MONITORING SYSTEM FOR PROJEK SARJANA MUDA (MOSYS)
FIN1 FATIHA BINTI HJ AZMAN
This report is submitted in partial of fulfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor of
Computer Science (Software Development) .
FACULTY OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY
UNIVERSITI TEKNIKAL MALAYSIA MELAKA
2007

ABSTRACT
Monitoring System for Projek Sarjana Muda (MOSYS) is a research, to develop the application which based on the current scenario in monitoring and evaluating progress of Projek Sarjana Muda (PSM). This application is limit to the stage of observation and evaluation project phase. The process of monitoring project progress is conducted by the lecturer which entitled as a project supervisor. The objective of this application development is to lighten the burden of project supervisor in managing and monitoring student's project. Beside that, it aims to give full information regarding about PSM 1 and
PSM
2 detail as well. Object-oriented approach is used as a project methodology for this project. The Rational Unified Process is chosen to aid in this application development based on the capabilities of this approach in smoothing the object-oriented software development process. Results get from this application development is hoped to help the lecturer especially for the project supervisor in maintaining their task in monitoring PSM student.

ABSTRAK
Sistem Pemantauan Projek Sarjana Muda atau Monitoring System for Projek
Sarjana Muda (MOSYS) adalah penyelidikan untuk membangunkan aplikasi yang berkisar kepada senario semasa di dalam proses pemantauan dan penilaian kemajuan
Projek Sarjana Muda. Aplikasi ini mencakupi kepada fasa pemantauan dan penilaian projek sahaja. Proses pemantauan projek biasanya di lakukan oleh pensyarah yang bertindak sebagai penyelia projek. Matlamat pembangunan sistem ini adalah untuk memudahkan pengurusan dan pemantauan projek pelajar oleh penyelia. Ia juga bertujuan untuk memberi informasi secara terperinci berkenaan PSM 1 dan PSM 2.
Metodologi atau kaedah yang diguna pakai semasa pembangunan projek ini adalah berdasarkan kepada orehtasi objek. Rational UniJied Process telah di pilih untuk menibantu proses pembangunan perisian ini. Ini berdasarkan kepada kemampuan pendekatan tersebut di dalam kaedah pembangunan sistem yang berorentasikan objek.
Hasil daripada pembangunan projek ini, diharapkan dapat membantu para pensyarah khususnya yang bertanggungjawab di dalam menyelia pelajar Projek Sarjana Muda.

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Overview
This project is to study about monitoring and supervision process specific to
Projek Sarjana Muda (PSM). In the current monitoring scenario in PSM, supervisor need to do a reminder on supervisory and monitoring schedules for every student that had assigned to them. This is happened to every lecturer that responsible as a PSM supervisor. The figure 1.1, elucidate the current circumstances in PSM process.
According to the definition, monitoring is the regular observation and recording of activities taking place in a project or program. It is a process of routinely gathering information on all aspects of the project. Monitoring also involves giving feedback about the progress of the project to the donors, implementers and beneficiaries of the project
(Bartle, 2007).
To monitor is to check on how project activities are progressing. It is observation. Monitoring is very important in project planning and implementation. It is like watching where you are going while riding a bicycle; you can adjust as you go along and ensure that you are on the right track.

Monitoring System for Projek Sarjana Muda (MOSYS) is an application which is implemented as a web based application. This application is designed to support PSM monitoring process, and to provide information about student's project progress.
Besides, it also will afford for project evaluation as well. All those aspect will be an extra feature in monitoring and supervision process.
The project modules consist of Project Monitoring, Project Status, Project
Evaluation, Student Performance's Report, and Student Management Information. Every module has their dedicated function that will support to the objective of development of this application.
1.2 Problem Statement
Based on the current PSM scenario, we can see that PSM were manually monitored by the supervisor itself. There is no appropriated computerized system to monitor PSM activities especially in our university. These are the problem that have been identified which lead to the development of the MOSYS.
1.2.1 Project monitoring aspect
The difficulty from the manual supervision is, for lecturer itself, they have to deal with six to seven PSM students in a time, and keep on monitoring the student progress, and at the same time to record the student's project progress base on the milestone. They also need to arrange and deal to their timetable and the student. This not yet includes the problem that will interfere with the schedule that has been planned before. So they need one application that will record and able to track student progress and student's project status effectively.

