The system development life cycle (SDLC) for the barber shop business will explore the initial requirements of the business from analysis and design through implementation and maintenance (Kay). For the inventory tracking and accounting part of the system, the first step was to conduct interviews to determine how inventory and accounting are conducted manually. The barbers keep track of incoming stock using an index card system; as they use up an item, they mark it on the index card, and when the next to last of an item is used, they add the item to the next order. Accounting is done using a simple ledger system; the owner does the accounting once a week. The manual system does not meet the requirements of the growing business; the owner would like to be able to view and print out an inventory at any point without researching it in the individual card system. He would also like to be able to do some tracking and trending in the system to determine how quickly the stores are using up certain products, since he can get better discounts by buying them in bulk. The owner has developed some products with his own proprietary formulas and plans to market some of those formulations on the Internet at some point. Finally, he plans to add on another shop within the year and possibly others after that, so he wants the system to be able to adapt to the businessÆs growing size.
To make the system scalable, it was planned with databases rather than flat files, and it was designed in a modular fashion that enables the programmers to make changes on a module-by-module basis with only minimal changes to the rest of the program. This also makes it easy for new modules to be added with minimal code disruption, as well as making removing modules painless. The modular design ensures greater system integrity through the systemÆs evolution and also provides virtually unlimited expandability.
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