Creating a new system for 'The mix n match dating agency'.

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Background Detail and Identifying the User

  • ‘The mix n match dating agency’ has been running for twenty years now.  Mike Kinley started it back in 1982 with an aim to bring people together.  The agency has been passed down in the family, and now with manager, Peter Kinley is one of the biggest dating agencies in London.  The main focus of the company is confidentiality and their people matching skills.  

Statement of the Problem

  • The current problem is the office is not very big, and it is in a total mess, papers and files lying around everywhere, when people want to look up on their members the information is very hard to obtain.  Their Manager, Peter Kinley is finding very difficult to organise the dates for his customers because all the information of the customers are held in a few filing cabinets which are not organised and there is no way of finding the different members other than looking through every single file.  There have been a few problems, where their members have been matched up with the same sex due to names like ‘Jamie’, which could be both male and female.  The problem has arisen, because they do not have a suitable data system, everyone has their own way of doing things and their company is at state.

Quantitative Objectives

  • The object and the user requirement for this project is they need to create:

  1. One system where information can be stored and everyone in the office can access.
  2. The system has to be linked, so that everyone has the same information.
  3. The database must have a simple menu of options to choose from.
  4. Customer’s names must be listed in alphabetical order.
  5. The system must be able to produce printouts of the individual customers.
  6. The data is up to date and accurate.  
  7. Has to be fairly straight forward as they don’t have time to learn how to use a whole new system.
  8. The system must be secure so access is only by the staff working for the company.

Proposed Solution and Alternative Software

  • There a few different possibilities in which the problem could be solved, the company could organise their filing cabinets so that all male customers have blue cards and all female customers have red cards, this is easy and straight forward.  Another option is entering data into a spreadsheet to log all the customers’ names and their dates they are set.  This solution would not increase the amount of time already spent keeping the company organised but it would not be easy to produce reports on the individual customer.  A third option is to use a database; this could perform the entire organisation the company needs and display reports on the individual customer.  `As the main priority of the company is organising records of the members and their dates, starting a database is the best choice.
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Time

  • It will probably take a little while to complete the database, as we need to send out forms asking the members of their details and their previous dates with us but first we need their address’s from the filing cabinet, just so the database is update and accurate.  This should take a couple of weeks, but if people are delayed with sending back the forms it could take up to a couple of months.  Designing the database, implementing, testing and checking that the staffs are happy with the result should take around about three weeks.

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