1.2.2 Project evaluation aspect
Lecturers need to give and submit PSM marks for their students. They have to evaluate the marks for six to seven students in a time and there will be a probability of an accurate marking. Here the function which will cater the entire problem and will provide the accurate mark for every student.
1.2.3 Efficiency aspect
If we look from the efficiency aspect, to compare with current system means here is refer to the manual procedure, the developing of this application will provide them much advantage in presenting their job. This application will let them to schedule their time and synchronize with student's timetable.
1.3 Objectives
The objectives to develop this project are:
To provide an application which able to monitor PSM student's project progress and to attain the student to reach their goals.
To provide PSh4 project status and evaluation in order to control the quality and standard of the project that will be delivered.
To produce an effective application that offer benefit in management and monitoring aspect respectively to the PSM supervisors.

1.4 Project Scopes
The scopes in developing this project are:
User:
User of this application is a PSM supervisor of Fakulti Teknologi Maklumat dan
Komunikasi (FTMK).
Platform:
This application will run XP and use Apache as a web server.
Functionality (modules):
Below is the module that will be operates on this application. o Manage Student Profile: The system is able to provide a function to get access to student's profile and project details. o Project Monitoring: The system should be able to keep track to student's project progress. o Project Status: The system is able to cover the supervisor's power in order to determine whether student's progress is achieved to PSM standard and the students are capable to continue their project. o Project Evaluation: The system should be able to provide evaluation hnction and capable to determine project grade. The system also should be able to deliver evaluation's report.

o Student Performance's Summary: The system is able to generate the report due to student's performance. o Searching: The system should be able to perform a search function to enable supervisor to get access the student info easily.
Figure 1.1 explains about stage and modules that will be covered in this project.
As state in the figure, this project scope will cover up to supervisor's circumstance only.
Stage 1
(Student)
Stage2
(PSM
Committee)
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(Suv-"--"
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Stages and Modules Covered
Student
( ,
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( i s )
PSM Committee ate project)
Figure 1.1: Staged and module covered in MOSYS

1.5 Project Significant
This project is estimated to provide applications that help the lecturer in order to updates and monitoring their student progress. This project is trust to lease the lecturer burden and this project will help the lecturer to focus on their career and at the same time they are able to give their best effort in helping the student to success in their study.
1.6 Expected Output
This project is expected to fulfill lecturer needs for PSM project status and PSM information indeed. Means here the mission for this application development is to provide the lecturers with all information they need about their PSM student. The information includes project status and project evaluation as well. This application also hopes to be the useful application to the lecturers and will operate as expected.
1.7 Conclusion
To reiterate, the aim for developing this application is to provide the system which able to observe and control student project improvement. The MOSYS development is intend to offer benefit in monitoring and evaluation stages especially to the PSM supervisors. The benefit of the system is to help the supervisor to keep on eye to their student performance. Besides, it also estimated to ease the supervisor burden to monitor student's project. Next chapter is describing about literature review and project methodology that will be used in developing this application.

CHAPTER I1
LITERATURE REVIEW AND PROJECT METHODOLOGY
2.1 Introduction
In this chapter we will discuss about literature review, fact and finding also project methodology in order to study and understand the current business of existing system which is the fact later will be use as a guidance to develop the application which is focus to the system that based on monitoring orientation.
2.2 Fact and Finding
For this section, we will review and study about the current system that have monitoring and evaluation characteristic. This research will focus on monitoring system which based on education orientation that has been state on the scope in previous chapter.

2.2.1 Domain
After some research and finding process, the domain of this project it more concentrate on project management and project monitoring area. The project will focus on monitoring and evaluation project for academic purpose corresponding to control and maintaining the project significance, quality and standard.
Refer to Geiko (2003) and Danilova (2003) the management of the quality of education deals with all the spheres of studying process at any Higher Education
Establishment and nowadays it has specific meaning, which is not only managing academic activities but also comparing them with achieved result i.e. the quality of education obtained by student (in other words the quality of knowledge and skill)
Rosenshine and Stevens (1 986) noted that most teachers (including unsuccessful ones) employ teaching practices that could help them make appropriate decisions-for instance, daily reviews and guided student practice. The successful teachers use the information they gather while implementing these practices to make decisions. In addition, they do so more frequently dnd at more appropriate times than less successful teachers. Making appropriate instructional decisions requires knowing what to do and when to do it. Such decision making requires constant monitoring of student performance.
According to Utah State University (t.th.) the two major purposes of academic monitoring are closely related: the attainment of student goals and the progressive improvement of instructional practices. Rosenshine (1979), in identifling the critical aspects of successful instruction, recommended that teachers set clear instructional goals and monitor student progress toward those goals. In addition, teachers must set and maintain clear, firm, and reasonable work standards.

