1

2

3

4

Firstly, CEO which includes in top level management is a key actor of AgeCare because she has

the responsibility to make strategic decisions for finance and running projects. She is also the one who

wants to change to MIS. So, she becomes the key actor.

Another key actors are funders because a charity cannot survive without them. If they stop

funding, AgeCare can neither provide services to clients nor pay salary to full time staff.

Since AgeCare uses centralized finance system, Finance Director has to handle the finances of

all 15 branches and preparing financial reports to Executive Committee. So, he becomes central to

AgeCare.

From data point of view, Information Quality Officer will be the main focus since the

responsibilities of managing all data flows associated with projects’ key performance measurements and

solving inconsistency of data from 15 branches for producing performance charts sit on him. If AgeCare

lacks this post, funders and trustees will not know precisely how their funds are used and they may

discontinue funding.

Apart from these core actors, other facts make us identify centre manager as key to the system.

Centre manager who plays the managerial role for each centre must oversee the projects and the

administration of the centre including centre expenses, recruitment and supervision of staff or volunteers.

Without having this role, the organization will be in complete disorder while running the projects at

respective centers.

After starting a project, it forces project leader to be the most essential stakeholder. While a

project is in progress, it is crucially significant to monitor its effectiveness and efficiency. Only if there is

a project leader who scrutinizes minutely the project and then reports it to superiors for assuring project

goes well, it can enhance AgeCare’s profile.

We can also take account of volunteers or staff as the core actors. Unless there are people who

will do voluntary work, it will be difficult to supply social services to elderly people.

5

We can find some key issues and areas of conflicts in AgeCare environment. The most

prominent one is associated with changing to MIS. As AgeCare has 15 branches, CEO becomes worried

about data security and whether they look professional and raise their profile or not. Consequently, she is

concerned about these and wants to change to MIS. Furthermore, staff and volunteers have difficulties

when elderly people are longing to know more about the projects run by AgeCare or about other elderly

people or about total people using charity’s services. Having such too much complaint leads to think

about MIS. Although some people welcome MIS, there are some who dispute with this idea because they

are afraid to record new data in new way for new system.

Additionally, there is another major issue and conflicts relating to finances. The more AgeCare

accepts funds, the more complicated finance information finance director must cope with. Therefore, he

starts to worry whether right fund is transferred to right centre or not and whether financial reports created

are accurate or not. Simultaneously, centre manager fears that he will have to wait in case of urgently

wanting money during project’s progress because everything must be reported to head office. Thus, he

wants to administer own finance system and conflicts between finance director and centre manager

gradually rise.

Finally, issue and conflicts on data inconsistency create difficulties between Information

Quality Officer(IQO) and centre manager. Each center stores its own projects’ data in their convenient

way such as using spreadsheet, database, manual file system, causing unsystematic way of collecting data.

So, whenever IQO asks for project’s data from centre manager, conflicts are occurred and he thinks

AgeCare should standardize data format to help him measure KPIs.

6

Although many different conflicts between employees concerned with centralized finance system,

data inconsistency and transforming into MIS can be seen in our drawn AgeCare Charity rich picture, all

these things are taken into rich picture by mainly focus on one thing. This is having a desire to develop

Management Information System.

Only if there is such kind of system, it will be able to standardize data. As a result, information

quality officer can easily compare key performance indicators of a project with others and produce

accurate financial documents. Moreover, MIS will be able to provide managerial roles for each centre

such as centre managers, directors of respective departments located at head office, CEO, executive

committee, trustees and funders with reports on finance, project’s progress and project’s performance.

In some cases, MIS will be useful for sharing information within AgeCare organization by

granting online access. This information may contain charity’s present performance level, elderly

people’s data between projects and previous projects’ records showing their good and bad points.

Because of these reasons and advantages, we demonstrated some conflicts and key issues in our

rich picture for supporting to get the idea that AgeCare cannot live without MIS so that data can flow

consistently and charity can operate well. Therefore, we mainly focus on wanting to change to MIS for

ease of producing reports for top level management while AgeCare rich picture was being drawn.

7

There are mainly five actors controlling data, systems and processing. The first one is project

leader who controls the project environment and deals with every single data of projects. As his/her task

is handling projects, processing like planning timetable for projects, monitoring project’s progress,

balancing project’s performance according to KPIs and reporting project details are under control of

him/her.

