1.  Programming Language Evaluation

Purpose -Produce a detailed evaluation of the effectiveness of the programming language used and justified the tools and techniques used.

Describe the features of the programming language you used, which helped and hindered you to develop your project. This could include the following, but it is not an exhaustive list:

• use of forms (colour, font, etc) to produce a quality, user-friendly interface. Talk about how each form does one thing i.e. your forms break the project down into mangeable chunks, which again makes it more user friendly

• use of arrays to read from and write to textfiles

• use of dropdown boxes which can be prepopulated

• use of labels as headings 

• use of datagrids and or listboxes to clearly display multiple records at a time

• use of modules to store global variables

• use of programming constructs such as IF statements (decision-making) and For loops (repetition)

• use of debugging tools in the VB IDE (Integrated Development Environment)

• use of annotation to explain what the code is doing

For any of the above that you describe as being helpful (or not), you have to explain WHY they were helpful in YOUR project. You have to make a link between the feature and what/how you used it.

2.  Similar Systems Comparison

Purpose - Compare your solution with similar commercially available systems. 

You need to compare and contrast your completed system with similar commercially available systems. 

• Take each of the online systems you looked at in your Investigation and compare the functionality in your system, with the functionality in each of those systems. 

• Draw a conclusion about whether your system could be marketed as a commercially viable solution and explain why/why not.

3.  Good features, Shortcomings and Potential Improvements

Purpose - Identify good features and shortcomings of the completed solution and described significant potential improvements that could be made to improve its effectiveness

There are three parts to this section. You need to write about the following:

• Good Features - Really emphasise all the good things about your project. This could be neat bits of code you wrote, specific functionality that you included to give it a commercial edge, the way you designed your solution in terms of data and forms design.

• Shortcomings - what could have been done better. For example, populating a dropdown box by typing choices in the list, rather than taking values stored in textfiles. Maybe you produced an end of month sales report, but the formatting (currency) wasn't done effectively. You can also talk about objectives you didn't complete and explain why. Note: not having enough time to finish your code is NOT a good reason.

• Potential Improvements - What other features of commercial systems could you have implemented, if you’d had the time. (think 2 stars and a wish). Look back at other commercial systems online for additional functionality that would fit with your project, which would enhance what you have already coded.

4. Personal Strengths & Weaknesses

Purpose - Evaluate your own strengths and weaknesses in the design and development of your system

There are two parts to this. Firstly you describe your strengths & weaknesses then you explain what/how you would do things differently in the future:

• Describe your strengths and weaknesses in relation to yourself as an I.T. professional, i.e. your ability to think logically, ability to code, thoroughness in finding errors (did you test enough?), time management (you can talk about how you ran out of time and why, here), your awareness of the end user and your development of the user interface to fit in with how the system will be used. 

• Describe specific changes to your approach that you might adopt to solve a similar problem in the future, which would help you to avoid problems you experienced during this project. What would have been a more efficient approach, what could you have done to cause you less problems?