Description
Project: an Investment Club (IC) Financial Management tool
With 4 friends who graduated from UBC with you last year (1 from Sauder, the other 4
from ECE), you envisage building and launching in the market a software tool to
support Investment Clubs. An investment club is a group of persons who pool their
financial resources (i.e., cash) in order to acquire and manage collectively a portfolio of
securities (such as stocks, or bonds). Your project is likely to take the 5 of you part-time
the best of a whole year. You are the project manager.
Features
The feature of the tool (codename: IseeFin) that you plan to market are:
• Variable contributions, based on the concept of IC “unit”, similar to that of a mutual
fund
• Members can join and leave at any time
• Members use the tool over the internet: Club holding and members’ valuation
published on web
• Automated valuation of portfolio
• Support for tax reporting, both US and Canada (e.g., T5)
• Extensible and configurable
A venture capital firm in Yaletown has been favourably impressed by your proof-ofconcept prototype, your business canvas, as well as the proposed timeline and the way
you suggested to approach project risks. But now they want some more details
information about duration and cost to get to “version one”.
You are going to use a multi-pronged approach to estimating the size of this project, the
associated effort, size of the team, and therefore duration. You will produce a 2 page
memo explaining your estimate and how you got there. In this assignment you will use
a Use Case Point approach.
You’ve defined a high level “use-case survey”: an inventory of the use cases of the
project, to be able to anchor your estimation reasoning on something a bit more
concrete (see appendix A).
Using the use-case point technique, derive an overall effort for the project. Decide on
the right level of staffing, and therefore the duration and cost.
1) Study the use-case point technique (UCP); see book chapter from Mike Cohn, or
book chapter from Ph. Kruchten on Piazza (in resources), or find some other resource
on the web. (Files: 06 Time 1.pdf or Cohn UseCasePoint.pdf )
2) Derive an overall effort for the project using UCP. Decide on the right level of
staffing, and therefore give also an estimate of the duration and cost.
Use a “loaded cost” of $5,500/person-month (to take into account computers, rent,
etc..).
Submit you assignment in PDF via Connect by Wednesday February 5th at 1:00pm and
place a printed copy in the mailbox located in McLeod 4th floor, between rooms
MCLD422 and 426. It is an individual assignment.
Nota bene:
• There is no “right answer” to this assignment. It is not where you get that matters,
but how you get there. So explain your assumptions, and your line of reasoning.
• Present your assignment in a synthetic way, these Yaletown V.C. folks have no
patience and will not read 15 pages of ramblings about size and cost.
IseeFin
An Investment Club (IC) Financial Management tool
We envisage building and launching in the market a software tool to support Investment
Clubs. An investment club is a group of persons who pool their financial resources (i.e.,
cash) in order to acquire and manage collectively a portfolio of securities (such as stocks,
or bonds, or other publicly traded financial instruments)..
Features
The feature of the tool (codename: IseeFin) that you plan to market are:
• Variables contribution, based on the concept of IC “unit”, similar to that of a mutual
fund
• Members can join and leave at any time
• Members use the tool over the internet: club holding and members’ valuation published
on web, but restricted to members
• Automated valuation of portfolio
• Support for tax reporting, adjustable by country (e.g., T5 form in Canada, Form 1065
in the USA) as usually clubs are limited partnerships, hence “flow through” entities
from a tax perspective
• Extensible and configurable
• Multiple currency USD & CAD, or GBP & EUR…
Market data
There are 4,700 active IC in the USA and 390 in Canada. Estimates are harder to derive
for Europe due to market fragmentation: probably only about 1,200. The concept is
starting to develop in Asia, China in particular. No data is available for other parts of the
world.
One program sold by the US federation of IC, for $270 (US). Antiquated U.I. (DOS like),
rigid set up, very hard to use. Sold to 20-25% of the clubs. No easy support for tax
reporting; US-specific. No multiple currencies. No concept of “unit”.
A small US tool is $119, but has too limited functionality: investmentclubaccounting.com
Another one is $119.99 per member.
Other clubs do it “manually” (from a paper register to some flat files: Excel etc.). A few
big ones use a professional accountant and its software.
In the UK, ShareScope costs £79.95 per member plus £14 per month subscription.
Features
• Variables contribution, based on the concept of IC “unit”
• Members can join and leave at any time
• Valuation of portfolio automated
• Support for tax reporting, US and Canada (e.g., T5)
• Club holding and members’ valuation published on web
• Extensible and configurable
Proof-of-concept Prototype
There exist already a proof-of-concept prototype. It is a combination of
• Microsoft Excel Workbook (multiple sheets)
• Half a dozen Visual Basic Macros
And was used on a real club with 11 members for 3 years, as a pilot study.
Overall requirements
Based on this prototype, and from analysis of other existing tools an initial use-case
model was created, involving users of the pilot.
Appendix A list the use cases, and appendix B the data used
Other Requirements or architectural considerations
– security (authentication, encryption of data, timeout on sessions, traces)
– multi-language, multi-language with Asian languages
– thin/thick client on web
– choice of database
– choice of web server
– accuracy of results (implement invariant checking)
– valuation of the portfolio from some other web service
– downloading portfolio value from the bank (use Quicken format)
– ease of installation by non software gurus
– portability (to various types of ISP servers…)
– backup of data and recovery, duplication of database
# Actor Name Description Complexity Priority
UC1 Partner Display current asset and
history of contribution
For a partner, display current ownership, and history of
contributions with level of ownership over time
L 1
UC2 Partner Display current ownership Show on a table the list of partners, and their current
level (%) of ownership
L 2
UC3 Partner Display current portfolio Show the current composition of the portfolio,
including the cash component
L 2
UC4 Partner Display net unit value history Show with table and graph the evolution of the
investment club net unit value
L 3
UC5 Treasurer Enter partner contributions How much cash are the partners contributing in the
current cycle (period)
L 1
UC6 Treasurer Close cycle Recompute the new value of the unit, based on
contributions, withdrawals, portfolio value, and
revenues
M 1
UC7 Treasurer Admit new partner Add a new partner on the roster L 1
UC8 Treasurer Remove a departing partner Liquidate the share of a partner M 1
UC9 Treasurer Enter income and expenses Based on monthly brokerage statement, enter interests,
capital gains, dividends, and financial charges
M 1
UC10 Trader Enter trades Add and remove entries in the portfolio of securities as
decided by the club
M 2
UC11 Trader Enter securities value Manually enter securities value (and exchange rates) L 1
UC12 System Compute portfolio valuation Everyday, the system computes automatically the
value of the securities part of the portfolio, using
online services
H 3
UC13 Treasurer Produce taxation data For a fiscal year, generate data to fulfill personal tax
filing, such as T5 slips in Canada
H 2
UC14 Partner Access taxation data After UC13, individuals can access their own data for
tax filing purposes
L 3
UC15 Admin Install and set up Create the server and the database M 1
UC16 Admin Maintain user and role Create, maintain, delete: user login, password, and
assign roles
L 1
UC17 All Login/logout/time-out Abstract use case that wraps all others M 1
Appendix A: Use-case survey
Appendix B: IseeFIN Database
There are 5 main tables of data in IseeFin’s database:
1. Users: login name and password + roles + history of access
2. Partners: name, address, taxpayer ID number (e.g., SIN or SSN), date of entry
3. Contributions: For each partner: List of contributions/withdrawal (with dates);
ownership level at each cycle end.
4. Portfolio: composition in terms of securities, ticker, amount, currency, etc.
5. Activities: income, expenses, trades, deposits, withdrawal (in each currency)
