2018

UML Case Study

School of Tus-Digital
GuangXi University of Science and
Technology
5/1/2018
 This case study is to be used throughout this Session, to answer questions in set
activities, which will be compiled into a report. Part A of this report, an “Initial
Investigation” is to be submitted at the end of Week 12. The final report (including
your Part A adjusted after marker feedback) is to be submitted in Week 18.
You should use all relevant parts of the case study to inform your answers for the
report.

Make sure you read the entire case study before you start any of the tasks. There is
information in the later sections that will help you with some of the things you need
to do in the earlier parts. Don’t discount information as not being relevant because
it falls later in the case study. During analysis and design information could be
important at any stages regardless of when it was gathered.

CASE STUDY PART 1

GOOD HEALTH CLINIC

INTRODUCTION
In 2010 cardiologists Tim Jones and Daniella Smith decided to combine their practices to
form a new clinic. They wanted to concentrate on preventative medicine by helping patients
maintain their health and fitness along with providing traditional medical care. A
nutritionist, Tom Wilson, also joined the practice. In 2013, Mary Wu, joined the group as a
physical therapist and the entire practice moved its offices to a location near a large
shopping centre closer to the middle of the city.

BACKGROUND
Currently the practice has 4 doctors, 3 registered nurses, 4 physical therapists and 6 office
staff workers. All 4 doctors are partners in the business. The other members are employees
under their various awards and are paid as employees. They are all permanent employees,
not casual.
It currently has a customer base of 3,500 patients. About a 3 rd of the patients have private
health insurance which covers them for wellness and health programs. The practice deals
with around 10 private health insurers.

Julie Wilson, who has been with New Century since it first started, is the office manager. She
supervises the office staff including Fred Brown who handles office payroll, basic accounts
and income distributions to partners. Susan Jackson is responsible for maintenance of
patient records. Most of the paperwork associated with insurer claims and accounts is
handled by Lisa Forsythe. Jenny Robinson has primary responsibility for the appointment
book including making reminder calls to patients and preparing daily appointment lists for
the doctors and therapists. Carla Sims has the primary responsibilities for ordering and
organising the clinic supplies and office supplies.

All 6 of the office staff have one or more primary responsibilities but they all help out
whenever it’s necessary. In addition to their regular duties, all 6 office staff help out with
preparing end of month accounts and reports.

ACTIVITY 1
1. Use the background information to create a short summary (one short paragraph)
about the Good Health Clinic.

2. Create an organisation chart for the Good Health Clinic.

3. Use the information above to describe the area of the organisation under study (i.e.
the business’ functions that will be handled by the new information system).

4. Add the background information, organisation chart, and business functions to your
Report document in Part A: Initial Investigation.

There are examples of each of the things listed above in the text. However, make
sure you do some other research. Use internet searches to find other examples and
to look for examples that could use to help you construct the things you need.
 CASE STUDY PART 2
ISSUES
Julie Wilson recently asked for permission to employ an additional office clerk because she
feels the current staff can no longer handle the increasing workload. The partners discussed
the request during a recent meeting. They were not surprised that the office staff were
feeling overwhelmed by the constantly increasing workload. Because the practice was
busier and more profitable than it had ever been, they all agreed that the practice could
afford to hire another office worker.

However, during the meeting, it was suggested that they could investigate the
computerisation of the office systems. A computerised system could keep track of patients,
appointments, charges, insurance claims processing, and accounts and reduce paperwork.
All the partners were enthusiastic about the project and voted to follow-up on the
suggestion.

Because no one on staff had any computer experience, Tim Jones and Daniella Smith
decided to hire a consultant (you) to study the current office systems and recommend a
course of action.

ACTIVITY 2
1. Either by yourself or with another class member, brainstorm all the functions that
the Good Health Clinic might require. Keep it at a very high level.

2. Prepare a draft System Vision Document for the new information system for the
Clinic. This system vision document will be revised when you find out more about
the requirements for the system. An example system vision document can be seen
in Figure 1.8 of your textbook (Figure 1.5 in the 6th ed).

3. Add your system vision document to your report document in Part A: Initial
Investigation.

You have been given a little information about what is required but there are a lot of
gaps. You are expected to fill these gaps to work out details and additional
information that is needed. This also gives you some latitude to explore health
clinics and their operations as they apply to your background and experience. Make
sure you explore other vision documents and know how they are worded and what
needs to be expressed in them so that an organisations knows where it is headed
and what it is trying to achieve.
 CASE STUDY PART 3

FACT FINDING AND SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

The doctors, nurses and therapists provide services and perform various medical
procedures. All procedures are coded according to the international Current Procedure
Terminology (CTP) which is published by various medical associations. The procedure codes
consist of 5 numeric digits and a 2 digit suffix (1234-12) and are used for all billing and
medical claims.

