The document provides a feasibility study for a proposed Personal Information and Leave Management System for the Administrative division of the University of Colombo School of Computing. It outlines the purpose, scope, overview of the system including software/hardware requirements. It analyzes the technical, operational, cultural, legal and economic feasibility of the proposed system. It discusses the current manual process and identifies alternative solutions such as a standalone system, web-based system, or purchasing commercial software. It recommends a web-based system using open source technologies like PHP, MySQL, and Apache as the best alternative. A cost-benefit analysis and project timeline are also provided.

1. Personal Information &
Leave Management System
System Analysis and Design
2nd Group
Feasibility
Analysis

2. Table of Contents
1. Purpose of the document ………………………………………………………………………………………………3
2. Scope …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….3
3. Overview of the System………………………………………………………………………………………………….3
3.1 Software architecture overview…………………………………………………………………………………..4
3.2 Hardware overview…………………………………………………………………………………………………….4
3.3 Requirements Identified………………………………………………………………………………………………4
3.3.1 Functional requirements…………………………………………………………………………………..4
3.3.2 Non Functional Requirements…………………………………………………………………………..5
4. Current Functional Procedure………………………………………………………………………………………..5
4.1 Examination Procedure……………………………………………………………………………………………5
5 Feasibility Parameters of the proposed system………………………………………………………………5
5.1 Technical Feasibility…………………………………………………………………………………………………5
5.2 Operational feasibility……………………………………………………………………………………………..6
5.3 Cultural feasibility……………………………………………………………………………………………………7
5.4 Legal Feasibility……………………………………………………………………………………………………….7
5.5 Economic Feasibility………………………………………………………………………………………………..7
5.5.1 Cost-Benefit Analysis………………………………………………………………………………………..8
Benefits…………………………………………………………………………………………………………8
Costs……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..9
5.6 Schedule Feasibility……………………………………………………………………………………………….10
6 Alternative Solutions…………………………………………………………………………………………………….11
6.1 Standalone System………………………………………………………………………………………………..11
6.2 Web based System………………………………………………………………………………………………..11
6.3 Purchase Commercial package software……………………………………………………………….12
7 Alternative Technologies………………………………………………………………………………………………12
7.1 Solution (Web based System)…………………………………………………………………………………….13
7.2 Solution Matrix………………………………………………………………………………………………………….14
8 References……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………15
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3. 1. Purpose of the document
The purpose of the document is to provide a detail description of the feasibility study which is
done for the Administrative division in University of Colombo School of Computing.
2. Scope
This document provides the description on the problem that the project intends to address.
Objectives of the projects and the current functional procedures of the manual system are
mentioned in this document. Possible alternatives are discussed and the best alternative
method is addressed including hardware software and the personnel that will be used in the
design and implementation.
An economic discussion on the selected alternative and how it meets the established objectives
and the functional requirements are discussed further in detail. Discussion on technological
capabilities of developing the selected alternative and the operational impact of the system on
the current environment is addressed as well.
In this document further includes discussion, economic analysis of the life cycle cost and
benefits of the project. In addition it includes the cost and benefits of the current method of
operation during the life cycle.
Under the schedule feasibility the project schedule and the key milestones are defined.
3. Overview of the System
The system will be developed as a single functional unit to automate their major processes.
• Accumulate Personal Information of the staff
• Attendance of the staff
• Leave management process
The system deals with personal information and leave management system, the proposed
system will be implemented only to use inside the intranet of the Administrative branch of
University of Colombo School of Computing to ensure restricted user access.
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4. From the proposed system expect to accumulate the personal information of the staff of
University of Colombo School of computing which currently done by manually. Currently
attendance of the non academic and contract staff using finger print readers. The system
expects to get the output of them and process their leaves. Finally the system has to generate
repots such as leaves of contract employees monthly, leaves of academic staff monthly and
annually which are given to financial division of University of Colombo School of Computing.
The system is a platform independent at the server side and the current preferred operating
system is Linux.
3.1 Software architecture overview
• Apache will be used as the web server.
• My SQL will be used as the database server.
• PHP will be used as the back end processing script.
• PHP Report maker will be used as the report maker
• HTTP will be used as the text transfer protocol over TCP/IP network.
3.2 Hardware overview
• The system will be running on the server computer and the usage is distributed over the
network among computers in the administrative branch.
• Fingerprint readers will be linked to the system databases to mark the attendance of the
students.