All data about staff and volunteers’ profiles, centre expenses, projects run by centre and clients’

information must be controlled by centre manager at each centre. All functions, for instance, keeping

above data, managing the centre, overseeing effort of staff and project leader on projects and reporting to

headquarters are covered in his/her control.

Finance Director controls flow of funds for entire AgeCare organization and handles financial

data of all centers, staff’s salary information and funds received from funders for particular projects.

Thus, controlling such processing as transferring money to branches, running payroll system, accepting

funds and reporting financial documents are performed by him.

Next controller of system is Information Quality Officer at headquarters who is responsible for

data concerned with KPIs and reports of projects by centre managers. So, procedures like measuring

quality of projects collected from centers based on KPIs and producing performance charts for executive

committee must be in control of him.

The most essential one is CEO who stands over all actors in AgeCare. All strategic decisions and

future plans are made under the control of her and she usually makes these decisions based on the

summarized data of projects reported by headquarters.

8

9

Name: Record Received Funds

Actor: Centre Accountant

Series of Activities

Use Case begins when accountant selects enter new project’s funds

1. Accountant chooses shopping service in the service category for which the fund is received.

2. Accountant issues funds receiving data, project’s name and the amount of funds.

3. After entering total amount, accountant will submit above data and confirm receiving funds is

correct.

Secondary Scenario

Before submitting, accountant can cancel and this lets the use case end.

At step2, if the amount of funds entered is incorrect or increased or decreased by the funders, the

accountant must reenter the amount.

Name: Register Clients

Actor: Centre Administrative Staff

Series of Activities

Use Case begins when elderly people come to register or are registered through social services and local

agencies and then administrative staff clicks on new client registration form.

1. Administrative staff checks whether a person has already registered or not.

2. Personal details of elderly people including their NHS No, financial and legal information are

recorded.

3. Client’s information is added to the system.

Secondary Scenario

In activity 2, the registration will be canceled when some requested information of elderly people is

inadequate or NHS No is invalid.

10

Name: Add Driver’s Info

Actor: Centre Administrative Staff

Series of Activities

Use Case begins when a person comes to work as a volunteer and then administrative staff selects new

driver registration form.

1. Administrative staff enters volunteer’s personal details including his or her available day and time.

2. Information of CRB, driving license, health checks and referees is inserted.

3. Administrative staff confirms that volunteer accepts rules and regulations of AgeCare.

4. Administrative staff submits volunteer’s data.

Secondary Scenario

For event 1, if a volunteer’s availability is not suitable with the time for shopping trip, this person will not

be considered.

In step two, registration will be declined if following cases are observed.

no driving license or many endorsements at the back of license

having criminal records or failing health checks (if a person is an ex-offender, he/she will be

examined whether committed conviction is related to roles of volunteer of green drive project)

lack of referee

In event 3, a volunteer may disagree about the prescribed rules and this lets the use case finish.

Name: Record Drawn Monthly Shopping Trips Rota

Actor: Doris Smith

Series of Activities

Use Case begins when Doris records new monthly shopping trips rota.

1. ID of project and project name are picked up.

2. Total visited times for each supermarket is viewed and IDs of sponsored supermarkets are selected.

3. IDs of available vehicles are picked up.

4. Doris looks for availability of drivers.

5. Doris groups the elderly people who live in the same postcode and records the best suitable route.

6. Doris enters date and time for each shopping trip.

7. Time and place to pick up each client are defined.

8. When ID(s) of vehicle(s) and ID(s) of driver(s) are added for each particular trip, Doris confirms

rota.

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Secondary Scenario

For step 2, if supermarkets found that they do not get fair share of visits, they may discontinue funding.

In step 3, if all vehicles are in use for other activities, Doris may hire vehicles from Car Rental Company.

In activity 4, when there are no available drivers, Doris will contact with other volunteer groups or change

date and time of shopping trips.

In event 8, if a driver resigns or is fired or changes his/her availability after allocating, Doris will reassign

another one.

Name: Fill in Everyday Routines of Project

Actor: Doris Smith

Series of Activities

Use Case begins when Doris records new daily project’s routine.

