Inception Report

Table of Contents

I. Table of Contents.......................................................................................................................................2
II. Introduction...............................................................................................................................................3
III. Project Management.................................................................................................................................3
IV. Brief Description of the Project................................................................................................................3
V. Expected Output........................................................................................................................................4
VI. Methodology..............................................................................................................................................5
A. Input Phase........................................................................................................................................5
B. Process Phase.....................................................................................................................................5
1. Requirement Planning...............................................................................................................6
2. User Design.................................................................................................................................6
3. Construction...............................................................................................................................6
4. Cutover.......................................................................................................................................6
C. Output Phase.....................................................................................................................................6
VII. Monitoring and Evaluation.......................................................................................................................7
VIII. Sustainability and Upgrade......................................................................................................................8
IX. Work Plan..................................................................................................................................................8
X. Project Implementation Requirements....................................................................................................9
XI. Project Team Composition........................................................................................................................9

2|Page
Introduction
This inception report focus on the project entitled “Mobile Attendance and Student Class
Monitoring System” which contains detailed descriptions, conceptual framework, and
procedures for the design of the project, work plan which indicates the phases of in carrying out
the project, project monitoring and evaluation procedures.

Project Management
Overall project management will be carried out between the Instructor and M.Sc. Computer
Engineering Students of School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Jimma Institute of
Technology. The students are responsible for project management and implementation and the
instructor is responsible for teaching, providing sample documents and advising before the end
of this semester.

Brief Description of the Project

Class attendance in Jimma Institute of Technology (JIT) is an important part of the academic
process and should be considered both a privilege and a responsibility. The instructor of a course
has the right to dismiss any disruptive student during any class session. Absences should be taken
only for important and necessary reasons. Each student has a responsibility to meet the institute
standards in pursuing academic study. The institute calendar provides instructional dates for
teachers and students; students are expected to attend class regularly for the entire semester.
Arrangements for any absence should be handled between the student and the instructor. If it is
common and mandatory task it should be in the way that saves time and effort as well as free
from any unnecessary cheating. But it is impossible to conduct the attendance marking as the
above scenario with the current manual system.

The proposed project will be develop to eliminate the above problems mentioned. The database
of the system will fetches updated data from SRS (Student Registration System), which is
currently used by Jimma University Registrar Office. The SRS database contains full information
about JIT schools/departments, instructors, students, courses and programs. So in this project the
registration process will not include. Students login to the system and mark their attendance
present. The system also shows them the number of times they are absent or late. Instructors
login to the system; create session with limited time frame and finally review total number of

3|Page
absent, present, late or sick and approved the attendance. Since it is online, both students and
instructors are using mobile phone with android platform which has wireless connection to
communicate with the server. The web application managed by the administrator will generate
daily, weekly or monthly reports. The administrator also updates students and faculty mobile
hardware information like MAC address to increase security of the system. To accomplish the
overall tasks, this project will use latest version of Android Studio, SDK and CodeIgnitor MVC
framework application to develop the frontend and use MySQL and SQLite3 database for
backend.

However, the system is limited to username and passwords authentication. Furthermore, it can be
expanded to support biometric to increase security.

Expected Output
After doing some system there will be an expected outcome. After completing this project the
system will deliver Mobile Attendance and Student Class Monitoring System for JIT (MASCM-
JIT) which performs its functionality by integrating Android and Web Application. The output is
very easy to access and it is user friendly. Some of services delivered by MASCM-JIT are:

 No need of registering students, instructors and course data because the system can fetch
all this from Jimma University SRS (Student Registration System).
 Instructor can easily create session for attendance marking while he/she deliver the
course in class.
 Students can mark attendance easily by using their mobiles.
 Students can view attendance status including warning message using their mobiles.
 Instructor can approve students attendance marking including modification activities
Input Process Output
using their mobiles as well as desktop computer
 Preparing report is easily handled
JIT Schools/Departments,
RAD Methodology
Instructors, Students,
Requirement Planning
Courses and Program Mobile Attendance
Design
Information Construction &
Attendance Information Deliver Student Class
Software Requirement Monitoring System
Methodology
Specification (SRS) for JIT
The methodology on how to conceptualize the project was illustrated on the conceptual
framework below:

4|Page
 Figure 2: Methodology

Input Phase
The input phase will determine the inputs that are needed to conceptualize the project. We
fetches JIT data that contains Schools/Departments, Instructors, Students, Course and Program
Information from Registrar database, get attendance information from student and instructor and
finalize the Software Requirements Specification (SRS) of the system.

