1.4. Impact Analysis

Positive Impacts

The positive potential impacts of the Scheduler as a functioning system are increased convenience and efficiency in scheduling classes for the Cal Poly CSC Department. This scheduler allows various end-user levels to access it. For example, an administrator, an instructor, and a student;

• Administrators have all the necessary information available on the Scheduler to generate a schedule
• Instructors are able to put in their class information through the Scheduler
• Students have access to view the future and current schedules and give feedback to administrators

The design saves progressing time for the administrator, allows instructors to specify their needs, and is more convenient for students to plan their future academic courses.

Other positive impacts of the Scheduler as a course example are:

• The presentation of a non-trivial software system that students can use as a guide for their own software development work
• An illustration of how formal methods can be put to practical use

Negative Impacts

Potential negative impacts of the Scheduler include those common to any user-oriented software system;

• If the system is poorly designed and implemented, it can be inconvenient to use and decrease rather than increase user productivity. For example, a slow implementation that takes too long to generate or modify a schedule.
• If the system implementation is flawed, it may lead to problems that go undetected until it affects those relying on it. For example, a room is double-booked and no one noticed until the first day of class.
• Significant disruption may also occur. If the system looses or corrupts important schedule data, users will need to re-enter their information.
• The design can lead to unfair schedules in terms of instructor preferences since every instructor has ability to decide what class they want to teach, when they want to teach, and how much they want to teach a particular class. The Scheduler generates a schedule based on those preferences.
  

As a course example, the use of the Scheduler has no significant negative impacts, unless its development methodology is considered weak or unrelated to the concepts being taught in a particular course.