1. ID of shopping trip, ID(s) of driver(s) in charge and assigned vehicle ID are chosen.

2. Doris inserts vehicle’s key picking up time, whether there is emergency call or not and key returning

time.

3. IDs of elderly people who came on the bus are selected and their attendances are saved. IDs of

elderly people who were absent are selected and the reasons why they were absent are inserted.

4. After adding the remark such as whether there is a problem or not, Doris submits everyday routines of

project.

Secondary Scenario

In step 2, if the driver is absent or take a leave, the system will display other available drivers. Similarly,

Doris will search for other available vehicles if the assigned bus breaks down and then the driver makes

an emergency call.

In step 3, if there were no elderly people coming on the bus, this would make the use case end.

12

Name: Insert Fuel Purchase and Usage

Actor: Doris Smith

Series of Activities

Use Case begins when Doris selects new insert fuel purchase and usage form

1. ID of driver who purchases fuel and ID of bus which is filled up with diesel are selected.

2. Doris inserts date, total gallon of diesel purchased, its cost and total driven miles.

3. Doris adds payment info (payment ID, total Amount)

4. After issuing remark concerned with whether driver gives back a receipt or not, Doris confirms data

about fuel purchase and its usage.

Secondary Scenario

In step 1, if either driver ID or bus ID is wrong, Doris will check again and reenter data.

For activity 3, if Doris does not have enough money to pay or she is not at office, driver will request

money from centre accountant or cancel filling up fuel.

Name: Report Project’s Progress, Finance and Performance

Actor: Claire Graham

Series of Activities

Use Case begins when Claire chooses monthly report.

1. Claire enters month for which the report has to be produced.

2. Claire searches for project’s major data by entering project ID or project’s name.

3. System will show project’s progress like how many tasks have already been accomplished, the usage

of resources and also show how well this project met KPIs such as drivers’ performance in caring

clients, elderly people’s satisfaction and whether there are too many complaints.

4. After adding remark whether the project met its requirements last month or not, Claire will generate

monthly report and pass it to headquarters.

Secondary Scenario

At any time before generating report, Claire may cancel reporting.

In activity 1, if Claire enters wrong month, the system will search and display other project’s information.

In step 2, if Doris did not record daily record regularly, CG will estimate all the conditions of project’s

progress and reports to headquarters.

13

In analyzing AgeCare’s method of running Green Drive project, six main tasks which can be

drawn as use cases can be found.

Whenever a project begins, finance department of head office sends fund to respective centre. As

we think that there must be an accountant at every centre to save received funds details, we regard centre

accountant as a primary actor for this task. There are also two secondary actors who maintain the system.

They are – supermarkets and social services which jointly supply funds for this project. Without them,

there would be no Green Drive project.

Data about elderly people and drivers is also vital for Green Drive. Since this function is

concerned with administration, centre administrative staff who records this data becomes a primary

actor. Although centre accountant and centre administrative staff directly interacts with the system, there

is a person behind who orders them to do so. This is centre manager who can be said as a secondary

actor.

In this project, we can see most of the key procedures and transactions, for example, planning and

recording monthly shopping trips rota, filling in every day routines of project and inserting fuel purchase

and its usages are done by Doris Smith. She also has to report to project leader by collecting all above

data. Therefore, we made her as a primary actor in our use case diagram.

Another key primary actor is brought about at the end of each month. Claire Graham, a project

leader of Green Drive, must arrange proper information for monthly project report on project’s progress,

performance and finance. Moreover, we also describe head office which oversees the reports presented

by this primary actor as a secondary actor.

14

By examining the scenario of Green Drive Project, we illustrated six use cases in our use case

diagram. Moreover, we have already explained above about both primary and secondary scenarios for use

cases in details. But, just describing all these facts are insufficient to demonstrate how well we

comprehend the coursework and use case diagram we have created. Therefore, we want to clarify the way

we assumed some key activities included in our chosen primary scenario of Record Drawn Monthly

Shopping Trips Rota.

We chose four key activities which can make this scenario complete. They are recording the best

suitable bus route, entering date and time for each shopping trip, defining time and place to pick up each

client and adding ID(s) of vehicle(s) and ID(s) of driver(s) for each particular trip. Why we chose these

activities is that not only other activities in this scenario but also all other scenarios depend on them.

