping us experience

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the experiences from the others indirectly and thus enriching our tacit knowledge. For that reason,

there is a need for managing the explicit knowledge.

When we are actually start thinking of management, immediately our attention will always turns to

how it can be manage and what sort of tools that will actually give us a hand to manage or to

accomplish the task. For that reason, with the practice of using Knowledge Management System

(KM System) brings to mind images of a massive repository system that made up of a vast collective

of individual’s knowledge assets within a business organization. The truth for creating such KM

System is actually allows the business organization to transforms ideas into business value. With this,

KM system range from a simple web site to a fully integrated workflow environment, meaning that a

system software that allow knowledge worker to collaboratively exchange or share information and

ideas or documents or any other production and use. Therefore, the proposed KM system

implemented as generic one, its serve as foundation would have the capability of fulfilling the basis

of a KM system, which is capable of storing, retrieving information when needed.

Why such a system should be implemented?

One of the main objectives of implementing such KM system is to maximize return on organisation’s

both tangible and intangible knowledge assets. KM is aimed at creating a knowledge based

organisation, which is able to learn from experience-based knowledge and to transfer it into new

knowledge in form of product or service innovations. One example is the set-up and use of

computerized files to keep track of customers’ preferences and inquiries aimed for improving

customer relationships.

By getting the most value from a business organisation intellectual assets, as mention before

knowledge need to manage, be share, and serve as the foundation for collaboration because

knowledge by itself does not produce value, but however when an organization collects, and reusing

the knowledge, the organization can turn this knowledge into value.

Understandably, the key for collecting and reusing the knowledge is where a good KM system can

help. So, by reusing and sharing knowledge, one of the obvious benefits for the workers that can

actually reduce the time it takes to gain information, increasing the knowledge exchange between

individual and communication and as well as speeds up their learning curve.

Besides, in today’s business climate, where employees work mostly as a contract basis or change

jobs much more frequently and it becomes an issue. When employees change jobs often or even the

organization itself by hiring new staff, the organization cannot rely on the employees to transfer

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knowledge to the other because its took time and costs for training a new staff. In addition, KM

system can even transfer the organization knowledge to the others when staffs are actually retired.

When the organization faces some critical technical issue and as well as economic issue with the

practice of using KM system, the organization employees can actually reusing back the existing

knowledge to assist them to solve the particular problem without the need of hiring any expertise

people. Clearly, as a reward of using the KM system it saves the organization time and cost!

Furthermore, by increasing use of mobile devices or “small-screen devices”, such as Mobile Phone ,

Smart Phone , and handheld devices like Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), the propose KM system

attempt to allow the knowledge worker to access the system through their own mobile devices since

many organizations have a wide range of front-line staff . In large organizations, these front-line staff

that who interact with directly with customers or members of the public (especially the marketing

sales staff or technical maintenance staff) are often very dispersed geographically, with limited

communication channels to head office. Typically, there are also few mechanisms for sharing

information between staff working in the same business area but different locations.

With the use of all these mobile technologies clearly it provided an alternative way of accessing the

KM system in remotely by comparing the traditional way of accessing the data and services through

the current desktop PC since access mechanism of the mobile devices are so portable that can move

with people. As a result, this leads to several obvious beneficial effects that change the use of KM

system like removal time and space constraints for doing any knowledge work. For that reason, the

user does not need to access the information on site and as well as improved access to decision

makers. With this additional functionality added to the current KM system clearly shown that it allow

the knowledge worker by “Getting the Right Knowledge to the Right People at the Right Time.”

Rationale: The following has highlighted some of the most common benefits for organisation

that adopting the KM system:

i. By reusing, sharing, transferring and managing of organisation’s knowledge asset will

provide the company with new business opportunities.

ii. Helps the business organization for better decision making to become more innovative and

increase profitability by producing more high quality products and customer services and to

formidable their competitor in the market place.

iii. Facilitate the accessing organisation’s information through sophisticated KM processes.

iv. To create learning business culture and accelerate learning in the business environment in

order to helps employees to develop and maximizes their collective mind power.