• The main hardware to be used in the system
o Server computer (existing)
o Client computers (existing)
o Fingerprint readers (existing)
o Network hardware (existing)
3.3 Requirements Identified
3.3.1 Functional requirements
• The attendance of the permanent, contract and casual employees will be linked to the system
with the use of fingerprint readers and all data should be stored in the database for easy access.
• The system has the ability to search the existing personal details of an employee and the
functionality to add, delete or update them.
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5. • With the use of leave management system the users can calculate the number of leave and no
pay days of each employee for a given period. And also it can facilitate to display the remaining
number of leave of the employees.
• The remaining leave of contract employees will be added to the next month and if it is more
than 2 leave it will be calculated as a no pay leave. For the permanent employees, it will be
calculated as a no pay leave, if they get more than 45 leaves for a year.
• Web technologies may be used to apply for a leave via mails and notices should be
delivered to the appropriate personals if they take more than 3 days without submitting
their excuses.
• The system has to generate repots such as leaves of contract employees monthly,
leaves of academic staff monthly and annually which are given to financial division.
3.3.2 Non Functional Requirements
• Total security to the information in the data base should be provided.
• Performance speed should be maximized.
4. Current Functional Procedure
The administrative division of University of Colombo School of Computing currently gets the
attendance of the non academic and contract staff using finger print readers and stores them
manually. At the end of month they submit a report with the number of working days of casual
employees and the number of no pay days of permanent and contract employees annually to
the financial division. In addition to that within the personal information they add, remove or
update the exiting data manually.
5. Feasibility Parameters of the proposed system
5.1 Technical Feasibility
• The proposed system will be developed in web bases completely and it is required to use
web technologies appropriately. Technology to build the overall system is available
• Currently available web technologies-PHP, JSP and Servlets, ASP.net, Perl / cgi
• Servers: Microsoft IIS, Apache, Google web server, Apache Tomcat
• DBMS: Oracle, Mysql, Microsoft SQL server, Microsoft Access
• The system is developed using PHP as the main development language due to clients hard
ware specification, and Apache has been chosen to be the web server due to high
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6. reliability and flexibility in between platforms. MySql is chosen to be the DBMS of the
system, due to flexibility.
• Availability of the chosen technologies: All the chosen technologies are widely used in the
world and are available for free use. These technologies are all open source software
(MySql, Apache, and PHP) and does not require any registering or purchasing of any kind.
• Maturity of the technology Apache over 50% of the servers in the world are Apache
therefore the technology is considered to be mature enough to be used.
• PHP: relatively new but gaining popularity fast
• Source Availability: These open source software sources are available widely and
knowledge is freely available through the internet.
• Technical expertise: The software team currently does not possess the required expertise
to complete the system, but it is possible to expertise the technologies in the given period
of time.
5.2 Operational feasibility
It is the measure of how well a proposed system solves the problems and takes advantages of
the opportunities identified during the scope definition and problem analysis phases. And how
well it satisfies the system requirements identified in the requirement analysis phase.
• Potential users of the system are familiar with the website navigation and handling.
Hence training up to necessary level would be easy.
• Existing internal network - The implementation of the system in the intranet can be
easily managed, and the security issues needs to be addressed in network level or else
in the application level.
• PHP5 supports object oriented development approaches so that well defined design can
maintain the smooth run and the flexibility of the proposed system.
• Security issues - User access levels will be set and the system will only allow privileged
users. Authentication, Authorization and Audit procedures will be facilitated to the
system administrators.
• Data retrieval and the data presenting will be done by the system so the report
generation will be automated by the system.
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7. 5.3 Cultural feasibility
In cultural feasibility the project's alternatives are evaluated for their impact on the local and
general culture. For example, environmental factors need to be considered and these factors
are to be well known. Further an organization's own culture can clash with the results of the
project.
It is mainly deals with the way end users feel about the proposed system. Some of the cultural
feasibilities involve with our proposed system are:
• Within the system we should give the client access privileges according to the
organizational culture of the University of Colombo School of Computing. So the four
users should get the privileges to access the personal information and leave
management details with the use of their username and password.
• Users should feel good about the system which has a user friendly environment.
• The daily attendances of the employees which are gathered with the use of fingerprint
machine should be highly secured.
5.4 Legal Feasibility
Legal feasibilities involve in verifying the legal viability of the proposed system.
