1.1. Problem Statement

The general problems to be addressed by the Scheduler Tool project are the following:

  1. to provide a reliable and easy to use software tool that manages a Cal Poly department's class scheduling

  2. to provide a way for professors to request times and classes that they prefer to teach

  3. to provide a way for departments to specify room and course constraints

  4. to provide a way for student feedback/course enrollment to be taken into account by the administrator

  5. the need for a secure server where schedules and databases are stored

  6. the need to have multiple schedules being worked on at any give time

  7. the need to archive past schedules so they can be consulted as necessary
While these problems have been solved by a number of commercially available and public domain products, the Scheduler Tool provides a solution with certain functional improvements over existing tools. Specific problem areas are the following:

  1. taking professor time and course requests

  2. using classroom constraints

  3. creating course overlap constraints

  4. using student course enrollments from previous quarters to impact new course offerings

The Scheduler Tool project addresses the requirements of a particular customer. This customer needs a tool with a collection of features not available in any single existing tool. This aspect of the problem is one of combining a set of existing features in a way that the features have yet to be combined in another product.



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