Without having systematic shopping trips rota, Green Drive project cannot go on. Even if only one of

these four activities is failed to carry out, it will have effects on the whole project and can cause project

fail. If we did not search for best suitable route, it will be time consuming for shopping trips. Likewise,

wrong date, time or place can make elderly people get in troubles. Although we could perform all above

activities without mistakes, we must cancel or postpone the trips if we miss to assign either vehicle or

driver for each trip. So, we identify these key activities by supposing expressed above.

15

We cannot always expect that a system will complete without having errors. So, while

documenting the primary scenario of Record Drawn Monthly Shopping Trips Rota, we also mulled

over some alternative paths that can happen at any steps in case of error situations. Finally, we could point

out some questions which can disturb the primary scenario. They include –

What if supermarkets discontinue funding?

What if all vehicles are in use for other activities?

What if when there are no available drivers?

What if problems or changes occurred associated with assigned driver?

By trying to find out solutions for these questions, we could imagine secondary scenarios for

Record Drawn Monthly Shopping Trips Rota use case. They are as follows –

Supermarkets realized that getting no fair share of visits.

All vehicles are full of activity

Drivers are not available or his/her availability does not suit with time for picking clients up and

returning them back to home.

Driver resigns or is fired or changes his/her availability after allocating.

16

While drawing use case diagram for Green Drive Project, some assumptions concerned with the

system were needed to be made. The reason why we made assumptions is that use case diagram must be

drawn based on pure coursework’s scenario and there are no responsible people of AgeCare to ask for

obtaining the required information. But, instead of making assumptions, we will surely ask some

questions to responsible peple for gathering information in real life.

Firstly, we want to ask the administrative staff whether they accept client registration or not if

some information of elderly people is inadequate. Another question should also be asked to the

admninistrative staff. This is what they usually do if a person who eagerly wants to be a volunteer is an

ex-offender but committed conviction is not related to roles of volunteer and if this person does not have

driving license.

Since many major processes are under the control of Doris Smith, we want to ask some questions

to her such as how she plans shopping trips rota to satisfy both supermarkets and social services and how

she arranges the bus route to reduce time consuming. Moreover, we should also ask her how she solves

the problems if all vehicles are not available for shopping trips and how she records the elderly people’s

attendance. As recording information of fuel used for transportation is also essential, we need to ask

whether she saves fuel payment details such as total purchased gallons and its cost together with its usage

like total driven miles.

Finally, it is required to know how this project information is presented to headquarters. So, we

need to ask project leader how he creates reports on project’s progress, performance and finance.

Moreover, we should ask him how he handles if the project does not meet KPIs well and how he will run

the project if funders discontinue or reduce funding. These are all questions we would like to ask if we get

a chance of asking the responsible staff in person.

17

Whenever we start to develop a system, the first step we have do is analyzing this system so that

we can know how the users of this system operate their system, which type of data must be kept and

which processes are vital. So, we use a number of ways like ethnographic approaches, prototyping,

interviews, questionnaires and workshops for fact-finding purposes as well as for gathering the user

requirements. Then, we apply many various tools to document these requirements and also to be used as

the communication tools between system analyst and the users to assure that user requirements are

correct.

For that reason, two tools: rich picture and use case diagram are used to identify the different user

requirements while we were analyzing the system of AgeCare charity. Therefore, we would like to

compare these two tools and then discuss about the usefulness of them in assisting us for developing

system of AgeCare. To see them clearly, we want to describe by using the table below.

AgeCare Charity Rich Picture Use Case Diagram for Green Drive Project

Main Difference Soft System Approach which considers for

human factor

Hard System Approach which is dedicated to

technical factor

Main purpose or

usefulness

As it is soft system methodology, its main

purpose is to express non-functional

requirements and social aspects such as

AgeCare stakeholders’ emotions, their

thoughts, their perceptions, organizational

factors, relationships between

stakeholders and conflicts between them.

It is also a powerful tool for indicating the

primary tasks of AgeCare charity. So, it is

useful for identifying uncontrollable and

unpredictable soft factors and we can

evaluate what people are thinking in their

minds and what their wants are.

In contrast with rich picture, the main

purpose of Green Drive Project use case

diagram is to describe technical aspects such

as sequentially state the interactions

between the key actors and the system of

Green Drive Project and its system’s

functionalities like functions and processes

the system is needed to carry out.