Process Phase
This process phase indicates the Rapid Application Development (RAD) methodology in such a
way that how this project team will going to do the project. RAD has four phases, namely:

1. Requirement Planning
In the requirement planning, project team are going to gather required input or information in the
form of oral interview from instructors as well as Jimma University ICT staffs. Furthermore,
document analysis and observation of related studies and literatures which helps the team to
finalizing the data that were gathered. Conducting brainstorming session among the team

5|Page
members will be of great help to exploring new ideas as well as finalizing the SRS of the system
which will serve as the input for user design and construction phase of the project.

2. User Design
On the user design, this project team will use Object Oriented Design (OOD) Approach to will
be designing the Use Case Diagram, Sequence Diagram, and Class Diagram of the system.

3. Construction
This phase of the project will be performing simultaneously with User Design. The diagrams
indicated in the User Design phase will be used in the construction phase to finally code,
integrate and test the system. Also on this phase, the project team will be determining the
Software tools (Android Studio, MySQL, SQLite3, Apache, PHP Framework (CodeIgniter),
Bootstrap, JDK, Android SDK) for procurement needed by the project.

4. Cutover
This phase consists of the delivery of the finished application which MASCM-JIT is to the users
and the validation and verification of the project requirements.

Output Phase
This is the final phase to deliver mobile attendance and student class monitoring system for JIT
(MASCM-JIT) which enables instructor take student attendance effectively and time saving
manner without any cheating.

6|Page
Monitoring and Evaluation
Based on the Project Work plan and Timetable, progress reporting will be implemented as
Progress Reports and Terminal Project Report

All Reports will contain:

 Evaluation of the progress achieved, in particular related to Work plan and Timetable,
Quality of outputs
 Problems encountered and measures implemented to solve them and
 Problems not solved, needing intervention at higher level; proposing measures to be
considered.

The progress report will be prepared based on Jimma University format.

Sustainability and Upgrade

After accomplishment of this project the only remaining task will be preparing user manual for
admin, instructor and student. Each year training for new student and instructor will offer. This
project will give a sustainable service because it is very user friendly and server based
application. And also if necessary it can be upgraded for advance service delivery. It may be
upgraded to biometric control mechanism such as face recognition and fingerprint scanning.

Work Plan
As stated in the project proposal, the projected duration and completion of the project will be
approximately 3 months. Detailed activity plan includes the usage of Rapid Application
Development methodology. The estimated time schedule for the individual task is shown below.
Requirement Analysis User Design Construction Cutover Final
Report

Conduct Initial Interview/ Hardware/Software tools for Coding/Testing End of Assessment/Final

Brain storming/Relevant Presentation
Documents 7|Page
4 weeks 7 weeks 1 weeks
Sofware Requirement Specifcation Simulation/ Sofware Development Demo Draf Submission
Figure 2: Detailed Work Plan

8|Page
Project Implementation Requirements
To process and come into final result (implementation) this project team will use the following
hardware equipment, software programming language and tools:

 Laptop
 Mobile Phones (Two)
 Software (Android Studio, CodeIgniter (PHP Framework), Bootstrap, Apache, MySQL
and SQLite3)

Project Team Composition

1. Abdissa Getachew
2. Fasika Tegegn
3. Getaneh Awelew
4. Henok Seyfu
5. Mikbas Zunedi
6. Misganaw Aguate
7. Tegenie Garedew
8. Yosef Elias

9|Page