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v. Encouraging and rewarding knowledge workers and seekers for their contribution and

utilization of the knowledge maximize the knowledge capital.

vi. Drive people to work in as team by creating awareness on the importance of team-work

through collaboration processes.

The nature challenge for building such system: The main challenge for developing such system is

to understand the basic concepts in knowledge management and as well as the essential key strategy

for developing KM system in order to give us a solid foundation for developing such knowledge

based system. Besides, the primary concern would be towards the component-based development as

it is the basis in which the system develops upon to promote reusability.

Since the KM system is about creating, accessing, and managing explicit knowledge (the knowledge

that converting from one’s individual tacit knowledge in the form of written document like white

paper, book or manual) of an organization. Clearly, for accessing and retrieving such a large of

amount of information the proposed KM system should incorporated with an intelligent searching

techniques like free text search , advance search or taxonomy search or even ontology searching

technique to filter out only the relevant information to the user.

Besides, the probably best-known risk that associated with KM system is that the some employees of

the organisation are so reluctant to share their knowledge to the others. Their employee might view

the KM system as a threat to them. For example let say, “Why should I bother to share the

knowledge if I am the only the person who truly able to solve a particular technical issue? It will

reduce my worth to the organization” may mean that the organisation can survive by using less

skilled and hence less experience workers. To address this risk, one of the challenges is some

recognition or reward or rating approaches must be implementing in the KM system in order to

attract and motivate the workers for actually using the system.

Furthermore, by managing intangible or knowledge assets would be one of the major risks for

implementing the KM system since knowledge value can become futile over some time especially in

the IT World nowadays and it is incredibly difficult to measure the true value of knowledge assets.

As a result, this proposes KM system should maintain flexibility for the needs of amendment since

the business needs or environment might change.

At last but not least, the proposed KM system will be planning to provide an alternative way of

accessing the system by using mobile devices. As we know, the mobile devices have a limited

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memory storage space capacity with limited processing power and obviously the screen is small and

obviously is hard to navigate. It would be a challenge of developing a KM system with a highly

usable, graphically oriented user interface for such a small screen devices. For that reason, the

proposed KM system is knowledge management platform that integrated only on handheld devices

(PDA) with a limited functionality instead of the Mobile Phone with a different screen sizes.

The Type of Target Audience / User who using the system.

The primary target audiences of this propose system involve of two groups of users which are the

knowledge creators and knowledge users that comprise of the entire knowledge worker from the

business organization and as well as the front-line workers who own a handheld mobile devices to

gain access to the system.

C. Brief description of project objectives. (i.e. scope of proposal and deliverables)Project Objectives

Basically the main objectives of this project to develop a centralize knowledge based system or a

repository which to facilitate the knowledge worker in collaborative manner in term of sharing and

transferring their knowledge to other’s in order to maximize return on organization both tangible and

intangible assets.

System Scope

By having the idea of reusing, sharing, transferring and managing the organization knowledge asset

the proposed KM systems should having a centralize knowledge base or a repository that capable of

allowing the organization worker to deposit and harvesting knowledge in the collaborative manners

to ease the knowledge worker reduce the time it takes to gain information and the most important

things is allowing organization to retain employee knowledge to prevents it from leaving when an

employee leaves. As a result, in order to provide a highly acceptable KM solution the major

components as highlighted as follows

i.) Collaboration Module

By having such collaboration module knowledge can be shared through the participation of users in

the discussion forum. The worker are allow to post their problem, ideas, suggestions and as well as

solving other’s queries on the discussion forum. So to speak, a reward points will be given to the

each posted message for knowledge creator.

ii) Document Management Module

With this document management module is allow the worker to store or deposit their knowledge

which in the form of written document (static knowledge) which can be shared and reused by other

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worker. In this module, rating capabilities will be implemented as an additional features which allow

the users to rate and give comment the document that posted by origin knowledge creator.