• Government Constraints – Since the proposed system is implemented in a government
institute, it may be subject to rules and regulations imposed and even funding constraints.
However, in this particular scenario it may not have a big impact.
• Copyright Issues – Since the proposed system will be using open source software there will
be minimal licensing and other related issues.
5.5 Economic Feasibility
Economic feasibility is the most frequently used method for evaluating the effectiveness of a
new system. More commonly known as cost/benefit analysis, the procedure is to determine
the benefits and savings that are expected from a candidate system and compare them with
costs. If benefits outweigh costs, then the decision is made to design and implement the
system.
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8. Benefits
• Better efficiency and effectiveness in the maintenance of personal information details and
calculations in the leave system thus reducing human errors.
• Saving on time and paper cost of manually entering data and generating reports thus
improving communications.
• Better employee motivation and flexibility due to improved efficiency in dealing with user
friendly interfaces etc.
• Reduction in labor cost as fewer employees would be needed in entering the data into the
system and processing the information.
• Improved employee services- efficiency in applying leaves, obtain their leave information
quickly and obtain other details relating to their no pay days, short leave and half days from
the website.
• Personal information and would be easily managed by the database thus saving the storage
space on file cabinets and maintenance.
• Data redundancy and security issues would be lessened due to improved backups and
security features in the system.
5.5.1 Feasibility Analysis - Cost-Benefit Analysis
We can divide the cost in to the few categories.
• Development and Purchasing Costs
o Hardware (Currently the got enough hardware facilities)
o Software
Operating System (Already installed and no need to change)
Main software need to build the system (Open source software - Free)
Other software (Total cost*25%)
• Installation and Data entry Costs
o Install the system
o Training the staff
o Enter previous data into system
• Operational Costs
o Maintenance of the system
o Upgrading the software
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9. • Personnel Costs
o Maintenance staff cost
o Operational staff cost
Projected development cost for the proposed system
Expenses
Reason Price
Other software cost Rs 10,000.00
System analysis’s cost Rs.400/hr x 250hrs Rs 100,000.00
Programmers Rs.400/hr x 200hrs Rs 80,000.00
Database administrator Rs.500/hr x 70hrs Rs 35,000.00
Designer Rs.250/hr x 100hrs Rs 25,000.00
Training for staff Rs 8,000.00
Total Rs 258,000.00
Projected annual operating cost
Expenses
Reason Price
Maintenance cost Rs 30,000.00
Data entry and employee costs Rs 20,000.00
Total Rs 50,000.00
Cost of Candidate Solutions
In build Web base System
In build Standalone System
Manual System
Purchase commercial software
package
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10. 10
ID Task Name Duration Start Finish
September October November December January February
Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan
1
Identify the Project 3 days Wed 02/09/09 Fri 04/09/09
Schedule Feasibility
2
Requirement Gatharing 5 days Mon 07/09/09 Fri 11/09/09
3
Prepare the Project Proposal 3 days Fri 11/09/09 Tue 15/09/09
4
Feasibility Study 17 days Tue 15/09/09 Wed 07/10/09
5
Software Requirements Specification 21 days Wed 07/10/09 Wed 04/11/09
6
Software Design 38 days Wed 04/11/09 Fri 25/12/09
7
Prototype Design 7 days Sat 26/12/09 Mon 04/01/10
8
Prototype Demonstration 1 day Wed 06/01/10 Wed 06/01/10
according to the client’s schedule. (Refer the printed report for further clarification of the chart)
mandatory deadlines that we are expected to achieve. Meetings with the client may differ
With regard to the timeline of the proposed system, the below gantt chart will show the

11. 6. Alternative Solutions
6.1 Standalone system
In this system all users have to have their own computer and there is no interconnection
among them. All these computers should have to install software separately. Multi users
cannot access the system simultaneously. So it is less in security. Implementing a standalone
system has the following benefits regarding the personal information and leave management
process.
• Data security and integrity- The system is in a single computer thus data transferring is not a
problem. Security problems during data transferring do not apply in this approach.
• High reliability- Data access does not depend on the network solutions. Therefore the data
base reliability depends only on the current system. Resulting in high availability in data.
• If more than one application is used, there is no single failure location.
• Costs are less due to low features required.
A stand alone system with approximately similar features could be developed using Java as
core technology and a standalone computer with at least 2 GB or RAM.VB .net and similar
technologies requires similar resources.
Using a standalone system is not feasible enough for our client’s requirements due to the
following reasons.