It is also useful to abstract the more key

functional requirements for developing

Green Drive system and this makes the use

case diagram clearer than rich picture.

Focus on It puts its focus on the current situations of

AgeCare environment. So, we can observe

the data flows within AgeCare organization,

present organization structure and current

facing issues between stakeholders mostly

It concentrates on searching for solutions for

the expressed issues in AgeCare rich picture.

And then, it looks for technical solutions to

achieve the particular goals of each key actor

which will be involved in the proposed Green

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concerned with data inconsistency, the

different opinions on changing to MIS and

finance.

Drive system. So, we can see the way of

inputting data of elderly people, drivers,

shopping trips rota and fuel payment into the

system, processing and reporting them.

Point of View for

drawing

respective

diagram

AgeCare charity rich picture must be drawn

from the point of view of stakeholders. For

example,

From point of view of elderly people, they

get services for shopping trips from

AgeCare.

From point of view of information quality

officer, he evaluates the project’s

performance by measuring KPIs and then

reports performance charts to AgeCare

Executive Committee.

Green Drive use case diagram is drawn from

the point of view of end-users. For example,

From point of view of administrative staff,

he/she will use the system to register clients

and add driver’s info.

From point of view of account, he/she

records the received amount of funds

Similar features

involved in each

tool

Boundary – Drawing rich picture helped us

in defining the boundary between

stakeholders of AgeCare within the system

and external sources such as funders, local

authorities, etc.

Actors – As we have already clarified

above, all actors that are depicted in

AgeCare rich picture are stakeholders since

the nature of rich picture shows the

organization structure. So, CEO, senior

executive committee, finance director,

information quality officer, central

administrative director, project leader,

centre manager, assistant manager, staff,

volunteers, funders, elderly people, etc

become included.

Boundary – Unlike AgeCare rich picture,

Green Drive Use Case Diagram assisted us in

dividing the boundary between the uses cases

and the key actors who are dealing with these

use cases.

Actors – Since use case diagram is intended

for technical solutions, almost all actors in our

diagram are the end-users who use the system

by themselves. But, a little different from the

actors in AgeCare rich picture is that there are

two types of actors in our use case diagram.

This is primary actors such as centre

accountant, centre administrative staff, Doris

Smith, Claire Graham who are directly

interrelating with the system and secondary

actors, for instance, supermarkets, social

services, centre manager and head office which

exist only to let the primary actors accomplish

their tasks.

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Similar features

involved in each

tool

Relationships – Arrow lines represents the

relationships between stakeholders or

between branches and head office or

between people inside and outside the

boundary of AgeCare environment.

Indicating activities – Activities also plays

the key roles for analyzing requirements and

they are shown above or below their

relevant arrow lines. For instance, “report

performance chart” points out the activity

between information quality officer and

AgeCare Executive Committee.

Relationships – Arrow lines are used to

visualize the communications between use case

and its respective actor. For example, an arrow

link between “add driver’s info use case” and

administrative staff to prove that they relate

with each other.

Indicating activities – Each use case

represents each activity that is activated by an

actor or actors. In our drawn diagram, we can

notice that “register clients use case” begins

when centre administrative staff, primary actor,

selects new client registration and centre

manager, secondary actor, commands him/her

to do so.

Different features

involved in each

tool

Issues – Since issues are the essence of a

rich picture and they are also the things

which make rich picture different from use

case diagram, we also searched for the

issues while constructing AgeCare rich

picture. Then, we discover that all

stakeholders of AgeCare charity have their

own concerns on the things their charity is

carrying out. We can see each stakeholder

exposes his/her different opinions for the

task he/she has to deal with. For example,

finance director may have concerns for

handling finance for the whole AgeCare

organization. Likewise, information quality

officer may have a great concern for data

inconsistency issue and some staff may

worry about facing with too much

complaint of elderly people. By looking at

these issues, we will be able to find the best

solutions for these exposed problems in

Primary Scenario – We had to document

primary scenarios for Green Drive use case

diagram. So, we can comprehend step by step

activities performed by respective key actors.

