Reflections and Play store entry

Welcome to our final Blog, you will see detailed description about path we took to come up with MoneyTracker android appliction and also the link to download source code and apk file

Reflections

Software projects are a balance of Features, time and Resources with a goal of producing successful deliverables. In today’s business world, each organisation takes software as its core to create products. Core coding aspects of software development like, adapting to new languages, frameworks and development environment pose main challenges. Good quality code is an essential property of a software because it could lead to financial losses or waste of time needed for further maintenance, modification or adjustments if code quality is not good enough. Hence, we made sure that we always we maintained high coding standard throughtout the development cycle.

What are the key factors do you think which makes project successful?

Firstly, on time delivery of product to the customer.
Complete set of feature as requested by customer.
Reliable product which can sustain for long time meeting all user expectations.
Effective communication with in the team and effective task distribution among the team members.
Finally, dealt within assigned budget and resources.

But on the other side why do you think projects fail?

Improper planning
Change of requirements at the nth moment
Poor communication among the team members
Working on functionality without sign off from customer
Competition from other organisations on similar or better products

Technical challenges our team encountered

We being students of MSc in Digital Engineering posess strong background of electronics or telecommunication, since our bachelors included more of subjects dealing with fundamentals of engineering we are more familiar with assembly and embedded coding languages than Java or C#. Since Android app development was completely new to all of us, we had to face many challenges in the entire product development cycle. Few are listed below

Understanding it's basic structure and workflow
Usage of android studio and emulators
Designing layout so as to cover most of the android devices
Creation of database and dealing with shared preferences
Also, we had to play around with the UI to bring up the best and reliable user interface to the customer

Challenges the team experienced by working on a software project as a team

Apart from technical challenges, administrative/ operational challenges are next that are faced in software development. Collaboration with customer and team, and also continous education of both technical and business part of product development is the main issue that almost all software developers face.

Initially, when project started we were not known to each other so forth had poor communication among us during 1st week of requirement phase. Later, subsequent meetings for sprint planning and standups as per SCRUM helped us get along and share views. But nonetheless following sprints and sticking on to completion of tasks within specified time period, adehering to changing requirements and tracking those in zenhub were quite challenging.

Benefits we experienced as a team working on software project

Exposure to SCRUM practice and real time project management skills
Introduced to new code and task management software like github and zenhub respectively
Each phase of software development life cycle followed in development of android application
Hands on with Android studio and emulators
More knowledge and experienced gained on coding(Java language)
Communication with customer to understand business part (i.e handling of Business analyst role was experienced)
Working with team helped us understand various stratergies that can approached to work effectively and efficiently by balancing work load

How did the course help us meet our needs

No doubt!! course is well organised, equally distributed with required number of team members to achieve the defined tasks. Being students of Masters each and every one will be keen to explore every other technology present today in the software industry. This course gave us oppurtunity to learn Android app development along with SCRUM for project handling. Now we understand organisation level methodologies and approaches followed to come up with a successful product. Four of us in a team had to work for 2-4 hrs a day to accomplish tasks due once in every two weeks. With provided course material and tutorials conducted every week to communicate with customer we always had sufficient information to meet our needs.

Summary

What is the app about?

Money Tracker is general purpose application suitable for every individual who is concerned to maintain or track the income and expenditure based on which an effective budget can be planned, none the less certain pre-requisites are, one willing to use the application has to be aware about usage of mobile phones, installation of android applications.This application can be better utilized by the people of age > 8 years, since it involves mathematically computations. This application is only focused for individuals who wish to track their day to day expenses, not for group of people or doesn't target large scale industrial expenditure maintainance

Why should android users download MoneyTracker app?

Gone are the days while people were using ledgers/ books to keep track of Income/expenses. In world of technology, we literally store a huge amount of useful data that is hard to be remembered in the form of apps. One such app is our Money tracker where you can store a good volume of daily transactions and view the stored transactions in the form of report.So, it's all one touch away ! -People willing to have an organised life would define an effective budget panning which is quite achievable by traking your income and expense, money plays an important role in every individuals life and keeping track of it's flow for various categories is one of the important task. Our MoneyTracker application helps to do so by facilitating the user to add a transaction with different categories, like in Income(Salary, Interest, Gifts or any possible category can be custom defined) and in Expense(Education, Shopping, Health, Travelling, Food and Beverages and any possible category can be custom defined) Hence our MoneyTracker application helps one to log his daily income expense activity and have proper planning so as to spend what amount where and when

Features

We have following four modules

1. Login functionality

Below images shows step by step procedure followed in login activity. At first, user has to enable login in settings window. Once enabled he will be navigated to SignIn window to store credentials. After saving, he is asked to enter 4-digit PIN on subsequent login to the Money tracker app.

2. Add Transaction functionality

Shows the process followed to add transaction. Initially home screen shows no transaction to display, on click of add transaction you will be navigated to select transaction type. On selection of Income/Expense transaction type, dropdown will be listed with predefined category values as shown. Finally lists all the transactions that is being added

3. Add New Category functionality

On adding transaction, user is allowed to add his own category type rather than choosing the predefined one's. On click of "Add New Category" link user is shown with popup as shown below and on adding it will be added to dropdown list and also will be preselected

4. View Report functionality

As shown below, user can view his weekly or monthly report by selecting Date values or Category(one or more) or Payment type.

Non-functional requirement

Category of the app	Applicable to all category except for large scale transactions
Age limit	Applicable to all ages
Android version	Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean)
Security issues	No access permission requested to contacts or Location
Supported devices	We have targeted APK 17 and above. So our app will run on almost 96% of the devices that are active on the Google play store
Energy consumption	Negligible (<1%)
Storage	18.76 MB
Target devices	Android mobile phones

Reflection and play store entry