DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A STUDENT PROJECT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

1.1 Introduction

In many tertiary institutions in the country, students seek a project in a given field of specialty as part of the upper level of their degree programme. Usually, a project can be filled by at most one student, though in some cases a project is suitable for more than one student to work on simultaneously. To give students something of a choice, there should be as wide a range of available projects as possible, and in any case the total number of project places should not be less than the total number of students. Typically a lecturer will also offer a range of projects, but does not necessarily expect that all will be taken up.

As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.

1.2 Background to the Study

One of the recent advances in the world of information technology is the rapid development of communication which has turned the world into a global village, we can send mails electronically (e-mail), search for information (www), buy goods online (e-commerce), withdraw/ transfer money (e-banking), school online (e-learning); this has affected the society positively to a great extent, as a result, computerization of project management should not be exempted in this revolution.

Project Management (PM) is the discipline of planning, organizing, and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of a specific project goals and objectives. A project is a finite endeavor having a specific start and completion date, undertaken to create a unique product or service which brings about beneficial change or added value. This finite characteristic of a project stand in sharp contrast to processes, or operations, which are permanent or semi-permanent functional works to repetitively produce the same product or service. In practice, the management of these two systems is often found to be quite different, and as such requires the development of distinct technical skills and the adoption of separate management philosophy, which is the subject of this study.

The primary challenge of project management is to achieve all of the project goals and objectives while adhering to classic project constraints usually scope, quality, time and budget. The secondary and more ambitious challenge is to optimize the allocation and integration of inputs necessary to meet pre-defined objectives. A project is a carefully defined set of activities that use resources (money, people, materials, energy, space, provisions, communication, motivation, etc.) to achieve its goals and objectives.

Project management is quite often the province and responsibility of an individual project manager. This individual seldom participates directly in the activities that produce the end result, but rather strives to maintain the progress and productive mutual interaction of various parties in such a way that overall risk of failure is reduced. A project manager is often a client representative and has to determine and implement the exact needs of the client, based on knowledge of the firm they are representing. The ability to adapt to the various internal procedures of the contracting party, and to form close links with the nominated representatives, is essential in ensuring that the key issues of cost, time, quality, and above all, client satisfaction, can be realized.

Regardless of the approach employed, careful consideration needs to be given to clarify surrounding project objectives, goals, and importantly, the roles and responsibilities of all participants and stakeholders. In software development, this approach is often known as “waterfall development”, i.e., one series of tasks after another in linear sequence. In software development many organizations have adapted the Rational Unified Process (RUP) to fit this methodology, although RUP does not require or explicitly recommend this practice. Waterfall development can work for small tightly defined projects, but for larger projects of undefined or unknowable scope, it is less suited.

The Cone of Uncertainty explains some of this as the planning made on the initial phase of the project suffers from a high degree of uncertainty. This becomes specially true as software development is often the realization of a new or novel product, this method has been widely accepted as ineffective for software projects where requirements are largely unknowable up front and susceptible to change. While the names may differ from industry to industry, the actual stages typically follow common steps to problem solving “defining the problem, weighing options, choosing a path, implementation and evaluation.”

1.3 Statement of the Problem

Investigation reveals the challenges of the existing Student Project Management System which is stated as follows:

1. Possibility of repeating project topics without detection by a project supervisor
2. Records of project topics carried out by a student are stored in the departmental library for a long time which occupies valuable office space
3. Projects are prone to loss due to natural disasters such as fire outbreak.
4. Difficulty in searching for project topics already done
5. Projects cannot be accessed outside the University, that is, it has the problem of geographical barrier.
6. Backing up projects becomes a problem since more space will be employed.

Faced with the need to organize projects, the proposed system for management of student projects is unique and totally innovative in its integrated approach. Its functionality of making project storage easier makes it called for. The system to be developed makes use of rich internet technology to replace desktop application with web application running on a remote server. The system shares the advantage of both web application and desktop application, and removes the most disadvantages of both.

1.4 Aim and Objectives of the Study

The aim of this study is to develop a Student Project Management System for the University of Port Harcourt to effectively manage students’ research projects. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows:

1. To design a database for the system
2. To implement the system using MySQL and PHP
3. To test the student project management system using uniport as a case study.

1.5 Significance of the Study

Projects provide a flexible framework for engaging students in exploring curricular topics and developing important 21st century skills, such as communication, teamwork, and technology skills. In addition, students are motivated by the fun and creative format and the opportunity to make new friends around the world. For teachers, a school portal enables quick and easy management of student accounts and review of project work. Both staff and student will benefit from this feature in that one can easily search for a project by the project name, student name or year. The office in charge of keeping and handling student projects will now have better support for storage of graduates’ projects and easy retrieval on request.

The proposed system could serve as an educational environment for many internet users and researchers. It will encourage researchers to take up further research on a subject matter (like a project) and thereby add to the body of knowledge. This repository also covers authors of the projects and because it clearly attributes the student name (author) to its content.

1.6 Scope of Study

The study focuses on the Design and Implementation of a Student Project Management System using University of Port Harcourt as a case study. A single material (like a project) will contain only the project topic, student name, abstract and the year of project submission. A user will only be able to search the project catalog for a project either by the project topic, student name, keyword and year of submission.

1.7 Limitations of the Study

During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:

1. Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
2. Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
3. Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
4. Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet).

1.8 Definition of Terms

Learning Objects: In the context of this research, a learning-object-is-a-resource with a clear educational-application. It is in digital form − examples: a Microsoft Word Document or a PDF document.

Catalog: This research applies the word ‘catalog’ as a container that presents all the SICT projects logged/stored in an organized tabular format, showing relevant information about each project. It can be compared to a library catalog containing all the information about books − their titles, author, number of pages, published year, ISBN etc.

Repository: A repository (in this case; SICT repository) is an archive, storehouse or container that allows storage, cataloging, accessing all SICT undergraduate projects and thesis, and viewing each object’s content.