CET3016 Assignment 1 asks students to design, not build, a secure enterprise system for SunMortgages Ltd, a mortgage broker serving property developers and individual customers and linking them to a national bank. The design must trace clearly from requirements to architecture, UML models and justified technical decisions.
Learning Outcomes LO1: Critically assess and justify the selection of appropriate software engineering lifecycles and development methodologies in the design and implementation of complex systems. LO2: Analyse and design robust and secure software applications using industry-standard frameworks, tools and techniques. Assessment Scenario SunMortgages Ltd wants a system to manage client records for its two client groups, property development companies and individual customers, efficiently, securely and accessibly. Authorised staff and customers need role-appropriate access, the system must communicate with a national bank to retrieve current mortgage deals, and the design must allow for growth, maintainability, security and possible international expansion.
Task 1: System Architecture (15%) Propose an architecture and produce a professional architecture diagram showing the major components and relationships. Address staff, customer and property developer access; authentication and authorisation; user roles and access levels; secure storage, processing and communication; integration with the national bank; scalability, maintainability, availability and future expansion; separation of responsibilities; and protection of sensitive data. Critically justify the architecture, discuss trade-offs (scalability, security, maintainability, performance, complexity, availability, data management, integration, extensibility) and explain why it beats at least one alternative approach.
Task 2A: UML Sequence Diagrams (15%) A member of staff retrieves a customer’s details. A customer updates their own record. The SunMortgages system retrieves the latest mortgage deals from the national bank. Show correct UML notation, actors, components, messages and responses, authentication, authorisation, input validation, data access, external interactions, and relevant alternative or failure paths, consistent with the Task 1 architecture.
Task 2B: UML Class Diagram (15%) Model the major software entities with classes, attributes, data types, methods, associations, relationship labels, multiplicities and a sensible distribution of responsibilities, consistent with the scenario, architecture and sequence diagrams. Marks reward the quality of modelling decisions, not the number of classes.
Task 3: Critical Methodology and Design Report (55%, about 1,500 words) Software development methodology: compare suitable lifecycles and methodologies, justify your choice and show how it supports requirements, design, implementation, testing, stakeholder involvement, changing requirements, quality assurance, delivery and maintenance, including its limitations. Architecture and design justification: justify the key decisions in your diagrams and show traceability from requirements, with alternatives considered. Security and access control: relate authentication, authorisation, role-based access, data protection, secure communication, secure bank integration, input validation and protection against unauthorised access to specific SunMortgages risks. Scalability and future development: explain support for more customers, data and transactions, new services and integrations, international expansion, maintainability and extensibility, with trade-offs. Technical risks and trade-offs: identify key technical risks and explain how the design reduces or manages them. Academic Writing and Use of AI The submission should use formal academic writing, clear headings, correct technical terminology, Harvard referencing, critical rather than descriptive analysis and clearly labelled diagrams. Generative AI may support brainstorming or proofreading where permitted, but must not make architectural, methodological or design decisions, and its use must be declared.