The case study: Fearless Spiders Indoor Rock Climbing System (FSIRCS)

Fearless Spiders (FS) is an indoor rock climbing facility that operates at an outer suburb of the city. It has four walls that enable customers to experience up to 144 climbs, with 72 Top Ropes, as well as a 19-metre bouldering cave. This is a new venture undertaken by a renowned rock climber, Ross Hill, who is keen to see FS grow and expand.

Fearless Spiders would like to implement an information system. The Fearless Spiders Indoor Rock Climbing System (FSIRCS) must manage the booking system for the walls and cave, and maintain all information about clients, members and sessions. It must also manage the information about wall maintenance, and keep track of staff/member safety induction.

Customers book online or at the FS centre. As the climbing sessions are heavily subscribed, customers are sent reminder texts about their booking the week before and the day before. Cancellation without incurring a charge is only possible up to 4 weeks before the session (after that the full price is payable). The FSIRCS is not required to handle any payment information as this is done by a third party system.

The bouldering cave can only be booked to parties of four, and can be undertaken without a staff member. However, for each wall session, a single booking can cater for a group of up to 10 people (ie 1-10), and must be accompanied by a trained staff member if anyone in the group is under 13 years of age. The staff member who acts as belayer (ie holds the rope) must have had a full safety induction within the last 3 months. The FSIRCS must ensure that the staff satisfy belayer requirements by recording date training occurs, and sending the manager an email one week before any staff member's induction lapses. This relevant staff member(s) will also require alerts at the appropriate times.

FS is keen to recruit climbers as members. Memberships are a great way to save money, as they allow members to climb as often as they like without paying for entry each time. If on average a member comes once a week, they will save with 6 or 12 months membership. If once a week or less is the preferred visit rate, a ten visit pass which has no expiry, will save 10% (pay for 9 get 10). The FSIRCS records whether membership has been taken, and what type. The system also analysis past bookings to recommend a membership type. Current membership types are shown in Figure 1. Members over 18 years old are also able to take on the role of belayer, but only after undertaking the safety induction training and conforming to belayer requirements in the same way as staff (ie regarding needing to be trained every 3 months. However, no reminders are sent to members needing to update their safety induction).

Figure 1 FS Membership types

1 Month (Entry Only)
1 Month (With Harness Hire)
1 Month (Entry With The Lot)
3 Months (Entry Only)
6 Months (Entry Only)
12 Months (Entry Only)
10 Visit Pass (Entry Only)
10 Visit Pass (With Harness Hire)
10 Visit Pass (With The Lot)

All customers must also meet various conditions: not be pregnant, not have suffered broken bones within the last 12 months. This is confirmed when they book, along with name, address, and contact phone number, and the date and time of the session required. Group bookings always need a primary contact. Details of all customers in a group are required, and all customers must sign a statutory declaration that the information they provide is true. Insurance and OHS requirements mandate permanent storage of these declarations.

Each climbing session is booked out at 1:30 hours, with 15 minutes preparation time, and 5 minutes clean-up time.

Walls 1 and 2 provide the basic climbing experience, while 'super' walls 3 and 4 also have back- projected imagery so the customers can experience climbing through different locations (such as the Himalayas or the Grand Canyon). These super sessions are more expensive than the basic ones, and there is also an option (for an additional cost) for having a recording made of the session that maintains the illusion.

Safety and comfort of customers is obviously paramount for FS. Between each session an inspection is made of the walls and cave (including physical damage, cleanliness and hygiene, any dropped belongings from the previous session, etc). There is also a technical check of the equipment (ropes and harnesses) before and after each session. These checks are noted by the system.

There is a full check of the walls by a service engineer at the beginning and end of every working day, and, in addition, each wall must be fully serviced every three months or every 50 hours of use, whichever is sooner. This takes 2 days, so to keep the centre open Ross tries to stagger the downtime so there are always at least two walls in service (one basic and one 'super' wall). While a super wall is being serviced the display system on the back-projection chambers is also inspected.

The hours of wall use are logged by the FSIRCS, by adding the number of session minutes to the usage log at the end of each session. When a wall reaches 50 hours of use (150 x 1:10 hour sessions) it is removed from the booking system until the service has been completed (which may not take place immediately). If there are less than 10 hours of bookings over the next two days, these are allowed to take place, but no wall can operate for more than 59 hours without a service. The system records when the wall will be 'bookable' again. Then the number of usage hours is reset for the wall. The information system also records the dates, times, and details about each service.

Several reports will be required of the new system. The FFIPS must be able to provide an ad- hoc status report on each wall, showing whether it is in use or being serviced, its current hours of use and date of next scheduled service. Ross would like a report showing the customer usage of the walls so that he can see what are the most popular times of year and types of bookings and plan for expansion.

TO DO:

Note the following points:

  • You may need to make assumptions where information is incomplete: state any assumptions clearly. You can also ask questions on the forum.
  • Your diagrams should be drawn using Visio (or suitable alternative that creates UML diagrams). Use the appropriate template for each diagram type. Make sure your diagrams are clear and readable.
  • Your diagrams must follow correct UML notation and naming conventions, and each diagram should include a title and legend.
  • Your models, diagrams and discussions should be consistent with one another throughout your analysis and design.

Q1. List the main stakeholders for Fearless Spiders Indoor Rock Climbing System (FSIRCS). For each stakeholder, write a brief description of their interest in the system and what aspects of it are of particular relevance to them. You do not need to categorise the stakeholders. Don't include the systems development team.

Q2. (a) List and briefly describe the main functional requirements for the FSIRCS. There should be around 5-10.

(b) List and briefly describe the main nonfunctional requirements for the FSIRCS.

Q3. (a) Use the User Goal technique to develop a list of use cases for the FSIRCS. Present your list in a table that includes the participating actors, use case name and a brief use case description.

(b) Use the Event Decomposition technique to identify any additional use cases for the FSIRCS. These will probably be temporal and state event types. Present your list in a table that includes the event, type of event, trigger, use case name, and brief use case description.

(Note that some use cases are already identified in Q6, 7, 10 below. Include these in your lists.)

Q4. Create a domain model class diagram for the system, including all classes, attributes, associations, and multiplicity. Show association classes and generalisation hierarchies where appropriate.

Q5. Create a CRUD matrix to check the consistency between your domain model class diagram and your complete list of use cases. Set this out in the form of a table with classes as the columns and use cases as the rows. If you find discrepancies between 6 the models while you are doing this, you should go back and correct your earlier models as required.

Q6. Create a fully-developed use case description for the use case Book a Climbing Session.

Follow the template provided at the end of this handout.

Q7. Draw an activity diagram to represent the flow of activities for the use case Inspect Wall shown at the end of this handout.

Q8. Draw a system sequence diagram for the use case Inspect Wall shown at the end of this handout that corresponds to your activity diagram in Q7.

Q9. Draw a state machine diagram to show the possible states and transitions for a Wall object. Label each state with the state name. Label each transition with the appropriate transition name, guard condition (if appropriate) and action expression (if appropriate).

Q10. Based on the activity diagram for the use case Create Usage Report shown at the end of this handout:

(a) Develop a first-cut* sequence diagram for the use case
(b) Develop a design class diagram for the relevant part of your domain class diagram

*i.e. you do not need to include boundary (view) or data access classes in your diagrams.

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