iii) Knowledge Harvesting Module

By having such a massive or large knowledge repository without an efficient searching capability

would definitely one of the failure in KM systems. Besides, having the intention of achieving a long

term successful in usage of KM system is very much depends on user participation. Clearly without

efficient and reliable searching mechanism will slowly result in lacking of user participation and

shrinking the organization knowledge asset. As a result, for harvesting knowledge several efficient

search techniques will be introduced to provide an alternate way to user to find valuable information

through the system by having relevant knowledge asset filtered to them.

iv) Subscription and Notification Module

With this subscription and notification module is basically allowing the user to subscribe to certain

information regarding of what information that want to access the most such as subscribe to any

specific authors or document, so a notification message send the user if the author have posted of any

new document or any changes or updated made to information. Clearly, with the use subscribe

service ensure the knowledge worker are constantly up-to-date on changes and as well as reduce their

time in re-searching or revisiting back the same document.

v) Feedback Module

Basically, this module is allowing the user to evaluate and give comments about the effectiveness of

the system.At last, based on my research and if I have the sufficient resources, time and ability, these

are the several special features I am going to attempt to implement for the proposed system like

incorporating Artificial Intelligent in Knowledge Management, an Ontology document searching

technique and implement a mobile based knowledge management system with a limited functionality

that can accessible through handheld devices.

Learning Objective:Throughout system development the primary learning objective would be learn and apply those

software engineering, project management and human computer interaction usability concept and

principles and as well as components based development principles in order to produce highly

reusable quality software on time. Besides, another major learning objectives would also including

of performing thorough research and understand on the essential knowledge management

development principles and techniques that require for building a such knowledge based system.

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Limitation of the system:

The scope of developing such knowledge based management system is extremely wide since an

effective KM solution is really much depending on what one’s business organization needs. For that

reason, the system is being developed as generic one which cater for any business organization used

with the most common feature implemented whereby in order to fulfilled entire project requirement

with such a given time duration.

Assumption made:

The successful adopting knowledge management is really much depending on what organization

business culture. According to Susan Conway and Char Sligar the author of unlocking knowledge

assets stated that “Culture can make or break a KM initiative and if the KM program or initiative

does not fit into the existing culture, resistance can emerge at the individual, group, and

organizational levels.” since knowledge is one’s individual assets people tend to feel insecurity by

sharing their knowledge to other because it can weaken their expertise and reduce worth to the

organization once the process is over. This might become very serious if the KM solution does not fit

the current business culture may well result in the KM system can be called as “White Elephant”

which mean by having such a system in organization but no one actually using it. For that reason, an

assumption has to be made whereby the organization worker should be comfortably working in way

of contributive and co-operative manner.

D. Brief description of the resources needed by the proposal.The following are the list of those hardware resources that required for developing and running the system -:

A. For developing the system:-

i. CPU: Pentium IV with at least 1.6 MHz

ii. Hard Drive Space: At least 5GB Free space

iii. Memory: 256MB

iv. Monitor: Any Standard Monitor.

v. Graphic Card: Intel Extreme Graphic with 64MB

vi. Printer: Any Standard Printer.

B. For running the system:

i. Web Browser: Any Standard Browser.

ii. Handheld based Emulator: Microsoft Pocket PC 2003.

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The following listed of software resources that I would most probably look into that used for

developing the proposed system (but some of it still under my considerations):

i. Operating System : Windows® XP Professional SP2

ii. Web Server: Internet Information Services (IIS) with .NET Framework installed.

iii. Software Development Tools: Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 or Microsoft

Visual Studio .NET 2005

iv. Database Management System: Microsoft SQL Server 2000

v. Software Modeling Tools: Rational Rose Enterprise Edition / Visual Paradigm and

Microsoft Visio.

vi. Project Management Tools : Microsoft Project

vii. System Documentation and Presentation Tools: Microsoft Office XP

viii. Graphic Design Tools: Adobe Photoshop CS or Macromedia Fireworks MX.

ix. Web Browser: Any standard web browser.

x. Handheld based Emulator: Microsoft Pocket PC 2003.

After the domain and technical research, the user’s involvement is definitely required during

preliminary research which involves of the interviewer those who fills in the questionnaires and as

well as those who participate during system testing phase like beta or acceptance testing which must

require the user’s involvement.

