Nearly 90% of the software projects fail. This is something given and our project was not an exception.
With hiccups in the attendance module becoming more and more our effort is turning into another also ran. The problem is that as requirements increase the resources employed on the project also needs to increase. The problems we sorted out recently were:
With hiccups in the attendance module becoming more and more our effort is turning into another also ran. The problem is that as requirements increase the resources employed on the project also needs to increase. The problems we sorted out recently were:
(snapshots would do a world of good here and i will include them to make these problems a little easy to comprehend)
1) In attendance entry there is provision to enter attendance for today, previous days and alternate classes. The attendance entered for a period gets knocked out if someone enters attendance for some other subject at that period. We knew this problem existed as we had exposure to a software called E-Vidya from trizile technologies in the years before we conceived our project.
2) In attendance entry when we click on multi-select modal box if attendance was already entered for that period it should show unchecked for the absentees which it was not doing. Now we made it do that.
3) In alternate/previous classes if the list of students is multiple then every submit returns the control to the same form. The list of students is replaced with that days(present days) students list after one submit. So the process of entering date for alternate/previous classes has to be repeated all over again. The problem has been solved for previous classes. We feel it need not be solved for alternate classes as it does not pose such a big menace.
4) There are some issues with some faculties(advancing age/macular degeneration) unwilling to enter attendance themselves and have given their work/shared their credentials with other faculties.
5) One faculty has left our institution and his id is being used to enter attendance by a faculty who is now handling that subject. There should be a procedure for transferring the subject from one faculty to another in case the first one leaves.
6) There are some problems with selecting date in the attendance entry for previous and alternate classes. The problems were with z-index of the calendar popup which has been solved.
7) Timetable kept on changing in the first few days of the semester and there are problems now that we need to modify attendance of some students on those days when the timetable was different.
8) We need a provision to enter attendance of students during the internals. So that messages can be sent to parents about their absence in the exams. The problem was postponed by agreeing to enter attendance for that subject which had tests just like ordinary days. Absentees would be taken from those days and sms'es sent and later attendance on those days would be deleted.
9) Entering attendance for labs was kept pending. It caused problem because section code allotted to each section did not have sub-fields to store lab batch info.
8) We need a provision to enter attendance of students during the internals. So that messages can be sent to parents about their absence in the exams. The problem was postponed by agreeing to enter attendance for that subject which had tests just like ordinary days. Absentees would be taken from those days and sms'es sent and later attendance on those days would be deleted.
9) Entering attendance for labs was kept pending. It caused problem because section code allotted to each section did not have sub-fields to store lab batch info.
10) There were some problems for faculties of second semester who could not enter internal marks for certain subjects. Probably the subject code-faculty mapping was faulty. It was set right immediately.
11) Some faculties were allotted extra classes for lab instruction/tutorial/remedial classes which were to be given slots in the timetable and it is not clear yet how the attendance register would be updated for such classes.
12) The sms service provider changed the web interface between march10th and march 15th and the change was not intimated to us in advance. We could not send sms'es on those days. Even the API url was changed. Now there is separate login for api and web interface.
