NAME ________________________         

Date ___________

GardenTraker

Suppose that you and some other students have done lawn care, or been groundskeepers, and 

you have decided to go out on your own and open a business that offers landscaping services. 

Your goal is to develop a list of clients for whom you provide regular and recurring services, 

such as mowing and weeding, plus specialty services, such as pruning, garden preparation, 

sprinkler installation and repair, and the like.

You need an information system for tracking customers, services you have provided, and 

services you are scheduled to provide in the future. As a new small business, you want a 

simple and affordable system based on Excel or Access. The name of the system will be 

GardenTraker.

1. Explain how you would use the SDLC to develop GardenTraker.

2. Define the scope of your system. 

3. Explain the process you would use to determine the feasibility of GardenTraker. List data 

you need for such an assessment, and explain how you might obtain or estimate that data.

4.  Consider the tracking of recurring services, and list all of the requirements that you can 

imagine for that functionality. Be specific and answer at least the following:

a.  What data will you need?

b.  How will you input that data? 

c.   Specify any other requirements you believe are important for tracking recurring 

services.

5. Considering just the recurring services functionality, do you think it would be better to use 

Excel or Access for this project? Is there some other tool? List the criteria you used to answer 

that question. Summarize the consequences of making a poor choice between products.

6. What does this short exercise tell you about information systems development? Think about 

it, and answer this question in such a way that you could use your answer to demonstrate your 

critical-thinking skills in a job interview