UOC Helping Hands

8. Self

8.02. Improve their ability to create safe, reliable, and useful quality software at reasonable cost and within a reasonable time.

When developing a system Software engineers should have the capability to implement reliably, safety, useful and quality software. Also, the final outcome should be under reasonable time and cost. Reliability is the most important thing according to my view. If a system provides quality services and protect their sensitive data from outsiders, it is a reliable system. Because, the system should be always give the accurate information to the users. As developers, we keep that point in mind, because we have to transaction with confidential data of users.

As well as, this is a non-profit web application, so we have to minimize the overall cost. We hope to use Open Source software services to minimize the cost, by always focusing on the security. To keep safety, we use validation inputs and related unauthorized access prevents. Also, this is the reasonable time for this system, because there is no any system to gather needy students and donors who are willing to help to the university students.

8.03. Improve their ability to produce accurate, informative and well-written documentation.

After or when developing the system Software engineers produce accurate, informative, well written and standard documents to the users as well as administrators. So, we hope to provide Software Requirement Specifications, Software Development Specification, User Manuals, System Manuals, Test Documents and etc.

7. Colleagues

7.01. Encourage Colleagues to adhere to this code.

When we develop a system as a team, our responsibility to adhere all the members follow the code of ethics to implement the system. If someone rejects to follow, we should encourage and clarify the benefits. As an example, when someone tries to get a statement without providing source, we can clarify him what are the bad situations after publishing that statement.

Not only for this project, can we follow this code of ethics in the future project work. Because, this code of ethics shows up guidelines how should we do a project as technical people as. By following these ethics, we can avoid unethical, cultural, technical, economical, and legal issues might happen.

7.06. Assist colleagues in being fully aware of current standard work practices including policies and procedures for protecting passwords, files and other confidential information, and security measures in general.

Donors and needy students should have registered to the system. Because they need a Username and Password to login to the system. The system administrator controls these user accounts by adding, updating and deleting details. The student doesn’t need a password or username to log into the system. They can send their requests to the site with true details. Then the administrator confirms those needy student’s details are correct or wrong. If those are correct, we publish a case with an ID.

6. Profession

6.08. Take responsibility for detecting, correcting and reporting errors in software and associated documents on which they work.

According to 6.08 code of ethics, software engineers or developers should get the responsibility to detect, correct and report the errors when occur in the implementation phase and documenting and reporting those things.

As an example, when we do system testing to assure the quality of the system, we clearly mentioned those errors, how detected and detecting process. In the testing phase, we found so many errors in a database and content errors. We have done testing phase using manual testing. In the manual testing, we can document the error handling by creating test scenarios, procedures and test cases. We got the responsibility of all those errors and detected. We should consider about this not only in developing phase, after delivering the system we have the responsibility for error detection.

5. Management

5.01. Ensure good management for any project on which they work, including effective procedures for promotion of quality and reduction of risk.

Developing a web application doesn’t give the meaning it can deliver all the functional requirements. It should have effective and efficiency, good quality, ease of use and manage and highly security conditions. This is the basic meaning of the 5.01 code of ethics.

When develop the website we should follow effective procedures, quality standards and risk reduction methods. It will give the advantages such as,

Avoid in illegal and unethical issues
Provide error free website and increase user satisfaction
Increase ease of use and user friendliness of the website
Therefore, high usage of the website because users come back to the website
Improve easy maintenance, therefore, reduce the maintenance cost
Reduce of faults, failures and the errors
We hope to conduct a better management and ensure the quality of the website while mitigating the risks and vulnerabilities. To avoid the risks we follow data validations, authentication and authorization and content management systems.

We seek to keep a good relationship among related parties of UOC Helping Hands and disclose the conflicts if happen.

4. Judgement

4.05. Disclose to all concerned parties those conflicts of interest that cannot reasonably be avoided or escaped.

As software engineers we have to inform about if any conflicts happen. Normally, several parties engage in a project, also conflicts are happening.

The several parts of the UOC Helping Hand are Students, donors, public and the administrator, including university staff who manage the system. As an example, to keep needy students' data, we need a centralized database. If the database unable to keep all the information about students, it is a conflict. So the developers have a responsibility to prevent those conflicts and disclose to the concerned parties.