Pete’s Pawn Shop – System Proposal

Thomas Haymes

Systems Analysis and Design – Info 361

Albert Wynne

By

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Summery…1

Systems Request and Case Scenario…1

Business Case…2

Gantt Chart…4

Use Case Diagram…6

Class Diagram…6

Sequence Diagram…6

State Machine Diagram…7

User Interface Prototype…8

Usability Test Report…9

Executive Summery…10

SUMMERY

Less than six months ago, the staff and management of Pete’s Pawn Shop

approached our staff with a systems request – a computer system that would allow them,

to better manage their transactions, customer information, inventory, and item status. The

proposed system would allow staff to register and identify customers, update the

inventory with sales, pawns, purchases, and item details, including photographs, file

police reports, receive updates on loans, and standardize the information available to

them. As such, this report contains business cases, a Gantt chart, a use case diagram, a

class diagram, a sequence diagram, a state machine diagram, a prototype of the user

interface and a usability test report.

CASE SCENARIO AND SYSTEMS REQUEST

Project Name: Pete's Pawn Shop

Project Sponsor: Peter "Pete" Forthright, owner and chief operating officer

Business Need: Pete's Pawn Shop has been in the pawning business for 30+ years.

The business specializes in jewelry, electronics, furniture and

antiques, but other items may be accepted on occasion. Though Pete

has been using a computer for simple tasks such as word processing,

and managing inventory in simple spreadsheets, he has a difficult

time keeping up with the record keeping and the legal requirements,

and many accounting errors have resulted in substantial losses. Pete

believes that his business operations could be made more efficient

and effective with the proper information systems support.

Functionality: The expected functionality includes transaction support for sales,

purchases, and pawning, as well as managing inventory and repeat-

customers, provide financial and legal reporting [stolen property,

etc.], and marketing.

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Expected Value: Reduce losses due to book keeping errors, reduce cost for clerical

support, better decision-making in offering loans and appraising

items, and improve relationships with customers (new and repeat).

Special Issues or

Constraints: Limited funds for equipment upgrades and software development;

limited information systems expertise; many one-time customers;

reporting requirements to identify stolen goods; need for outside

appraisers for some items; two workstations with Internet access;

one external mass storage device; no website, Facebook or other

social media identity.

BUISNESS CASE

Scope Statement:

The proposal received requests a computer system to better manage Pete’s Pawn

Shop’s inventory and profits. The purpose of this document is to analyze the feasibility of

this proposal in regards to cost, function, and organization. We will be analyzing the

potential effectiveness, risks, reasoning, challenges, and impact on the business.

Organizational Feasibility:

This would actually aid the company’s needs of an improved method of keeping

track of merchandise and sales. The use of a computer system and database would have a

substantial impact on the functioning business, reducing the human error present thus far,

allowing a more streamlined approach that would possibly save time in certain

operational areas and increase profits. This would allow better management of inventory

and stronger loss-prevention. It would mark an improvement in communication among

employees and reduce the time and difficulty of these transactions.

The only issues would be training Pete and his staff in the use of this software and the

determining and licensing of the type of software to be used. One must consider the user

experience of the staff. It would have to be a fairly simple system given this is a small

business and there are only two computers.

Economic Feasibility:

This idea is sensible from a business perspective. The computer system would

allow better communication among employees and management, better knowledge of

inventory, debts, pricing, and other important details. Affordability would be based on

system features - complexity and ability, and should be chosen to suit the business’

needs. There will likely be a subscription fee as a recurring cost.

Risks would include system failure and data loss, which would certainly have a major

negative impact upon the business, perhaps crippling it, but can be prevented by regular

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backups and redundancies. This system would also have to be secure or protected by

passwords and an inexpensive firewall, for another risk would be data vulnerability and

manipulation, which, left unperfected, would leave the door open to data theft or

alterations, both also highly damaging to the company. However, the greatest risk, at the

moment, seems to be simple errors or failure to use the system, which would only prove

this venture to be a waste of money. One must remember that this is a small business and

there is only so much money that can be put into this project.

Technical Feasibility:

There are many technical issues regarding implementing a system in the pawn shop. One

technical issue will be converting old information to a new system. This includes

converting and uploading information from 30 years of business, including pawns, sales,

purchases, police reports, and inventory. This will require us to create a database for

each activity, then need to specify what each program will do. For example, we need to

create a program that will handle sales, purchases and keep track of inventory.

There are a number of risks associated in implementing a new system. One of the risk

will be misunderstanding the requirements and failing to manage the change. This

includes poor estimation of the project size and the project structure. This can cause a

project failure due to inadequate planning. This will be a low risk because we will spend

a lot of time planning on how to implement a system, which programs will handle what

activities.

Another risk to implementation will be not properly explaining to Pete and his employees

on how to use his new system. This will be a low risk because we will spend a

significant amount of time showing Pete and his employees on how to properly use the

system, which will have a relatively simple design.

The biggest risk to implementation of this new system will be hacker finding a way of

getting sensitive data from Pete’s new system. Hackers have been known to breaking

into security and taking sensitive data such as financial data. The way to counter this

measure will be to encrypt all his data. This will prevent hackers from getting sensitive

data.