There are 7 reports required at the practice that are generated from the office. The 1 st
report is the daily appointment list for each provider. This list shows all scheduled
appointment times, patient names and services to be performed including the procedure
code and description. The 2nd daily report is the call list that shows the patients who are to
be reminded of their next day’s appointments. The call lust includes the patient name,
telephone number, appointment time and provider name. The 3rd report is the weekly
provider report that lists each of the providers and the weekly charges generated, plus a
month-to-date (MTD) and year-to-date (YTD) summary.

The 4th report is the statement – a pre-printed form that is produced monthly and handed to
patients as they leave the clinic. Statement header information includes the statement date,
patient name and address, procedure charges, procedure provider, payment due and any
outstanding payments owing. The bottom section of the statement includes details of
procedures and their individual charges. Each procedure is listed on a separate line with a
separate cost that are totalled for each statement. The statement also shows the totals of
any refunds received from a private insurer which is deducted from the amount outstanding.
Some patients are given the option to pay their accounts in instalments. The statements list
any instalments paid as well.

The associates also require 2 insurance reports: the weekly insurance company report and
the monthly claim status summary. Some insurers can take up to 60 days to remit funds to
the practice after a claim has been submitted by the practice.

In addition to these 6 reports, the office staff would also like to be able to print mailing
labels and appointment cards to send to patients when it’s time to remind them of their
next appointment. They would also like a system that will generate emails and/or texts to
patients as reminders or just for general information.

ALTERNATIVES AND STRATEGIES

At the end of the fact finding and analysis, it’s time to prepare a systems requirement
document and give a presentation to the associates. The proposed system’s advantages
were established during the fact finding. The benefits that are expected to result from the
system are smoother operation, better efficiency and more user-friendly procedures for staff
and patients.

It’s also time to examine the costs and benefits to determine the economic feasibility of
several alternatives. If the practice decides to go ahead with the development process, the
main options are to develop the system in-house or purchase a vertical package and
configure it to manage the practice’s specific needs.

The current workload requires at least 3 hours of overtime for each office staff member per
week. Some weeks the office staff spend up to 12 hours overtime catching up on various
tasks. As well, based on current projections, it will also be necessary to add another full-
time office staff member within 6 months. Neither the overtime nor the new position will
be needed if the new system is implemented. However, the current manual system also
causes an average of 3 errors per day and each error takes about 20 minutes to correct. The
new system should eliminate these errors.

It’s been estimated that the project can be completed in 12 weeks working full-time. The
consulting rate, which the practice has agreed to, is $240 per hour. If the new system is
designed from scratch you can expect to spend around $3000 for a commercial DBMS
system. After the system is implemented and the staff have been trained, they should be
able to handle routine system maintenance tasks without the assistance of a consultant.

As an alternative to in-house development, a vertical software package is available for about

$10,000. The vendor has terms requiring an initial payment of $3,000 following by a 2 nd
annual payment of $4,000 and a final annual payment of $3,000. If the practice decides to
purchase this package it will take around 4 weeks to install, configure and test. The vendor
provides free support during the 1st year but then the practice must sign a technical support
agreement at an annual cost of $2500. Although the package has most of the features that
the practice wants, the reports are all pre-configured and altering them would be difficult
and expensive.

Regardless of which option is required there would be approximately 10 hours of training

required which would be delivered by an external person at a cost of $250 per hour. The
practice also expects that there will be ongoing support needed for each option over the 1 st
3 months of installation. This would be to deal with any problems and general trouble
shooting that would be an additional cost. The general housekeeping functions of each
system, backup, maintenance, updates and so on could all be handled by one of the office
staff members but is estimated to require around 4 hours per week. It is expected that there
would be a useful life of around 5 years for each system. It is expected that installation of
hardware and software would be $10,000 for each system. This includes cabling and
incidental hardware including multi-function printers.

ACTIVITY 3
1. Create a table, listing all tasks separately, with their duration;

2. Identify all dependencies, and indicate what predecessor tasks are required;

3. Construct a Gantt chart in Microsoft Project or other project management software;

4. Identify the PERT/CPM chart in the software, and identify the critical path;

5. Determine the overall duration of the project;

6. Take clear screenshots of the Gantt chart and PERT/CPM chart and paste into your
Report document in Part A: Initial Investigation under Project Management.

