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SEMESTER 1 2024/25

COURSEWORK BRIEF:

Coursework Brief:

Purpose:

The objective of this project is to produce a VBA application to help automate a business or organisational process. Refer to part II of the module textbook, (Albright, S. Christian. VBA for Modelers: Developing Decision Support Systems. South-Western College Publishing, 2011.), for examples of different types of VBA Applications.

There are two components in this assignment:

VBA Algorithm (60%)

Create a VBA application in Excel to help automate a business or an organisational process of your choice. In this application, you are going to:

1. Clearly highlight and explain the purpose of the business process you proposed and emphasise the main benefit of automating the business process. It would be good to specify the key aims of the business process and the main criteria for successful outcomes (e.g. saving time, reducing costs or better decisions).

2. Create a graphical user interface within Excel (or other appropriate application such PowerPoint, Word, Outlook, etc.) that allows someone familiar with Excel, but with no knowledge of VBA, to successfully operate your VBA application (you may discuss the design of user-friendly interfaces in your GUI and VBA code).

3. Demonstrate the key programming skills including the use of:

• Variables, Constants and Data Types;

• Routines, Procedures and Functions;

• Conditional Structures and Loops;

• Arrays;

• VBA Objects, e.g. UserForms and/or classes; etc.

4. Demonstrate a clear understanding of the importance of correctness/tolerating wrong inputs, usability/reusability, readability and performance/efficiency (e.g. if you have Big datasets) in programming.

Report (40%)

Produce a report about your VBA application, which must include:

1. Introduction of your VBA Application:

• The background and rationale for the business issue or problem, you have decided to address using a VBA application, along with the key aims you would like to achieve.

• You may refer to relevant literature but keep the literature review brief.

• Clearly state the overall objectives of the VBA algorithm and how you plan to measure whether these objectives have been achieved.

2. Discussion of the potential impact of the VBA Application:

• How do you think the application of your suggested solution will impact a business or organisation? For example, would you expect it to result in lower costs, higher efficiency, higher accuracy, etc.?

• Discuss the potential challenges of implementing your application within a business or organisation. For example, consider issues such as managing multiple users using the same application simultaneously, linking your application to large databases, deploying your application online in a cloud environment, and preventing unauthorised users from accessing or altering data records etc. You do not need to cover all of these, but you should consider some of them in real-world settings.

• Reflect on how well your proposed solution is likely to address the problem/issue. Additionally, suggest ways to address limitations you have identified in your model. You may also explain why VBA should be adopted compared with other tools/programming languages.

3. User’s Operational manual:

Write an operational manual so that a user familiar with Excel, but with no knowledge of VBA, can successfully operate your VBA application. It should be brief. Keep in mind that well-designed software requires minimal explanation. Note the following:

• Manuals should be easy to read and follow.

• Screenshots are not essential but can be useful.

• Any assumptions and limitations should be clearly specified.

• Specify the deployment environment and compatible versions for your application.

• Provide an explanation of any warnings and/or messages given by the program (e.g. when users click the wrong buttons or provide incorrect inputs). Although not essential, you might want to include a troubleshooting section.

4. Technical Documentation:

The technical documentation should describe the components of the application for a VBA-literate reader so that the VBA application can be maintained and enhanced in the future. It should include:

• The purpose of each file (module, class, UserForm). You may also use a system diagram to illustrate the relationship between these files.

• For each file, a brief description of the purpose of each routine, method, property, and event (e.g. think of yourself as part of a project team, and your descriptions should enable other members to continue developing or improving the application). Typically, one or two sentences will suffice.

• A description of how the files are linked together.

5. VBA program code:

Towards the end of the term, we will run an assignment workshop where we will clarify the expectations of the project, review students’ performance from previous years and discuss ideas for VBA project apps. Please attend.

You must submit the report and the report must not exceed 2000 words including everything except the VBA code text, bibliography and reference list.

Towards the end of term, we will run an assignment workshop where we will clarify the expectations of the project, look back on students’ performance in previous years and review ideas for VBA project apps. Please attend.

Submit to blackboard:

• A single PDF document containing (i) your report and (ii) the entire text of your application VBA code copied from Excel. You must submit the pdf document to the Turnitin submission tab on Blackboard.

• An Excel file in the xlsm format containing your VBA application. You must submit the xlsm file to the ‘VBA Model Submission’ tab on blackboard.

• If your application inputs a data set, for example, a CSV file, then you must also submit a sample data file to the ‘VBA Model Submission’ tab so that I can test your application with the input data.

Please name your files using the final eight digits of your student ID number prefixed by VBA2, e.g. VBA2_12345678.xlsm and VBA2_12345678.pdf. Do not include your name.

Collaboration, plagiarism and cheating

• Note that while may use the examples from Albright (2013), or other sources, to inform your ideas, however you are expected to come up with your own, new application rather than simply replicating an existing one: Copying the VBA code from an existing source will be regarded as plagiarism.

• Unlike the exercise sheets for the course, you should work on your own when carrying out the coursework.

• Your report should acknowledge clearly all the people with whom you have discussed any part of the coursework, as well as any references you may have used.

• Please refresh your memory of the University’s code on academic integrity, see

http://www.calendar.soton.ac.uk/sectionIV/academic-integrity-regs.html

You are reminded that if the statement Option Explicit is not included at the top of the source code in every non-empty module, class and UserForm in your project, you will lose credit for the assignment.