Cost Benefit Analysis:

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GANTT CHART

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USE CASE DIAGRAM

CASE DIAGRAM

SEQUENCE DIAGRAM

sd Make Pawn Use Case

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STATE MACHINE DIAGRAM

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USER INTERFACE PROTOTYPE

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USABILITY TESTING REPORT

The web page for Pete’s Pawn Shop, for purposes of simplicity, now links directly to the

employee web page, accessible through username and password. From there, store staff

can manage the inventory and customer accounts, as well as handle the selling and

pawning of items. The pawn page in particular allows details and images of the pawn to

be directly uploaded to the database. The goal of this design is to increase the ease with

which pawns are handled and recorded. To this end, the initial design of the web pages

was made to be utilitarian yet relaxing.

When performing the tests, areas of major concern were as follows:

Layout

Minimal User Effort

Aesthetics

Consistency

Content Awareness

User Experience

The results of the usability test were surprisingly minimal. While consistency and layout

were a concern, the first test indicated a lack of clarity in the Pawn Item page of the

website. It wasn’t apparent that this was the place to input pawn details, rather it seemed

that it would only display the information. As such, minor cosmetic details were added in

to this page, as well as the rest of the website. Links were colored in blue and underlined,

while places to add text had underscores added. In addition, given the suggestion, an

additional option, to add a second item to pawn was added to the Pawn an Item screen in

the event of a customer pawning multiple items.

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The second usability test was likewise minor. This test brought forth an issue regarding

grammar. Originally the Pawn an Item Page was titled the Make a Pawn page based on

the sequence diagram for this project. As such, the page was renamed the more

grammatically appropriate Pawn Item page. The second test also indicated distaste with

the coloring of the web pages. The text was initially black and grey with a beige

backdrop. While meant to be relaxing, the tester found this design to be dull. As such,

after some experimentation, the backdrop was changed to a soft blue, and the text a

gentle purple, to promote the same relaxing utilitarian motif originally intended, thus

enhancing user experience.

Other than these comments, and their subsequent adjustments, no other issues were

indicated. It would seem that the web pages, at the moment, are consistent, easy to use,

clearly present their content, have a good layout, and present a pleasing experience for

the user. Further testing may be required for further enhancement, or better understanding

of the potential problems with the page.

EXECUTIVE SUMMERY

The preceding information is centered on the use case of a clerk or manager

using the system to pawn an item. As in After analyzing the benefits and issues of

purchasing and implementing a system to manage transactions and inventory, a use case

involving the pawning of an item was implemented, indicating who would do what and

the order of events that would transpire. The case diagram indicating the behavior of the

system was prepared, demonstrating the movement of objects in the system and what

traits and actions they would be capable of, including the actions included when the loan

period concludes. The sequence diagram was subsequently prepared, followed by a state

machine diagram. Finally, the user interface prototype was prepared in PowerPoint, and

tested on a minimum of two people, with the testers focusing on issues of consistency,

user awareness, minimal user effort, user experience, aesthetics, and layout. The feedback

was collected and the design changes implemented as indicated in the testing report

above.

At this point, the following design suggestions and changes are advised. First of

all, there is the likelihood of a customer wishing to make multiple transactions – sales,

pawns, and purchases – in the same visit. The system would have to be adjusted to handle

multiple elements such as this. While the current system proposal would be capable of

handling these transactions, it would be relatively slow, and possibly confusing to the

user. A system upgrade or feature allowing the user to select multiple actions for a single

transaction, perhaps using a checkbox list, allowing the computer to keep track of what

needs to be done, would be advisable to ease the burden of the user. In addition, a system

for credit card and bank account transactions would be advisable. As the store may not

consistently have the amount of money needed for a transaction, it may be necessary to

transfer the money into the bank account of the customer. Thus, the system would have to

be able to contact the customer’s bank to make the transfer. It should be cautioned that

this particular use case may turn out to be too complicated to enact in real life, so some

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time should be spent on planning to determine feasibility. On a potentially more realistic

note, a function for store credit would be advisable for customers unable or willing to

make a cash or credit transaction. This is in a similar vein to other businesses with

buy/sell functions such as GameStop of FYE: For Your Entertainment. The information

on how much store credit a customer has earned can simply be linked to their customer

information. Credit can be included for sales or loyalty rewards.

The following actions remain before project completion and implementation.

Several use-cases remain, most notably the ones for sales and purchases. Their

subsequent diagrams will have to be linked back to those indicated in this report, which

will possibly require revision based on future development. Further additions to the

system, such as those previously suggested, will have to be considered and, once again,

use-cases, diagrams, and revisions made. The records system will have to have a degree

of normalization considered in order to have the effect of organization desired by the

pawnshop management that began this project. On this note, experimentation with the

records in Microsoft Access would be advised in order to find the normalization most

appropriate and effective for the data presented. Finally, there is the matter of the system

development. For a small business such as this, it would be advisable that a system be

pre-purchased. Further adjustments will have to be made to the planned system, the make

and capabilities of the computers in the store – in a worst case scenario, the computers

would have to be upgraded. The final step of the program would be the training the staff

in using the program.

To include a final thought, specific care and focus will have to be given to the

budget. As stated in the economic feasibility section of the use case, this is a small

business and there is a risk of too much money being invested in this project. The issues

of potential scope creep should be kept in mind throughout development. Only so much

of the profits can be put towards this new system before one can see a serious drain on

the store. If nothing else, one may have to do simply with Microsoft Access. It may lack

some of the desired features discussed above, but if it were to be installed on the store’s

server, it would have the desired effect initially sought.