• From our proposed system we expect to apply leave online, so it is incompatible with
the standalone system.
• Personal information and leave management is dealt among four users, so some of the
information should be shared between them. Hence standalone system is not applicable
for user requirements.
6.2 Web based system
In our proposed system each user has different privileges and system can provide information
within high security. Many staff members can access the system and get information about
their leaves. The system able to generate reports regarding user needs. Users can edit and
update data in systematic way.
A web based Distributed system fulfilling the same requirements could be developed using the
same web technologies. These systems have the following benefits.
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12. • No single failure location- Data is stored in multiple locations so it would be more disaster
resistive.
• High performance in certain situations- If data is stored in a more accessible location the
system may perform well than a centralized system
• It is efficiency in applying leaves, obtain their leave information quickly and find other
details relating to their no pay days, short leave and half days from the website.
• More manageable-Web based systems need only be installed on the server placing
minimal requirements on the end user workstation. This makes maintaining and updating
the system much simpler as usually it can all be done on the server. Any client updates can
be deployed via the web server with relative ease.
• Highly deployable-Due to the manageability and cross platform support deploying web
applications to the end user is far easier. They are also ideal where bandwidth is limited
and the system and data is remote to the user.
• Secure live data-Typically in larger more complex systems data is stored and moved
around separate systems and data sources. In web based systems these systems and
processes can often be consolidated reducing the need to move data around. Web based
applications also provide an added layer of security by removing the need for the user to
have access to the data and back end servers.
• Reduced costs-Web based applications can dramatically lower costs due to reduced
support and maintenance, lower requirements on the end user system and simplified
architecture.
6.3 Purchase Commercial package software
According to user requirements can purchase commercial package software from the software
developers. From this solution users are unable to get the maintain privileges. The user can get
guidance and support for the user of package but it is a high cost solution as well.
7. Alternative Technologies
The technologies that were chosen to implement the system may be replaced by so many other
similar technologies existing.
• Apache HTTP Server: Apache is a freely available Web server that is distributed under an
"open source" license. The original version of Apache was written for UNIX, but there are
now versions that run under OS/2, Windows and other platforms. Even though Apache is
the world’s most used web server the following solutions too may be introduced.
o Microsoft IIS
o Google GWS
o Oversee
o Apache Tomcat
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13. • IIS have a considerable market share in the web server market. But it has less flexibility with
platforms. It is supposed to run on Microsoft windows and it supports less technology
except for Microsoft products.
• Google web server is used by 6% of the worlds servers and it is less flexible than Apache
• Oversee web server is not that much used around the world, so Apache is selected as a
better solution.
• Tomcat implements only the Java Servlet and the JavaServer Pages (JSP).
• PHP has been chosen to be our main programming language. PHP is open source and can
run on both UNIX and Windows servers. It is easy to integrate with web pages. Another plus
of PHP is that the language interfaces very well with MySQL, a popular type of online
database.
• Java Server Pages and Java Servlets is a possible alternative. But with clients hard ware
specifications, using JSP would give a considerable performance hit.
• ASP.net is another solution. This is a Microsoft based language and is only supported by IIS
Web server. It is important to purchase Microsoft IIS server with the ASP.net package. This
solution is expensive and is less used in the world.
• Ruby is the lack of complete documentation online. It is slow relative to other languages.
Rails have a lot of techniques to compensate for that slowness in most scenarios.
• MySQL: Oracle is supposed to be the best DBMS available, but it is expensive to be obtained
and gaining knowledge on Oracle is expensive.
• Microsoft Access was not designed to be used with applications that are web based since its
forms and reports are only functional in a Windows environment and are not compatible
with an internet browser like Internet Explorer.
• The best and feasible Database Management System is MySQL.
7.1 Solution (Web based System)
Web based System
When considering the above mentioned alternatives, the most suitable system is a web based
centralized system according to the client’s current requirements. The following benefits could
be obtained over other alternatives.
• Multiple concurrent accesses through different locations inside the Institute.
• Low implementation cost with the technologies proposed
• Low maintenance cost compared to distributed systems.
• Ability to use the existing network and hardware devices.
• User interfaces are more suitably oriented towards the current examination process.
• Higher security level compared with a distributed system.
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14. • Solution Matrix
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15. References:
• <http://en.wikipedia.org>
• System Analysis and Design methods (7th edition)
By Jeffrey L Whitten and Lonnie D Bentley
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