Development of an Improved Web-Based System for Human Resource Management Unit of Somali University

ABSTRACT Human Resource (HR) unit is a vital department in any institution of higher learning. The unit manages the staff welfare, recruits new staff and keep track of their records until retirement. The unit is also responsible for adequate dissemination of information through official memo and online communication to the entire stake holders of the institutions and beyond. The main objective of this study was to introduce a substantial improvement to the existing website that was been used by the HR unit of Somali University. The analysis of the old system shows that it requires improvement in the areas of security, usability, design patterns etc. In an attempt to achieve this, the stake holders within the unit were interviewed and some relevant information they gave was documented. Opportunity was also given to interact with the old system and some of its weaknesses were also documented for improvement. Specifically, the security and administration, information dissemination module, design styles module and navigations were some of the areas identified for improvement. The combination of these modules into one application assures the perfect platform for re-engineering and aligning Human Resource processes with a view to achieving sustainable Institutional goals. This study model some activities with Unified Modelling Language (UML), and the new improved system uses dot net framework for the overall implementation of the designs, while CSS was used for the menu design. Also, Sql server 2014 was used as the backend for the systems and the system undergoes testing as the development progresses in line with the waterfall model software development strategy. The usability of the system as tested by 50 users in conformance with System Usability Scale (SUS) approach shows that, the system has a usability of 75.15%. The proposed system is found to achieve significant improvements when compared to the old system based on a number of metrics.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION.......................................................................................................................I

APPROVAL ............................................................................................................................ II

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................................III

ABSTRACT............................................................................................................................IV

LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................................. V

LIST OF FIGURES ...............................................................................................................VI

TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................................................... VII

CHAPTER ONE .................................................ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.

INTRODUCTION...............................................ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.

1.0 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY..............ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.

1.0.1 THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE...............ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.

1.0.2 CONCEPTUAL PERSPECTIVE...............ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.

1.0.3 CONTEXTUAL PERSPECTIVE...............ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.

1.1 PROBLEM STATEMENT............................ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.

1.2 THE AIM OF THE STUDY...........................ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.

1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY...................ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.

1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS ............................ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.

1.5 SCOPE OF THE STUDY...............................ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.

1.5.1 GEOGRAPHICAL SCOPE........................ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.

1.5.2 CONTENT SCOPE ....................................ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.

1.5.3 TIME SCOPE .............................................ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.

1.6 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY...............ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.

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CHAPTER TWO ..................................................................................................................... 9

LITERATURE REVIEW ....................................................................................................... 9

2.0 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 9

2.1 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FLOWCHART................................ 9

2.2 RELATED LITERATURE................................................................................................ 10

2.2.1 DEVELOPMENT OF INFORMATION SYSTEM AT HUMAN RESOURCE UNIT

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2.2.2 INTEGRATING THE TECHNOLOGIES OF HR ........ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT

DEFINED.

2.2.3 COST AND BENEFIT OF HRIS................ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.

2.2.4 HUMAN RESOURCE INFORMATION SYSTEM ROLE IN HUMAN RESOURCE

MANAGEMENT..................................................ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.

2.3 REVIEW OF RELATED STUDIES ..............ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.

2.4 HUMAN RESOURCE INFORMATION SYSTEM USAGE .....ERROR! BOOKMARK

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2.5 REVIEW OF THE EXISTING WEB-BASED SYSTEM.ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT

DEFINED.

CHAPTER THREE............................................................................................................... 21

METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................................ 21

3.0 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ 21

3.1 DATA COLLECTION ...................................................................................................... 23

3.2 SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT MODEL ........................................................................ 24

3.2.1 WATERFALL SDLC MODEL...................................................................................... 24

3.2.1.1 ANALYSIS OF THE SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT CYCLE .................................... 25

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3.2.1.2 DESIGN OF THE SYSTEM ...................................................................................... 25

3.2.1.3 IMPLEMENTATION OF THE SYSTEM................................................................. 26

3.2.1.4 SYSTEM TESTING................................................................................................... 26

3.2.1.5 SYSTEM MAINTENANCE ...................................................................................... 26

3.3 SYSTEM REQUIREMENT SPECIFICATION............................................................... 26

3.3.1 SYSTEM INTERFACE................................................................................................. 26

3.3.2 USER INTERFACE ...................................................................................................... 27

3.3.3 HARDWARE INTERFACE ......................................................................................... 27

3.3.4 DESIGNING OF SOFTWARE INTERFACE............................................................... 27

3.3.5 COMMUNICATION INTERFACE.............................................................................. 28

3.4 SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TOOLS SPECIFICATION.......................................... 28

3.5 USER REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATION.................................................................. 28

3.6 THE PROPOSED SYSTEM............................................................................................. 29

3.6.1 WHY THE CHOICE OF ASP.NET............................................................................... 29

3.6.2 THE CHOICE OF SQL SERVER 2014 AS A DATABASE ........................................ 30

3.7 DATA FLOW DIAGRAM (DFD) .................................................................................... 30

3.8 ANALYSIS OF THE EXISTING SYSTEM.................................................................... 32

3.9 REQUIREMENT ANALYSIS OF THE PROPOSED SYSTEM.................................... 33

3.10 USE CASE MODELLING............................................................................................. 33

CHAPTER FOUR.................................................................................................................. 41

DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION ................................................................................. 41

4.0 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................. 41

4.1 SOFTWARE DESIGN ...................................................................................................... 41

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4.1.1 USER INTERFACE DESIGN........................................................................................ 41

4.1.2 DATABASE DESIGN................................................................................................... 43

4.1.2.1 ENTITY RELATIONSHIP DIAGRAM .................................................................... 44

4.2 SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION...................................................................................... 47

4.3 TESTING AND MAINTENANCE.................................................................................. 47

4.3.1 SOFTWARE TESTING ................................................................................................. 48

4.4 DEVELOPING DOCUMENTATION ............................................................................. 48

4.4.1 USER DOCUMENTATION .......................................................................................... 49

CHAPTER FIVE ................................................................................................................... 50

RESULTS, EVALUATION AND DISCUSSION............................................................... 50

5.0 THE RESULTS ................................................................................................................. 50

5.1 EVALUATION.................................................................................................................. 53

5.2 VALIDATION................................................................................................................... 55

5.3 DISCUSSION.................................................................................................................... 56

5.3.1 TO ANALYSIS THE STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF THE OLD SYSTEM

.................................................................................................................................................. 56

5.3.2 TO DESIGN AN IMPROVED WEB BASED HR SYSTEM...................................... 57

5.3. TO IMPLEMENT THE HR SYSTEM............................................................................. 58

5.3.4 TO TEST AND VALIDATE THE SYSTEM ................................................................ 59

CHAPTER SIX ...................................................................................................................... 60

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS................................................................. 60

6.0 CONCLUSION................................................................................................................. 60

6.1 RECOMMENDATIONS.................................................................................................. 60

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6.2 CONTRIBUTION TO KNOWLEDGE............................................................................ 61

6.3 FUTURE WORK.............................................................................................................. 61

6.3.1 LEAVE MANAGEMENT............................................................................................. 61

6.3.2 INTEGRATION WITH PAYROLL SYSTEM.............................................................. 61

6.3.3 INFORMATION ARCHIVING .................................................................................... 61

REFERENCES....................................................................................................................... 63

APPENDICES........................................................................................................................ 68

APPENDIX I: QUESTIONNAIRE........................................................................................ 68

APPENDIX II: SOURCE CODE ........................................................................................ 68