Contents
ABSTRACT... 1
INTRODUCTION... 2
PURPOSE... 2
OBJECTIVES... 2
Beneciaries... 5
METHODOLOGY... 5
Principles of DSDM... 6
Streangths... 7
Weakness... 7
Technology to be used... 7
PROBLEM DEFINITION... 8
JUSTIFICATION... 8
Research Element... 9
PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION SCHEDULE...9
ABSTRACT
E-commerce, or electronic commerce, is the sale and purchase of goods or services through
electronic means and in this case, electronic means is the Internet which is an incredibly popular
way of doing business. Instead of looking to create an e-commerce system, designed to perform
all types of ecommerce tasks, as opposed to making use of an existing product the purpose and
the scope of this project aims at creating a framework. This will make it easy to extend the needs
of any e-commerce project with minimal effort. With the dramatic increase in the popularity of
online shopping over the past few years, there are already plenty of options available if you not
are planning to build your own e-commerce solution, but sometimes it's better to use your own
solutions. It may be easy to find an e-commerce system but when it comes to extending it or
using it, you might come across a lot of difficulties. This project aims at creating PHP framework
that will be extended and used with ease, particularly for e-commerce sites. Using this
framework one will be able to display and manage products, customize products, create wish
lists, make recommendations to customers based on previous purchases, send e-mail
notifications when certain products are in stock, rate the products online, and much more. While
a typical e-commerce system may show products within a browse or search interface, a
framework will allow us to integrate products into other areas of a website; for instance, pulling
certain categories of product into relevant pages, particularly useful for a website that needs to do
INTRODUCTION
PURPOSE
After looking at some popular e-commerce sites, this framework obviously will need some key
features. It will need the ability for users to search for and browse products, within different
categories. Visitors to the customized sites obviously will need to be able to purchase products,
which will lead to the need for a shopping basket to store products the visitor intends to purchase
and a checkout process to manage delivery details, tax calculations, delivery charge calculations,
payment processing, and of course order management for administrators.
OBJECTIVES
GENERAL OBJECTIVES SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES
Provide customizable
dashboards
Develop fully customizable design using templates to
display products, shopping basket orders.
Provide customer account dashboard to display
customers’ personal information, recent ordered
products, newsletter subscription status, primary
billing & shipping address, shopping cart and wish
list.
Provide an administrative panel to view, edit create
products and fulfill orders
Provide a way of displaying and managing categories
of products
Provide a way for easy product
Management
other aspects of a website or web application (e.g.
lastly updated etc.)
Providea way of searching for specific products Filtering the product list based on the customers'
preferences, such as brand, or other properties
Providing wish lists, that is, lists of products that users
wish to purchase at some point, or would like
someone to purchase for them (including the provision
to facilitate gift purchases)
Provide a way for Order &
Checkout Process Management
Provide option to create account at beginning of
checkout process
Provide shopping cart with tax and shipping costs Display saved shopping carts with configurable
expiring date
Provide onsite order tracking from customer accounts
(order status and history)
Group products into orders (unless it's an auction-style
site)
Accept and process payment for orders, or accept a
note of how payment is going to be made Take delivery details from the customer
Provide Secure means of
Payment
Provide Web services API for easy integration with
Kenyan payment systems (M-PESA, Airtel money,
bank payment, PayPaletc.
ProvideAPI listening and SSL security support for
orders on both front end and back end
Enhance Customer Relations
To provide wish list with ability to add comments To email or send RSS feed of wish list
Provide product reviews and product tags submitted Provide Newsletter subscription
Beneciaries
Since Ecommerce Framework will be general purpose tailored software, anybody
intending to get his/business online he will reap the benefits of the system.
METHODOLOGY
Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM) will be adopted in the development of the
Ecommerce Framework. DSDM is an iterative and incremental approach that embraces
principles of Agile development, including continuous user/customer involvement. DSDM fixes
cost, quality and time at the outset and uses the MoSCoW prioritization of scope into musts,
shoulds, coulds and won’t haves to adjust the project deliverables to meet the stated time box
Source (http://dsdmofagilemethodology.wikidot.com )
Principles of DSDM
There are 9 principles which are essential to any implementation of DSDM
i. Active user involvement – imperative
ii. Teams must be empowered by to make decisions iii. Focus on frequent delivery
v. Iterative and incremental development – mandatory vi. All changes during the development must be reversible vii. Requirements are base lined on high level
viii. Testing is intergrated throughout the life cycle ix. Collaborative and co-operative approach
Streangths
System is delivered on time and budget
Ability of the users to affect the project’s direction
The results of development are directly and promptly visible in every timebox increment Since the user/customers are actively involved in the development of the system they are
mostly likely to embrace it and take it on
Basic functionality is delivered quickly, with more functionality being delivered at
regular intervals
Eliminates bureaucracy and breaks down communication barrier interested parties
Because of constant feedback from the users, the system being developed is more likely
to meet the needs it was commissioned for.
Early indicators of whether the project will work or not rather than a nasty surprise
halfway through the development
Weakness
Relatively high barier to entry.
Technology to be used
Since PHP is a very popular language, and because it isn't a framework in its own right, will be used to
structure this project framework, Apache will be the server, while MySQL will be used for the database.
Why PHP & MySQL?
Most modern web hosts support PHP and MySQL, and while languages like Ruby on Rails are gaining
The Framework will be developed based on Model-View-Controller Architectural pattern, to separate the
system Logic and the user interfaces
PROBLEM DEFINITION
There is need to extend the functionality of any e-commerce project with minimal effort
Weaknesses of the current systems
The current e-commerce systems do not give the user full control over the framework and when
it comes to extending it or using it, one comes across a lot of difficulties.
JUSTIFICATION
Instead of creating an e-commerce system, designed to perform all types of e-commerce tasks,
this project aims at creating a framework. This will make it easy to extend the needs of any
e-commerce project with minimal effort. While a typical e-e-commerce system may show products
within a browser or search interface, a framework will allow us to integrate products into other
areas of a website; for instance, pulling certain categories of product into relevant pages,
particularly useful for a website that needs to do more than just sell online. For example, if one
reviews, and other media about the author, and then integrate some of their popular products into
the page.
Research Element
Dynamic Ecommerce Frameworks
PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION SCHEDULE
TASK NO. TASK DESCRIPTION START DATE END DATE REMARKS
1. Concept Writing 28/09/2015 12/10/2015 Approved
2. Proposal writing & Defense 12/01/2015 02/11/2015
3. Requirement Analysis 02/11/2015 23/11/2015
5. System Implementation 24/12/2015 30/03/2016
6. System Testing 08/01/2016 30/03/2016
7. Documentation 02/11/2015 30/03/2016
8. Submission 01/04/2016 -
PROJECT BUDGET
ITEM/N
O
ITEM AMOUNT
1. Printing photo copying Ksh. 1500
2. Binding Ksh. 2, 000
3. Domain name and web Hosting 3, 000 (annually)
4. Other expenses Ksh. 500