Students must know exactly what is expected in completing an assignment, how the format of the assignment should look, how neat the work should be, and the accuracy level they are expected to attain. If teachers establish objective standards, they will be more able to evaluate student performance.
Before teachers can effectively monitor student progress, they must have in place a sequence of valid instructional objectives. To be instructionally valid, the sequence of objectives must be integrated with a validated instructional program. That is, the instructional objectives students are expected to meet should be a part of an instructional program that has been sufficiently tested. The program should be supported by data showing that similar students achieved high levels of mastery under similar conditions.
2.2.2 Existing System
In this section, we will study and exposed the systems which have management and monitoring project element. In this case a model on existing system that related to monitoring topic will be pickup as a case study. One of the examples is Microsoft
Desktop Product which is Microsoft Ofice Project Standard 2007 and another ohe is ah open source monitoring application known as dotproject.

a)
Study on Microsoft Office Project Standard 2007
The reason of choosing Microsoft Project as a project case study is, Microsoft project have the features of project management as well as project monitoring and one more thing this is a stand alone application. Other than that Microsoft Office Project is most widely use as a tool in monitoring and maintaining project progress. Because it a
Microsoft product, so that it needs a license in order to fully utilized it.
Microsoft Office Project Standard 2007 provides robust project management tools with the right blend of usability, power, and flexibility, with that it can manage projects more efficiently and effectively. It also provide an information and control about project work, schedules, finances, project teams aligned and are more productive through integration with familiar Microsoft Office system programs, powerful reporting, guided planning, and flexible tools (Microsoft Corporation).
According to Microsoft Corporation the key reasons for using Office Project Standard
2007 include:
Effectively manage and understand project schedules
Leverage existing data.
Build professional charts and diagrams.
Effectively communicate information.
Gain greater control of resources and finances.
Provide access to the information you need.
Track projects according to your needs.

b) Study on dotproject Application
Another one application that base on monitoring and management application is dotproject. This application is an open source project management tool and it is free.
This application is still functioning as a project management tools same as Microsoft
Project but this is an example of project management tool in web based environment.
Originally commenced in 2000 by dotmarketing.org, dotproject was developed as a state of the art Project Management tool from the start. The original theme (still available in the first release of 2005) flagged dotproject as an open source alternative to
Microsoft products and other expensive, commercial applications. Right from the start, dotproject had, as its core aims a number of simple requirements such as clean, simple and consistent user interface, and the most important it is develop to have project management functionality
- not another CMS, groupware environment or all things to all people collaboration tool, but a project management environment (dotproject).
The features include in this application are:
User Management
Email based trouble Ticket System, (Integrated voxel.net's ticketsmith)
ClientICompany Management
Project listings
Hierarchical Task List
File Repository
Contact List
Calendar
Discussion Forum
Resource Based Permissions

c) Comparison of characteristics between the application of Microsoft Office
Project Standard 2007 and dotproject.
Table 2.1 explains about comparisons that have been recognized from Microsofi
Office Project Standard 2007 and dotproject. Both systems got their pros and cons. The most important thing is both systems still deliver the same objective in manage and monitor the project progress proficiently.
Table 2.1: Comparison of characteristics between Microsoft Off~ce
Standard 2007 and dotproject
CHARACTERISTIC
SYSTEM TYPE
SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
SOFTWARE TYPE
FUNCTIONALITY OF PROJECT
MANAGEMENT
FUNCTIONALITY OF PROJECT
MONITORING
EFFECTIVELY COMMUNICATION
INFORMATION UPDATES
MICROSOFT PROJECT stand alone client require license
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
DOTPROJECT web based client server open source
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

2.2.3 Technique
This document is obtained from internet, which refer to Lews Castle College (t-th) about monitoring system which explains about procedures for monitoring the progress of postgraduate research students. The system describes the internal processes (equivalent to a quality assurance system for research postgraduate study) and related requirements for progression of research students through a research programme to specified research degree. a) Monitoring Procedure System
Good supervisory arrangements and practice
The following points are recommended as good supervisory arrangements and practice for students and supervisors.
Joint supervision
There must always be joint supervision. At their initial meeting the supervisors and student should agree in writing the role of each supervisor and arrangements for supervisory support.
Supervisory meetings
Students and supervisors should have regular meetings at which academic advice is given and through which progress is monitored. This is particularly important at the beginning of the research, so that the project makes a good start.