For gathering information and user requirements, the following have highlighted the three fact-

finding techniques will consider to be use throughout the research stages.

These techniques are listed below:

i. Research

Research is one of the most important fact-finding techniques. The research includes of

searching in World Wide Web (WWW), reviewing journals, white paper, books or e-books

and as well as any benchmarking the existing KM system that available on the current

industry.

ii. Interview

Interview should be carried out in order to obtain opinion and the perspective from other’s

whom who specialize in KM field (like Ms. Wan Rohaniah or Mr. Sanath) or even those who

have experienced in implementing and using such KM system in order to allow the developer

to further enhance and refine the system ideas and features of the current existing KM system

and the propose system.

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iii. Questionnaire

The questionnaire is distributed mainly to those IT personnel who especially have the

experience and insight into the development of such a KM system instead of interviewing all

of them because it is time consuming. The main reason doing the questionnaire for this

project was to seek and gather all the necessary information might beneficial for the

development of proposed system such as “Do you agree that adopting such a KM system in

your organization helping you on day to day decision making and improving your daily

operational activity or what kind of additional feature you be expected for the system?

E. Academic research being carried out and other information, techniques being learnt. An extensive research must be carried out in order to complete this project successfully. The

following have listed the various techniques, programming languages and research areas that need to

be done:-

Key Concepts and Strategy of developing Knowledge Management System.

Concepts of Web Design Usability and Mobile Web Design.

Human Computer Interaction Principles.

The Searching Strategies and Methods such as Free-Text Searching, Taxonomy Searching,

Meta Searching, Advance Searching, Ontology Searching, and Content Searching.

Data Mining and Data Warehousing

Rewards and Recognitions Mechanisms.

Server-Side Scripting Language like ASP.NET, ASP, PHP or JSP and as well as Client-Side

Scripting Language like Java Script and VBScript.

The following are the list of books title (some sources obtain from Staffordshire University – Ebrary

System), journal and website that planning to be read and research on throughout the system

development:

Knowledge Management Concept

Books

Barbara C.McNurlin and Ralph H.Sprague Kr, Information System Management In Practice

Seventh Edition , 2006, Prentice Hall

Metcalfe and Amy Scott, Knowledge Management and Higher Education: A Critical Analysis,

2005, Information Science Publishing.

Ma, Zongmin, Web-Based Intelligent E-Learning Systems : Technologies and Applications, 2005,

Information Science Publishing

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Susan Conway and Char Sligar, Knowledge Management Unlocking Knowledge Assets Solution

by Microsoft , 2002, Microsoft Press

Amrit Tiwana , The Knowledge Management Toolkit: Orchestrating IT, Strategy, and Knowledge

Platforms (2nd Edition), 2002, Prentice Hall

Joseph H. Boyett and Jimmie T.Boyett, The Guru Guide to the Knowledge Economy, 2001,

Wiley.

Rene Tissen Daniel, Andriessen and Frank Lekanne Deprez, The Knowledge Dividend : Creating

High Performance Companies through Value-based Knowledge Management , 2000, Prentice

Hall

Byan Gladstone, From Know-How to Knowledge – The Essential Guide to Understanding and

Implementing Knowledge Management, 2000, the Industrial Society.

White Paper and Journal

L. Windlinger / HSW - University of Applied Sciences Waedenswil S. Tazari, D. Balfanz / ZGDV,

Mobile Knowledge Management, 2005, Information Society Technologies.

Mohammad Nazir Ahmad Sharif, Nor Hidayati Zakaria , Lim Shu Ching, Low Soh Fung,

Universiti Teknologi Malaysia Facilitating Knowledge Sharing Through Lessons Learned

System, Journal of Knowledge Management Practice, March 2005.

Miltiadis et al(Editor),The Semantic Web, 2005, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Kim Hunter, Developing a knowledge management strategy, 2004, Step Two Designs Pty Ltd.

