Keeping Track of Your Geocaching Outings
When Wayne Johansen turned 16, his dad bought him a new Garmin handheld GPS system. His family had always enjoyed camping and hiking, and Wayne was usually the one who monitored their hikes with his dad’s GPS system. He always liked to carry the GPS to monitor the routes, distances, and altitudes of their hikes. More recently, though, he had found a new hobby using his GPS system: geocaching.
Geocaching is a high-tech version of the treasure hunts that most of us did when we were kids. Participants search for geocaches or caches that are small, hidden, waterproof containers that typically contain a logbook and perhaps a small item. When found, the participant sometimes gets instructions for the next move—to either enter information into a logbook or to look for the next cache.
As Wayne became more involved with his hobby, he discovered that there are many different kinds of activities for geocaching enthusiasts. The simplest ones are those that involve caches found by using GPS co- ordinates, although even some of these tasks can be difficult if the caches are well hidden. Some of the activities involve multipoint drops where there is a set of clues in multiple locations that must be followed to arrive at the final cache point. Some activities involve puzzles that must be solved to determine the coordi- nates of the final cache.
Before long, Wayne wanted to make his own caches and post them for people to find. He discovered that there were several Web sites with access to geocaching information, caches, and memberships. He joined one of the geocaching Web sites and used it to log his finds. But he decided he would like to create his own system for tracking all the information he had about his caches. Conveniently, Wayne’s older brother Nick, a college student majoring in information systems, was looking for a semester project for one of his programming classes. The two of them decided to develop a system to help Wayne keep track of all his geocaching activities.
In this case, you will go through the various core processes of an SDLC and perform some of the activities of a development project. The project is divided into tasks and sub-tasks, as was our Tradeshow System project. The daily assignments for this case should be considered as preliminary efforts and rough drafts. The objective of these assignments is to help you remember the overall approach to software development. Several assignments have been listed for each task to allow your instructor to select those that best meet the objectives of the course.
Task 0: Define the Vision
Either by yourself or with another class member, brainstorm all the functions this geocaching system might do. Keep it at a very high level. These activities closely relate to Core Process 1: Identify problem and obtain approval. Write a rough draft of the System Vision Document based on your brain- storming ideas. [Hint: Think of what Wayne wants the system to do and why this helps him.]