Where a collaborating institution is involved in the research project it should be involved in the meetings at least once per annum.
It cannot be too strongly stressed that the success of a student's research project depends largely on the help and guidance offered by the supervisors, especially in the early stages of the work. Close contact at that time is essential if later difficulties are to be avoided.
Frequency of meetings
This will depend on the student's circumstances (full-time or part-time) and the nature and stage of the research project. Meetings should be more frequent for full-time students and in the early stages of research. Arrangements for supervisory support, including the frequency of meetings, must be agreed at the first meeting, and the schedule adhered to by the student and supervisors.
The first meeting
The first meeting between student and supervisors is particularly important in establishing a provisional framework for future support and getting the students academic work off to a good start. The following areas should be covered in the first meeting:

Supervision
= Role of each supervisor
Frequency of future meetings
Timetable for early meetings
Arrangements for seeing and commenting on written work
= Monitoring arrangements and timetable
Safety
Academic support
=
Research facilities available
University training programmes and attendance requirements
General framework for the whole research programme
Detailed plan for the early stages of the programme
A written record of the decisions made at the meeting should be agreed and given to the student.
Subsequent meetings
Regular meetings, in accordance with the agreed schedule, are essential to monitor progress and agree timetables for the future. The research timetable should be committed to paper so that supervisors can see whether deadlines have been met. The length of the meetings will vary. For full-time students meetings of an hour or so are usual. For part-time students, whose meetings are less frequent, they will be longer.

Monitoring progress
Supervisors use different methods to monitor their student's progress, and they should agree with the student at the initial meeting how it is to be done.
Supervisors are required by the Research Degrees Committee to submit reports on the progress of their students, and this should be taken into account when working out a monitoring schedule.
The timetable agreed at supervisory meetings should be used to see whether deadlines are being met and progress is being made. Students should prepare progress reports for their supervisors at regular intervals. The timing should be linked to the report supervisors are required to make.

2.3 Project Methodology
There have been basically three approaches in information system development area: process-oriented, data-oriented and object-oriented approaches (Jian, 2001). An object oriented approach is aim to be used as a project methodology for this project development.
Refer to Jian (2001) on his articles about Object Oriented Analysis Methodology; unlike its two predecessors that focus either on process or data, the object-oriented approach combines data and processes (called methods) into single entities called objects. Objects usually correspond to the real things an information system deals with, such as customers, suppliers, contracts, and rental agreements. Object-oriented model is able to thoroughly represent complex relationships and to represent data and data processing with a consistent notation, which allows an easier blending of analysis and design in an evolutionary process. The goal of object-oriented approach is to make system elements more reusable, thus improving system quality and the productivity of systems analysis and design (Hoffer et al., 2002).
The most suitable methodology for object oriented is a Rational Unified Process
(RUP). RUP is a modern process model derived fiom the work on the Unified Modeling
Language (UML) and associated process. Normally described fiom three perspectives:
A dynamic perspective that shows phases over time
A static perspective that shows process activities
A practice perspective that suggests good practices.

According to the Jacobson et al., (1999) and Kruchten (1999), The Rational Unified
Process0 is a software engineering process. It provides a disciplined approach to assigning tasks and responsibilities within a development organization. Its goal is to ensure the production of high-quality software that meets the needs of its end-users, within a predictable schedule and budget.
The Rational Unified Process is a process product, developed and maintained by
Rational0 Software. The development teams for the Rational Unified Process are working closely with customers, partners, Rational's product groups as well as Rational's consultant organization, to ensure that the process is continuously updated and improved upon to reflect recent experiences and evolving and proven best practices.
The Rational Unified Process enhances team productivity, by providing every team member with easy access to a knowledge base with guidelines, templates and tool mentors for all critical development activities. By having all team members accessing the same knowledge base, no matter if you work with requirements, design, test, project management, or configuration management, we ensure that all team members share a common language, process and view of how to develop software.
Refer to Jacobson et al. (1992), Booch (1995) and Jocobson et al. (1997); the
Rational Unified Process activities create and maintain models. Rather than focusing on the production of large amount of paper documents, the Unified Process emphasizes the development and maintenance of models-semantically rich representations of the software system under development.

The Rational Unified Process is a guide for how to effectively use the UML.
UML is an industry-standard language that allows us to clearly communicate requirements, architectures and designs. The UML was originally created by Rational
Software, and is now maintained by the standards organization Object Management
Group (OMG) (Booch et al., 1998).
The Rational Unified Process is supported by tools, which automate large parts of the process. They are used to create and maintain the various artifacts-models in particular-f the software engineering process: visual modeling, programming, testing, etc. They are invaluable in supporting all the bookkeeping associated with the change management as well as the configuration management that accompanies each of iteration.
The Rational Unified Process is a configurable process. No single process is suitable for all software development. The Unified Process fits small development teams as well as large development organizations. The Unified Process is founded on a simple and clear process architecture that provides commonality across a family of processes.
Yet, it can be varied to accommodate different situations. It contains a Development Kit, providing support for configuring the process to suit the needs of a given organization.
The Rational Unified Process captures many of the best practices in modem software development in a form that is suitable for a wide range of projects and organizations. Deploying these best practices using the Rational Unified Process as your guide, offers development teams a number of key advantages.