Birgit Zimmermann1, Melanie Gnasa2, and Karin Harbusch1, Modeling a Corporate Information

System to improve Knowledge Management , 2002

Web Site An Innovation in Knowledge Management

http://www.lpcube.com/site/HTML/aboutkm_overview.html

Public based Knowledge Management http://www.kmresource.com.http://www.knowledgeboard.com/index.htmlhttp://www.kmworld.com

The Knowledge Management Advantagehttp://www.providersedge.com/kma/km_overview.htm

Programming Language

Books

Deitel & Deitel, Listfied,Nieto, Yaeger, and Zlatkina, C# for Experienced Programmers, 2003,

Prentice Hall.

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Brian Larson, Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services, 2004, McGraw Hill.

Matthew MacDonald , ASP.NET: The Complete Reference, 2002, McGraw Hill.

Marco Bellinaso , Kevin Hoffman, ASP.NET Website Programming: Problem - Design - Solution,

C# Edition, 2002 , Wrox

Web Sites

ASP.NET

www.asp.net

F: Brief description of the development plan for the proposed project

Before starting to develop any project, we need a proper development plan since we often told that

“If we fail to plan we plan to fail”. Basically, a plan serves as a blueprints or a map for us to finish

the tasks on time. However, a suitable methodology needs to be selected before writing a plan

because a software methodology provided a framework which we can manage software projects

more efficiently. With A suitable methodology will lead to success of a project since different

software methodology cater for different project because each project will have its own

characteristics and needs in regards to an appropriate process.

At this point, Rational Unified Process (RUP) would be the selected the software methodology

throughout the system development. The whole idea for using this methodology is RUP provide a

disciplined approach for most the software development and it allow the developer to build high-

quality software that meet the customer requirement and as well as deliver the final product on

schedule and within budget.

Due to the requirement of the final year project documenting all the process throughout System

development (not software development) is a must since we are not just developing the system

prototype only. As a result, RUP is a heavyweight methodology which is more emphasized on the

system documentation which will added value to my project on by letting the clients (supervisor and

assessor or even for the interviewer during job interview) in better understanding of the propose

system.

By choosing RUP it is not a rigid methodology by comparing with the traditional waterfall model

which does not allow revisiting backs the previous stages. Besides, customer requirements will often

change throughout software development, due to the fact that the customer do not get to see the

product until it is largely complete. To address the problem, RUP actually allows me to plan a little,

design a little, and code a little since it follows the iteration and incremental development

approaches.With such iteration will ends up with an executable release, which clearly allows the

developer to correct the errors and managing the risks at the early stages by getting the user

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feedback. Although the spiral model is one of the iteration methodology and guarantee to develop a

highly acceptable system in the end but this model basically very time consuming since it does not

introduce an executable model right after each completion of the cycle. In addition RUP consists of

four phases which can be altered to suit for my project development. The four phases are, Inception

Phase, Elaboration Phase, Construction Phase and Transition Phase. However, for this project I only

utilize inception, elaboration and construction only because transition is not required as a phase of

the FYP since deployment is no consequence.

After selecting the software methodology, some of the important tasks and activities will need to be

identified as well as setting a start and finish date for each given task identified where the project

timeline or Gantt chart actually taking place here by showing the estimated duration for completing

the specific task and this will actually incorporate and configured the RUP methodology to suit for

my system development.

The following section is a brief description of my initial project development plan and as well as to

show how I actually incorporate and configured the RUP methodology to suit for my system

development:

Inception Phase

This would be the first phase in the RUP methodology and some research on the proposed system

must be done in order to formulate the scope of the project such as what are the core features will be

implemented and as well as identify the primary target user for the proposed system. This shall also

include the initial risk assessment against the project implementation. Therefore, a risk management

plan will be documented by given the appropriate categories of each risks identified, probability of

each risk, its impact on the development process and as well as the summary RMMM plan of each

possible risks. In addition, each of the identified tasks will be given a duration and showing in the

Gantt Chart. The duration for this first inception phase is estimated in three weeks (this includes of

PSF preparation and PSF approval).

