I post

It was just last year when we first made a move on our Systems Analysis and Design 1 (SAD 1) project. As it was expected, we had a hard time looking for a particular company that would openly accept us to conduct a study. The plan was to go where we had our Management Information System study, the Legacy Group at Bajada St. We decided for it since it’s just a walking distance from the university and assuming that we still had a connection to its executive secretary. However, by the time that we set our feet on the establishment, we were declined of the second opportunity that we asked for the reason that their company was too busy to accommodate what we needed. So we planned for a back-up and to make the long story short, we landed on Barangay Buhangin Station. We interviewed the barangay secretary and fortunately, we were accepted. We proposed an integrated system for the barangay’s inventory, residence and employment record keeping, and blotters based on the information that we had acquired and observed. Our instructor then was Ma’am Tammy and she asked us if we were really determined to pursue the proposal up to its implementation. It was a quite long argument between her and us. But at the end, she accepted the proposal and we were very relieved because at last we would be able to proceed to the next milestone and we did not have to find for another company which was very tiring.
Days had passed, we had our team building and we were ready for the first milestone with regard to the project proposal. One Wednesday afternoon at the fifth floor of engineering building- USeP, we were surprised of Ma’am Tammy’s revelation. She was not going to be our SAD 1 instructor anymore. She had to take part on our school’s newly proposed information system. What????! Certainly, another instructor will take over her subject and that meant something for us, the students. We liked her and just missed a chance of knowing her deeply. Since she studied in South Korea, we lost the opportunity to be able to learn from her experiences. Life went on and with the blink of an eye, we had our new instructor. Charaaaaaaan!!
Sir Randy became our instructor. For the reason that we had been his students for half of our college life, we already look forward for some things to happen. We knew for certain that our school life would never be easy with him. Aja! It looked as if we were fortune tellers. Presto! We were somehow right. On his first glimpse of our project proposals, he doubted if those were worthy of our three years’ learning at the university. For him, those were simple and taken for decades. According to him, it was time for us to get away from what was already obsolete and we had to level up on what was appropriate for college levels. At that moment, I just felt he wanted to let us understand that we had to change our proposals into something that would fit or exceed his expectation. He was just being nice not to directly point out that what we had come up was a trash. Ha-ha.
At the thought of revising our proposals all over again, we almost grasped for air since it had to be a total job overhaul. It would mean that our preliminary efforts would be useless. Thus, we tried our luck to convince Sir Randy to reconsider. We delivered our explanation as to how we had to stick with what we started – the Barangay Integrated System. We told him that we were not confident enough to go for a more technically complicated project since we were still students and that pool of requirements yet had to come our way. We really argued with him but to our dismay, he would never be contented of the said system. He even gave us words of encouragement: “You can do it.” Then, what else could we do? “Gamboa gets what he wants.” Once his mind is fixed, it’s unbreakable and irrevocable and could not be influenced by anyone.
We actually withdrew our first scheme and altered our objectives. Instead, we proposed a web-based system for the University of Southeastern Philippines (USeP). At the initial attempt of presenting it, it was denied. During the second, thank Bro for we had been accepted. Obviously, it was an indication to start the process of project development. For the first semester, we had to include the analysis, planning and design phase. Our decision was firmed – to develop an automated system for the online publicity of tutorial services provided by the students of USeP. In this regard, let me share some things that we had been all the way through:

Planning Phase
Included in this phase were the documentation for the project request, feasibility study, working and staffing plan and the risk analysis. Considering UseP as the scope, we had to initially see and analyze the problem. We had to observe and interact with the people who will eventually be the direct beneficiaries of our project. We labeled such two primary entities, the “service seeker” and “service provider”. The former were those students who wanted to learn/improve on a specific subject such as Math and English while the latter were the ones who were offering subject tutorials. We also had initiated the project’s feasibility in terms of economic, technical, and operational aspects. Lastly, we formulated our risk analysis. We had it all prepared for consultation with our instructor. Happily, he approved of it and marked it as “V.G.”, an acronym for “very good”. Personally, it felt something because it was the very first time we received that kind of remark from him. It made us crave and aim for more. From then on, we were very inspired and eager to work on the second phase which was the analysis.

Analysis Phase
Unlike the previous one, this analysis phase was very demanding of time, effort and ideas. We planned to formulate the analysis and strategy plan, information gathering, as-is system (current system) and the to-be system (proposed system). We thought that this would be simple and we just had to write on what we had in mind. However when we attempted for our second consultation, we were asked for the supporting documents that would reveal how we arrived to that output. Unfortunately, we failed to show our evidences. Again, we had to conduct a thorough information gathering. We distributed questionnaires but again, it had to be validated so we had to find an expert to have it validated. After validation, it had to be approved by our instructor. To cut the story short, it was very tiring and it came to a point that we almost stopped doing what we needed to do. However, rough times turned smooth. Luckily, we made it and we happily received a VG.