RUP Phase Model
Phase iteration
Inception Elaboration Construction
Figure 2.1: The RUP phase model
Transition
The Figure 2.1 gives detail about every phase in RUP. RUP consist of four main phase. Their purposes of each phase are according to the explanation below.
Inception
According to Kruchten (t.th.) and Royce (1998) during the inception phase, the purpose is to establish the business case for the system and delimit the project scope.
T k involves identifjmg all use cases and describing a few significant ones. The bus3WSs case includes success criteria, risk assessment, and estimate of the resources needed, and a phase plan showing dates of major milestones.
The purpose of the elaboration phase is to analyze the problem domain, establish a sound architectural foundation, develop the project plan, and eliminate the highest risk elements of the project. Architectural decisions have to be made with an understanding of the whole system: its scope, major functionality and nonfunctional requirements such as performance requirements.

Construction
During the construction phase, all remaining components and application features are developed and integrated into the product, and all features are thoroughly tested. The construction phase is, in one sense, a manufacturing process whe- emphasis is placed on managing resources and controlling operations to optimize costs, schedules, and quality.
Transition
The purpose of the transition phase is to transition the software product to the user community. Once the product has been given to the end user, issues usually arise that require you to develop new releases, correct some problems, or finish the features that were postponed. The transition phase is entered when a baseline is mature enough to be deployed in the end-user domain. This typically requires that some usable subset of the system has been completed to an acceptable level of quality and that user documentation is available so that the transition to the user will provide positive results for all parties. This includes:
"beta testing" to validate the new system against user expectations parallel operation with a legacy system that it is replacing conversion of operational databases training of users and maintainers roll-out the product to the marketing, distribution, and sales teams
The transition phase focuses on the activities required to place the software into the hands of the users. Typically, this phase includes several iterations, including beta releases, general availability releases, as well as bug-fix and enhancement releases.
Considerable effort is expended in developing user-oriented documentation, training users, supporting users in their initial product use, and reacting to user feedback.

2.4 Project Requirements
The minimum requirements to develop Monitoring System for Projek Sarjana
Muda (MOSYS) are as follow.
2.4.1 Software Requirement
Requirements and details of software need in order to construct this project are:
Macromedia Dreamweaver Mx 2004
Adobe Photoshop CS2
Appserv ver 2.5.5
Web Browser
Rational Rose Enterprise Edition
2.4.2 Hardware Requirement
Hardware needs to support the development of this project are:
Personal Computer (PC) Desktop
Printer
2.4.3 Other Requirement
Other requirement needs in order to support the project are:
Network Interface Card (NIC) and modem or wireless adapter
Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) cable

2.5 Project Schedule and Milestone
The project planning for this project development contains six phase. Every phase is designed with specific task in order to deliver the product, synchronized to schedule. Starting with the planning phase which is the phase of preliminary study, follows by analysis phase, which is stage to do a feasibility study in order to gather requirement and research on project domain.
Next stage is a design phase. It's to determine and construct the requirements get from analysis phase. Implementation phase is a stage where the development of project begins. Include in the cycles, is a testing phase which is an approach to verify and validate the product. The project cycles will close with maintenance phase, and it will work as system support after product released.
Table 2.4 will state every stage that need to complete in order to achieve the objective of MOSYS development. For complete project schedule, please refer to Gantt chart at appendix A.
Table 2.4: Project schedule and milestone
ACT~VITTES
PLANNING PHASE
ANALYSIS PHASE
DESIGN PHASE
IMPLEMENTATION PHASE
TESTING PHASE
MAINTENANCE PHASE
DURATION
11 days
12 days
13 days
48 days
24 days
17 days
DELNERABLES chapter 1 and 2 chapter 3 chapter 4 chapter 5 chapter 6 project presentation

2.6 Conclusion
Based on study of monitoring system in academic orientation, it was found; in the process of develop monitoring system for education purpose it has to consider a few aspects such as management factor and monitoring technique. In other hand it is to ensure the project that going to develop is archived to PSM standard and this is to ensure the quality and value of the project itself.
RUP is chosen for project methodology, because it is an iterative software development process framework. RUP is not a single concrete prescriptive process, but rather an adaptable process framework, intended to be tailored by the development organizations and software project teams that will select the elements of the process that are appropriate for their needs. RUP usually used to apply on object oriented approach, and it has been decided to be used along the project development. Next chapter will discuss and reviewing about requirement capture process that we call as analysis.