Secondary Scenario - Moreover, we also had

to consider secondary scenarios of each use

case, for example,

how will the project be run if the

supermarkets stop giving funds?

whether the registration will be canceled or

not when some requested information of

elderly people is inadequate or NHS no is

invalid,

whether the administrative staff accepts a

person to be a volunteer or not if this person

does not have driving license or referees or

if he/she is an ex-offender,

what will Doris do if all vehicles are in use

for other activities while arranging rotas?

By finding solutions for these questions, we

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Different features

involved in each

tool

building up Management Information

System for AgeCare charity.

Conflicts – At the places in our drawn rich

picture where two people have opposite

perspectives on the same case, we put the

cross-swords to signify that they are conflict

areas. In our AgeCare charity rich picture,

these symbols can be found between finance

director and centre manager or information

quality officer and centre manager or

between AgeCare and other charities or

between volunteers and staff. Based on the

conflicts expressed, we can consider which

things must be changed to be better for the

proposed MIS of AgeCare.

Monitoring - We take the eye symbol into

our AgeCare rich picture to represent

monitoring something for fulfilling the

expectations. In real life, the funders will

not give money easily just by hearing the

words of AgeCare Executive Committee.

They need to see some evidences of their

funded projects’ effectiveness. So, they

should monitor the reports presented by

committee. To be able to present these

reports, the committee has to check the

reports forwarded by finance director and

information quality officer. So, the eye

symbols are placed between them.

Similarly, projects are needed to be

monitored by information quality officer

and project leaders to make sure that they

meet the KPIs.

can handle exceptional behaviors of the Green

Drive system.

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Some good points Rich picture is easy to use as there is no

predefined constraint or rule. So, we used

the cartoon-like symbols while drawing

AgeCare rich picture. As a result, it can

be even understood by non-technical

people such as CEO and other

stakeholders of AgeCare.

It is a valuable tool to describe the

problem situationa of AgeCare charity’s

at present time.

AgeCare stakeholders can more easily

discuss their roles in charity by seeing

rich picture.

It is helpful in abstracting the major

functional requirements of our proposed

MIS system for Green Drive.

As it is created from the user point of view

by capturing the tasks performed by users, it

assists us in producing the correct system.

For each function carried out by the end-

users, we document not only primary

scenario but also secondary scenario.

Therefore, it can make the system more

robust as alternative paths are considered for

the exceptional conditions.

Since use case descriptions use simple

narrative text, the stakeholders of AgeCare

can easily interpret whether the system

presented by system analyst is right or

wrong.

Other diagrams such as sequence diagram,

activity diagram, collaboration diagram, etc

can be drawn based on use case diagram.

Some bad points It will not be as useful as use case

diagram for developing the system.

Some AgeCare stakeholders might think

that we are joking them when we show

them our drawn rich picture which is just

like a cartoon

As all stakeholders of AgeCare must be

involved in rich picture so that we can

know their organization structure, there

is too much information which are

essential and which are not on our rich

picture.

In real life, we have to ask end-users to

know which parts of their functions are

important for designing the use case

diagram. But, end-user may never think of

technical solutions suitable for system

functions and they will think all their

performing functions are required.

Therefore, it leads to identifying the wrong

functional requirements for the system.

22

To conclude, we can say that both two tools are graphical tools for making the communication

more easy and useful between the stakeholders or end-users and the system analyst. As a picture can tell

us a thousand words, there is no doubt that both tools can highlight the user requirements just by taking a

glimpse at either our drawn AgeCare charity rich picture or our described use case diagram for Green

Drive project. Each tool assists us by its own way in analyzing the user requirements for AgeCare charity.

With the help of AgeCare rich picture, we came to know their organization structure, their primary tasks,

their current situations, the exposed issues and conflicts for these issues. On the other hand, we could

abstract the systematic functional requirements of proposed MIS for Green Drive project through our use

case diagram. In addition, use case diagram not only make obvious who is interacting with the system to

do which process but also make the system more robust with the help of secondary scenarios. Some

people may say that they can implement the system just by using use case and rich picture is useless.

Although it is possible to design a system just by using use case, what we believe is that a system which

is implemented without considering human factors and organization factors will surely fail sooner or

later. Therefore, in our opinion, only if we implement the systems by combining rich picture which is

designed for hard system approach and use case diagram which is dedicated to hard system approach, we

can be successful in gathering user requirements and implementing the systems.