Written exam, DBD, January 2008

Open book exam: Any books or notes are allowed.

The assignment contains 4 questions. Total time available: 4 hours.
To ease photo copying: Use a soft pencil on blank or ruled paper. Not on
squared paper.
There is a time estimate for each question. 40 minutes have been set off for
reading the text and as spare. The time estimates are not weights. The final
marks reflect an overall assessment.

Planning of staff training at a hospital

Many companies need to manage training and courses for their

employees. Various systems are available to support this.
A few years ago, the Danish National Hospital bought such a
system. After using the system for two years, they had to recognize
that the system was so inconvenient that nobody wanted to use it.
Imagine that you work for the supplier of the system. Your job is to
design a new system for planning and recording of courses taken by
the individual employees, in particular at hospitals.

Users

There are several groups of users, for instance nurses and hospital
porters (carry patients around). Users move around a lot and rarely
sit down undisturbed at a computer. Further they don't have a
computer of their own, but have to share a few, for instance in the
guardroom. Here they meet in idle periods and chat - about courses
too. This is also the place to check email and search for information.
A ward (department) has a department manager, who often is a
nurse. The manager is responsible for recruitment and training of
the staff. A manager may be responsible for up to 150 employees.
In total a large hospital may have 10,000 employees.

Courses

All courses are run by the training department of the hospital,

which announces the courses in the monthly hospital news. There
are three kinds of courses:
Mandatory Courses, for instance Heart Failure and Fire. There are
3-4 mandatory courses. All staff must take them regularly, typically
every two years. The department manager must ensure that everybody takes the courses in due time. Each course is run 20 to 40
times a year. The course lasts from 1 to 3 days.
Specialist Courses, which are mandatory for some employees. As an
example some nurses must take a course in anesthetics. The
manager should ensure that the appropriate employees take them.

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There are around 50 courses of this kind. Each of them is offered
from 1 to 4 times a year. A course lasts from 3 days to 6 weeks. You
may assume that it always is an unbroken sequence of work days.
There are Optional Courses, for instance Communication and IT.
Employees may apply for them, but they are not mandatory. Here
too there are around 50 courses offered from 1 to 4 times a year,
but they last only 1 to 3 days.

The situation today

The plan was that employees enrolled online to the courses and
later recorded that they actually had completed them.
However, this was abandoned because the system provided a poor
overview and was hard to use. As a result the manager had to plan
who needed which course and enroll them. The manager maintains
a list (in his desk drawer) of all the employees. The list shows the
courses taken by the employees and when they were taken. It is
hard to get an overview, of course, particularly if there are more
than 50 employees. It is also hard to see who needs a course in the
near future.
When the manager has planned who is to go on the next course, he
sends a list to the training department. However, it often turns out
that the course is fully booked, and then he can start from scratch.
When an employee has taken a course, the manager has to record
it. He easily forgets. Or he erroneously records that the employee
has completed the course, when in fact he stayed at home because
of illness.
The figure shows what an ordinary employee sees today when
trying to enroll on a course. Keywords are terms selected from a list
of around hundred words. The field Discussion required means that
some prerequisites are needed to follow the course. Validity period
and Expiration date show when the employee has to renew his
certificate (proof of completing the course).

Vision

With the new system, the employees may still enroll online,
particularly on optional courses, but sometimes also on mandatory
and specialist courses, for instance if they prefer a specific week.
But it must be so easy and attractive that it is done. The enrollment
is always preliminary, because the department manager has to
accept it.
Around every two weeks, the manager plans whom to enroll on the
next mandatory and specialist courses. For this purpose, it must of
course be possible to see who needs the course in the near future
because of the two-year rule. It would also be nice to see the
courses in the near future to make it easier to distribute the
employees over the period. In order to check that an employee has
the necessary preconditions, it must be possible to see which
courses the employee has completed already.

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The manager must be able to book a number of seats for the
department and find out later who is to go. He must also be able to
record which employees to send on which courses in the near
future, without being explicit about which course announcement to
use. This is for instance useful in connection with the regular
appraisal interviews and when a new employee is hired.
The employees get information about their final enrollment by
email.
The training department records who has completed the courses.
So the department manager doesn't have to care about this
anymore. The training department still announces the courses in
the hospital news, but announces them online too in order that
employees see them and enroll this way. In this assignment, don't
care about support for the training department.

Other information

The system should be a support system rather than an attempt to

fully automate things. For instance we may leave it to the manager
to check that employees have the necessary prerequisites for
joining a specific course. We may support him, however, by making
it easy to see which courses to check.

Question 1. Data model (estimated time: 40 minutes)

Make an E/R data model of the system as it should be. You can
assume that the system can draw on an existing employee
database. Specify the attributes for each entity class. It is preferred
that you omit foreign keys and artificial primary keys, but if you
show them, you must as usual mark them with underscores.

Question 2. Task descriptions (estimated time: 40 minutes)

Describe the tasks for the department manager and the ordinary
employee as a task list (annotated and elaborated as needed).
Elaborate with subtasks and problems where it is relevant.

Question 3. Virtual windows (estimated time: 90 minutes)

Design virtual windows for the department manager and the

ordinary employee in graphical form. For each window state which
tasks it supports.

Question 4. Usability requirements (estimated time: 30 minutes)

Which measurable (verifiable) usability requirements relating to the

ordinary employees, would you use during development? Give a
short justification. (Don't care about requirements relating to the
manager.)