A System development methodology guidance tool for supervision of IT projects

Abstract

Top universities in the world have shown that successful research activities can be the largest source of value and revenue for a University. However, many universities in Kenya still over-rely on tuition fees such that a low intake of students has a substantial negative impact on the state of the University. There is an urgent need for such teaching-centred Universities to rely more on valuable research activities. For this to happen, the success rate of research activities must be increased. One of the main factors that leads to low success rates in research is poor application of a formal methodology. This research investigates on how a web-based application can be used as a guidance tool in Universities to guide students on how to apply a system development methodology for the success rate of IT-based research that involves software development. The web-based application can as well be used by supervisors to track the progress of the IT-based research that they are supervising. Questionnaires were used to collect data from the researchers and the supervisors. The scrum framework, which is a subset of agile methodology, was applied to guide the development of the application. This methodology supports the collection and analysis of constant feedback from the end users and controlled improvements; and this leads to higher user satisfaction. HTML5 and CSS was used to develop the front end and PHP was used for server-side scripting for the backend. A MySQL DBMS was used to store the project details, student and supervisor details and project progress data. The expected outcome is a web-based project management application for students and Faculty supervisors. This application is expected to promote the success rate of IT-based research in universities through the correct application of system development methodologies.