7. Include the overall duration and critical path in your report.

You will have to think outside the square here and make sure that you cover the
tasks needed. As well, you need to make sure that the tasks are at an appropriate
level of detail to enable you to make an informed and professional decision about
how long the project will take. Obviously there will be tasks that you will have to list
at this early stage that you might not have to do or that depend on what direction
the project will take. For example, the tasks needed if you implement an off-the-
shelf package are different to the tasks needed if the system is developed in-house.
Perhaps you need more than one project plan OR can you put multiple paths in a
single plan?
 CASE STUDY PART 4
As an analyst working on the development of the new system, it is your role to ensure that
the project is feasible. Some of the reasons that projects fail are: incomplete requirements,
lack of executive support, lack of technical support, poor project planning and lack of
required resources. At this stage, you decide to do an initial project feasibility analysis, to see
whether Good Health Clinic should continue with its plan for the new information system.

ACTIVITY 4
1. What are the risks associated with this project? Create a list of up to 10 risks and
their likelihood of happening (see Study Guide topic 4, activity 4.6 for an example of
how this should be set out).
2. Define the anticipated benefits of the new system. This should include both tangible
and intangible benefits. Wherever possible, translate the intangible benefits into
anticipated tangible benefits.
3. Define the expected costs of the new system. Look at the examples given in
workshop activities for some examples of expense categories. It is ok to give
estimates at this point.
4. Use two or more cost-benefit analysis techniques to decide whether to proceed with
the project.
5. Identify any assumptions and interpretations that you are making with respect to
the information that you have been given, that you are estimating, and that you are
projecting (into the future).
6. Create a new section in Part A of your report: Risk and Cost Benefit Analysis. Insert
your work from above, and give a clear indication as to whether it is feasible to
continue with the project.
7. Does the proposed system present a strong business case? Why or why not? Include
a recommendation as to whether the system should proceed, as the final part of
your preliminary report. The Preliminary Investigation part of your Report can now
be submitted.

Most of the stuff you need here is in the text and you work on during tutorials. Look
carefully at how the ‘risks’ are worded and how the costs and benefits are laid out in
a ‘good’ feasibility plan. Always use ‘good’ examples as your template and don’t
forget to look for these. GOOGLE examples so get a good feel for ‘best practice’.
 CASE STUDY PART 5

You have a list of tasks to do, which include interviewing staff with various job roles. This is part of
the investigation, where fact-finding is conducted to find out more about the requirements for the
proposed system.

ACTIVITY 5
1. What fact-finding techniques, apart from interviews, would you recommend to find
out the requirements for the new system?
2. Identify at least two staff members with different primary job roles of interest to this
project.
3. Develop a list of questions for an interview with each staff member. Identify the time
anticipated for the interview. Review your topic on creating interview questions, and
make sure you include suitable question types.
4. Include the interview plans in the Appendices for your Report.
5. Include the recommendations for other fact-finding techniques, in your Report.

The questions and information you need to ask need to extend further than simply
asking about design options. You need to get information that helps you plan the
entire project from start to finish. For example, you will need to find out whether all
current patient information and records are to put onto the new system. This will
lead to other questions about numbers of records, format etc. Part of the project
then needs to include options for getting that information onto the system – will it
be straight data entry or can things be scanned? How long would it take someone
to enter the information if it’s straight data entry? So – questions and information
raise more questions and result in more information.
 CASE STUDY PART 6

During requirements modelling for the new system, you met with the office staff and the
partners. Things were moving very quickly, and positively. Assume you conducted a series of
interviews, reviewed processes, observed business operations, analysed the payment
processes, and studied a sample of the reports. The objective was to develop a list of system
requirements for the proposed system. You found the following information about the
system inputs and outputs.

OUTPUT DESIGN
The recommendation for a new computer system has been approved by the practice’s
associates. A key step in the development of the system design is specification of the
system’s outputs. The following outputs need to be designed.

Report Title Report Contents

Daily appointment list for each provider name, patient name, patient telephone
provider numbers, appointment time, procedure name
Weekly provider report provider number, provider name, patient number,
date procedure performed, procedure code,
procedure description, procedure fee, sub-totals by
provider, grand total
Patient statements patient number, patient name, patient address, date
procedure performed, procedure number,
procedure description, provider name, procedure
fee, sub-totals, instalments paid, amount
outstanding, insurer parts paid, grand total
owing/paid
Mailing labels patient name, patient address

INPUT DESIGN
Now that the outputs have been determined it is time to consider the inputs to the system
and the design of the interfaces to capture the information needed.
DATABASE DESIGN
After completing the input and output design you now have to give consideration to the
design of the database. The information shown on the inputs and outputs must be able to
be entered and stored in a database for retrieval.

SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
Assuming the input and output specifications and database design has been accepted by the
associates, you will now need to examine the hardware requirements for the system. The
office system will require a server and 4 workstations in the office and a further 8
workstations for the doctors and therapists. There will need to be a backup system and
processes to ensure the integrity of the systems data. A multi-function laser printer and a
colour laser printer are also required.

ACTIVITY 6
1. Write down a list of the main functions needed to be handled by the new system.
2. What are the roles that will be interacting with the system?
3. Using all the information that you know about the Clinic’s business operations so far,
create a use-case diagram for the new system.
4. Select four use-cases and write a brief use-case description for them.
5. Pick one of these use-cases and write a full use-case description for it. Use an activity
diagram in the full description.
6. Include the following in your report:
 the use-case diagram;
 the brief use-case descriptions;
 the full use-case description, including your activity diagram.

The functions you document here will need to show the specific things you have
decided on during your analysis. Make sure that you use the correct symbols on
each diagram and adhere to the standards required for each of them.
 CASE STUDY PART 7

You have been preparing the System Requirement report for the partners. From your investigation so
far, you are leaning towards a recommendation for either in-house development or outsourcing
options for the new system. You are not sure that a commercial software package would meet all the
Clinic’s needs.

Based on your research, you felt that it would be premature to select a development strategy at this
time. Instead, you recommended to the partners that an in-house team should develop a design
prototype, using a relational database as a model. You said that the prototype would have two main
objectives:

 it would represent a user-approved model of the new system, and

 it would identify all system entities and the relationships between them.

You explained that it would be better to design the basic system first, and then address other issues,
including Web enhancements and implementation options. You proposed a three-step plan:

1. data design
2. user interface design, and
3. application architecture.

You explained that systems analysts refer to this as the system design phase of a development
project. The partners agreed with your recommendation, and asked you to go forward with the plan.

ACTIVITY 7
1. Review the Good Health Clinic’s fact-finding summary and all other information you
have about the required system. Be willing to critically analyse this for duplications
and inconsistencies.
2. Draw an ERD with crows-foot cardinality notation. Assume that system entities
include patients, practitioners (doctors, therapist and nurses), procedures, costs,
appointments, dates, times etc….
3. Design tables – making sure each table only refers to one “thing”. As you create the
database design, identify primary and foreign keys by underlining primary keys, and
making foreign keys italic.
4. If you add primary keys which use codes – for example a code for the procedureID,
then identify the format of these codes.
5. Create suitable sample data to populate the fields for at least three records in each
table.
6. Include the following in your report:
 The ERD you have completed;
 The database design (schemas);
 Formats of codes used;
 Sample data for each table.

You are going to have to demonstrate some initiative to develop the tables, data
items, keys etc. The project narrative has provided you with some information but
left information out that you would be expected to define as an analyst. GOOGLE
examples of customer invoices, medical procedures and their associated
information, appointment schedules, doctor information, etc. All of this will help
you to design the tables and data items.
MAKE SURE that you follow the formatting standards listed above!
 CASE STUDY PART 8

You need to make sure that you have sufficient models to understand the new system. In
reviewing the models (use-cases diagrams, including activity diagrams) you have realised
that you have not included a system sequence diagram for any of the use cases.

After creating this, you are ready to review the options for a new system, and make a
recommendation to the partners.

ACTIVITY 8
1. Create a system sequence diagram for one of the use cases identified in Activity 6.
2. Add this system sequence diagram to your report in the appropriate area.
3. Search online for any potential commercial software packages that could be suitable.
Identify two packages, and compare their features and their suitability to be used as
the new system.
4. Present at least three options for the new system in your report. One of these must
be in-house development, and two of the others may be the commercial packages in
(3) above.
5. Review your feasibility analysis for the new system. Taking all options into
consideration, make a recommendation for the new system, in your “Conclusion and
Recommendations” section.
 FINAL STEPS

You have completed the content of your report, and now need to make sure that it is presented
professionally, as it will be shown to the partners and staff at the Good Health Clinic.

ACTIVITY 9
Ensure your report is professionally presented. This means it should include:

 a title page, with the name of the Report, and the analyst’s name (your name);
 an executive summary;
 a table of contents, with page numbers;
 page numbers on all pages except the title page;
 Headings, sub-headings, dot-points and numbering where necessary. Headings
should be numbered or the structure should otherwise be easily identified;
 Appendices where necessary;
 Formatting and whitespace (space where there is no text or pictures) used
appropriately - be willing to start each new section on a new page;
 Page orientation used appropriately. For example, if you have an ERD that will show
better in landscape orientation than portrait orientation , set a Section break
(Page Layout > Breaks) before this page, set the page to landscape and then set
another Section break to start the new page in portrait again.

Hand in your report via the Assignment Link on MySCU.