Elaboration Phase

Requirement gathering, analyzing and designing the proposed system would be the major

components for the elaboration phase in which to produce solutions for the identified problems

domain. This will include academic and secondary research regarding on development concept for

the KM system and as well as any other relevant concept and implementation and as well as

benchmarking any existing KM system available on the market. After research has been done

primary research such as interview and questionnaire session will be conducted. The result of the

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interview and data summaries from the questionnaire will be documented and followed by critical

analysis. This iteration will be probably taken about six to eight weeks.

After critically evaluate the outcome of the research, system requirement specification plan will be

documented. This document serves as propose of describing the propose KM system in terms of the

functional requirements and non functional requirement. Besides, a visually based modeling of the

user’s requirement will be documented such as use cases. The primary uses for all these are to

facilitate in design activities and to seek feedback from the client (Supervisor) at the early stages to

eliminate any changes in future. Next, during the design stages will be involve of designing the

system by using appropriate UML diagrams and applying the HCI concept in the interface design in

term of the usability in the web development, system hierarchical diagram, entity-relationship

diagram and so on. With this second iteration in elaboration phase will be probably taken about four

to five weeks.

Construction Phase

In the construction phase, the entire design model for the proposed system will be completed and

ready for implementing the system. There will be several iterations in this construction phase and for

each iteration will be taking about two to three weeks and it really depend on the level of the

difficulty of each module. However, if there is a module require a short time to implement there will

be a possibly combination of two module to be develop at same time such as Log In module and

Feedback Module. Furthermore, in each and every iteration a review of the system design and an

initial testing plan will be document before the actually start implementing the specific module. After

successfully implementing the system, the system will be extensively tested with provided in earlier

test cases. For further information regarding of the testing approaches chooses are described in the

following next section.

G. Brief description of the evaluation and test plan for the proposed project

In order to deliver a fully functional, a highly acceptance error-free system, the system shall involve

a tremendous amount of evaluation or testing need to be done by various people (such as the person

that the developer who planning to interview) throughout the system development. Generally, the

objective of software testing is to ensure that all the functionality of the module in the system will be

function and the performance of the system will achieve optimal result that met the expectation of the

user and is also know as the process of verification and validation of the system requirements.

Clearly, a good testing should follow a few important principles and it should be carefully planned.

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As software testing process, first the testing shall commence by undergoing unit testing for each

modules or function identified. Unit testing ensures each module and function works properly.

Basically, the system developer itself will be tester to perform the unit testing.

On next level of testing the propose system shall be mainly focusing towards achieving functional

requirements and non-functional requirements of the system that stated in the requirement

specification. As a result, I have decided to follow the concept of black-box testing (also called

behavioral testing or functional testing) because this testing technique mainly focused on tested the

functional requirement of the software. Basically, the black-box testing approach treats the system as

black box or close box whereby the system tester will only know the formal inputs and projected

results. Understandably, the system tester does not require to having detailed functional knowledge

about the system and as well as how the program actually arrives at those results. In fact, the system

tester test the system based on the functional specification those we given to him / her.

After the completing of functional testing, this shall slowly progress into a larger scale of testing

where integration testing will take place whereby the top-down approach will be follows with begin

with testing the highest program module, modules integrated by moving down through program

structure.

Next testing then shall proceed towards system testing where the software will be subjected to

compatibility, security and performance testing. It will test if user whether can enter the main page

by entering the URL of the main page before actually log in to the system. The system will also be

tested for viewing compatibility in other browser such as Mozilla Firefox and as well as other general

data retrieval performance.

At last, the final level of the system testing will be the benchmark testing or so-called alpha testing

where the functional requirements would be evaluated to know whether the system is acceptable by a

potential end-user. The tester itself will be presented with real data used, not simulated data to

examine the inputs and outputs of the system and as well as commenting the user’s friendliness of the

system. This can be done with questionnaires given to users that test the system. Some of the

questions are:-

Do you find any difficulty of using the system or is the system ease to use?

Does the system meet your user’s requirement?

The entire user’s feedback or the comment given by the tester will be well-documented for

further enhancement of the system.

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