Organizational Overview

• Messiah College Mens' Basketball is a member of NCAA Division III and the Middle Atlantic Corporation. It organizes two yearly individual summer basketball camp sessions which provide the environment, format, and opportunity for boys' basketball players, ages 8-18, to improve their skills and continue their development through a week of competition and instruction.

Organizational Point of Contact

• Mr. Rick Van Pelt, assistant mens' basketball coach and logistical coordinator for the Messiah College Basketball Camp.
  • Phone: (717) 766-2511 ext#2450
  • Email: RvanPelt@messiah.edu

Planned Meetings

• Meetings will occur with the organization's point of contact prior to each of the milestone deadlines and otherwise, as necessary, via phone or scheduled appointment. Mr. Van Pelt has noted his increased availability after 24 February, the team's final regular season game. Four meetings have already occurred, establishing initial ideas, guidelines, and requirements.
  • Meeting Notes

Problem Overview

• The existing camp management system consists of an MS Access database with a single table. Camp participants send their registration information via surface mail. Participant information is manually entered from the registration form to the database. Address information is extracted in order to print mailing labels for registration confirmation. All team and league generation, participant room assignments, scheduling, and other tasks are performed manually. The organization desires a database system that will accept online registrations, minimize problems associated with differences in the time of registration and receipt of payment, reduce the amount of time required for data entry, and automate as many camp setup tasks as possible.

Scope, Boundaries, and Constraints

• After initial team discussions of the project, we realize that time constraints may greatly come into play. The true scope of this project, in all its requirements, is likely closer to two semesters. Fortunately, the problem can easily be broken down into modules of decreasing priority. This will allow us to accomplish the project one module at a time, with working releases following completion of each module. The organization has expressed interest in a system, at any level, that would reduce time and manual work. There is also a knowledge boundary involved, as each of us has only limited experience with database technologies. We hope to combine knowledge and resources in a way that will reduce the effect of this limitation, however. A third limitation may exist in interaction with resources from Messiah College. In this area, we hope that problems associated with responses to our inquires and the eventual incorporation of our application into the existing system will be minimal.

Improvements upon Deployment of Application

• Upon successful completion of the camp management system, the organization will gain many hours that were previously tied up in data entry and manual tasks such as team and room assignments. The application will allow for automatic transfer of information from the online registration form to a database and improved forms for manual entry of surface-mailed information. Automatic registration confirmation emails will provide participants with a mail-in stub that will allow for easier matching of registrations and payments on the administrative end. Searching, filtering, and grouping functionality and reports will be available for better review of participant information. Assignment of participants to teams, leagues, and rooms based on their information will also save time and effort. Other administrative features such as health information management, an email center, an award archive, camp staff scheduling, league standings, and camp banking will each improve operations and preparation for camp.

Technological Constraints

• No constraints in databases or languages are involved in this project. The only limitation is that platforms on both administrative and user ends be web-capable.

Key Risks

• Primary risk items exist in a potentially unrealistic schedule and in personnel shortfalls. Incremental development and prioritization will be utilized to manage scheduling risks while job matching, knowledge and resource sharing, and message boards will be used to handle potential personnel shortfalls.

Expected Budget

• Because the organization has decided to accept payment by personal check only, there are no fees associated with debit or credit card transactions. We intend to utilize free, open-source technologies on the development end so there is effectively no budget for this project.

Project Justification

• This project is a great candidate for a database application team project for several reasons. The organization is more than willing to provide the team with any information and resources required and the potential benefits of our application on organizational efficiency is tremendous. Our point of contact, Mr. Van Pelt, has enough knowledge about the existing system and desired improvements and will be available for guidance and review throughout the development process. Key end users are also available for consultation. The project is complex and has great potential for applying database requirements, analysis, and design methods discussed in CSC332. The size of the project is manageable and can be handled in a series of working releases that could serve as an end product if necessary. As developers, the team looks forward to the great real-world database experience. In all, both the team and the organization are excited about the potential benefits of this project and we believe we have a superb candidate for this assignment.