drum kit costing system

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Nick Gibson                 GCSE ICT Coursework

AQA GCSE ICT

Specification B

Name: Nick Gibson

Candidate Number:

Centre Number: 51347


Contents

Test Plan        


                     

Description of the task to be attempted

Chris Wright owns a drum shop called Drum Gurus. It has been operating for about 5 years and he now wishes to improve the pricing system in order to provide a better service to his customers.  He sells drum kits, cymbals, drums, accessories, and parts to customers. As there are more drummers coming onto the scene Chris is selling more and more complete drum kits as opposed to accessories and individual items. The current invoicing system is manual and time consuming. When a customer comes in to buy a drum kit it’s a lot of working out because of the various code numbers and prices that are available. In addition the use of calculators to check prices can often result in mistakes due to human error. You have to make sure that you have typed in the right numbers and pressed the right buttons. He used to sell about 1-2 drum kits a week but now that his business has expanded this has increased to about 7-8 a week. It takes quite a long time to work it out on a calculator and then check if it’s correct. Chris has to add up all the items individually, and if the customers find that it is too pricey he may have to do it all over again. With at least 80% done individually each time, it is really time consuming. If the customer wants to change the size of a drum or cymbal or take something out, or add something new, Chris has to add the item and change the total. Also if a buyer wants to buy a cymbal, Chris has to locate it in his price catalogue and then work it out. Then the customer might change his mind so he has to work it out and find it again. Sometimes he might write down the wrong items or make a mistake with the price. Most customers think that this system is inefficient and really needs to be improved. Another problem is the possibility of losing the sheets that he wrote the prices and customers orders on and it is a lot of work trying to dig them out of piles of sheets

There are quite a lot of problems with the current system. It takes a long time to work out if a customer decides they want to buy something different. When Chris gets an order he will have to locate the price for the item and work out the total price manually and may get it wrong. If he has more than one customer in the shop it can get harder and put more pressure on him to get it right. He would have to go quicker and probably make more mistakes.

When customers buy drum kits, they sometimes get various items that are optional and so it has to be taken off the list and that consumes more time. There are some items of a drum kit that are included but the customer can have add ons and the proposed system would easily include them in the total. Also, when the customer buys a drum kit they also get a free pair of drumsticks with it and that will come up automatically on the pricing system. The current manual system it self is dreadful and Drum Gurus are having problems with it and have asked me to create a fresh new computerised system.

 


Analysis

Investigation

Interview

I had an informal interview with Chris Wright, the owner of Drum Gurus. Chris explained to me that he wanted to make a much better version of their current drum kit costing system. Chris gave me a few simple ideas to help with the redesigning of the drum kit costing system. Chris also mentioned to me that his old system wasn’t very effective, and that he wanted a much simpler costing model. He gave me some background information about the type of drum kits and prices etc, to change the current system.

Observation

I went to Drum Gurus to see for myself how the old system works. As I suspected, the system performed poorly and was slow at loading prices. They recently set up a website which is an improvement on the manual system he used to use, but it is still not sufficient. Chris deals with quotes by writing down a customers order on a piece of paper and files it away in a filing cabinet.    

Analysis

Interview Analysis

After meeting with Chris Wright I found out what I needed to do to accomplish this task. I now have been given a list of their top selling drum kits and their prices. Also he gave me some accessories to put in as well. I will include these in my drum pricing model:

Output Requirements

My output requirements are that:

  • The model should give the overall prices of the different drum kits and drum accessories
  • It will also be able to give the price without and with discounts for the total price and order.
  • Finally it will be able to print of a final quote onto a page of A4 paper and be easy to follow

Input Requirements

For the input requirements I am going to include all the drum kits and accessories that Chris has given me. The prices of the equipment will have been saved into the system, but it will always be possible to change the prices of the equipment if and when necessary. The users will have to state the quantity and also all the items they want, just like in the previous tables. The customer will be able to change anything easily and the total will always change and come up automatically when the order is completed. They will be able to choose from a selection of drum kits, cymbals, snare drums, accessories and much more.

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Processing Required

The system will have to be able to achieve:

  • Calculate the total price for the accessories and drum kits.
  • Display the price
  • How many items will be purchased
  • Show the size and make of every cymbal they are about to purchase

 

The data items to be processed include: costs, sizes, makes, colour.

Furthermore the system will have to achieve many other operations. For example it will have to calculate the total price for the Drum kit taking into account all the individual items such as snare drum, toms, bass and cymbals. ...

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