Advanced Diploma in Data and Systems Analysis Requirements Definition - The Playhouse Theatre Department for Continuing Education Oxford University INTRODUCTION The Playhouse theatre is a small and well-respected theatre situated in the picturesque University town of Camford. The theatre boasts two auditoria: the Stearne Place - a conventional proscenium arch theatre setting involving a raised stage facing a rectangular block of seats (the stalls), circle, upper circle (the gods) and boxes; and Persephone's Pit - a small and intimate theatre in the round, involving a central stage surrounded by three, semicontinuous, concentric banks of seating with three radiating aisles leading from the stage and trisecting the seat banks. The Stearne holds 623 people, Persephone's Pit (universally known as "The Pomegranate" - in partial reference to the seat plan) holds about 250 (the seats are benches, so some squashing up is possible). The Stearne stages conventional plays, the annual, and lucrative, pantomime, public lectures and some musical performances. Seats may be booked until there are none left. There is no waiting list system but people are sometimes allocated late cancellation seats in the hour before performances start. The Pomegranate tends to host solo concert artists, and informal and amateur events. It is less used than the Stearne and the economics associated with its use are more problematic because the sorts of events that suit it tend not to generate the kind of revenues needed for viability. Pomegranate performances typically negotiate a tightrope between overbooking (the seating making it impractical to allocate seats) and non-viability. Customer attempting to book for Pomegranate performances are first added to a list and later informed whether their booking has been successful - lists are resolved on a week by week basis right up to the performance and are kept in paper form. Fire regulations dictate that the theatre management must know the exact number of people present in every performance. Tickets are collected at the auditorium doors, and counted to provide this information. This system requires the use of physical tickets but makes it hard to establish the presence or absence of a particular individual quickly. The Pomegranate theatre usually organises price differentials solely on the basis of which of the three benches one sits on. Ushers keep a watch to prevent people from changing benches during the performance. This does happen, sometimes, causing disputes. Wheelchair users who can leave their chairs are sometimes reserved space at the end of rows. The theatre has many categories of staff, including managerial and backstage and front of stage staff, performers, directors, managers, caterers, administrators, and volunteers. Backstage staff deal with the performances: front of stage staff deal with the public. Moreover, visiting companies sometimes include their own support personnel, choreographers, electricians and costume handlers. All staff receive remuneration of various kinds (though this is often notional in the case of volunteers - involving, say, free tickets) and the fire regulations apply to staff as much as the public - it is simply vital that there is always an accurate record of the people in the building. No modern theatre can survive from ticket revenues alone. The Playhouse is sponsored by public charitable bodies, local firms, and Porterhouse University (using revenue generated from book fines from their famous library). Tickets are priced on the basis of the performance, the event, and the seat. In addition there is a complicated series of discounts that may or may not apply involving: • children • the elderly • the disabled (the theatre has limited access for the disabled to both auditoria) • students • Playhouse workers • Some sponsors • Friends of the Playhouse (a special category of sponsors) • remunerative tickets (issued to volunteer ushers and members of the public, under some circumstances) • Babies - these must be issued with tickets. The theatre is licensed for a particular number of "souls" - babes in arms are only welcomed to some performances, and must be issued with notional "baby tickets", for which there is no charge, and no seat allocation. The concession and discount system has grown organically and is now very involved. It urgently needs simplification and clarification. The Playhouse does sometimes ban some people from the theatre. Tickets should not be issued to them. The Required System Few British theatres have fully computerised bookings systems. The Playhouse wishes to be among the first to install one; and its board of trustees are also interested in the possibility of selling such a system on to other theatres - though there are some worries about support and expense issues. The Current Booking System The current booking system is paper-based and very antiquated. Tickets may be purchased from the Theatre Box Office, during business or performance hours. This involves either faceto-face transactions, or telephone sales. The Playhouse management also allocates some of the tickets for each performance to local booking agencies (mainly travel agents). These have to be returned to the theatre two days before the relevant performance, in order to be available for "late bookings" and to avoid double-booking problems. Each such return involves a reconciliation process relating to the centralised booking plan - which is currently kept on individual Excel spreadsheets. The current system only involves card tickets - so tickets purchased by phone must be collected physically from the box office. This tends to happen at the last minute and causes staff difficulties and stress. Travel agents have issued tickets for Pomegranate performances in the past, but this is not currently done. Tickets may be returned up to twenty-four hours before a performance, with a sliding scale of refunds. Tickets returned later than that can be held at the box office and may be sold on to late comers (in which case attracting a partial refund to the original purchaser). Tickets are issued by a small computer printing system which types out performance and seat details onto card. The outside ticket agencies have similar systems. The theatre keeps no formal record of its customers, though there is a mailing list to which members of the public can subscribe. 15% of the UK population are registered as disabled and the theatre is proud of its provision for people with handicaps. The theatre has good wheelchair access; both auditoria are fitted with induction loops; and four seats in the Sterne have small screens that can be used to broadcast subtitles (these must be booked ahead of time, and subtitles are only available for about 20% of all performances). The theatre has the principle that disabled people should not have to pay more for special services, but there are availability restrictions. Wheelchair users who have to remain in their chairs are restricted to four seats in the Sterne and three in the Pomegranate. One problem with booking the four Sterne seats is that it involves physically removing the seat, the seat behind it, and that seat's in-aisle neighbour, - so each such booking removes three seats from the auditorium. Theatre policy is to keep these seats available until two weeks before a performance, and then let them go - so disabled people would probably not be able to book after that. Of course, many wheelchair users can use ordinary seats; but such seats are restricted to being at the end of rows and there is currently no system in force to reserve them in any way. THE CURRENT BOOKING PROCESS How the Theatre operates: Buying Tickets • Tickets may be purchased by cash or credit card. • Tickets may be bought in person, from the main box office. • Tickets may be bought from the main box office by telephone sale. • Tickets may be bought from certain approved agencies, up to two working days before the performance. • This last point does not currently apply to the Pomegranate. • Bookings require card tickets to be issued, and this applies even to the notional ones given to babes in arms • There are a great many possible discounts and these are coded onto the ticket in an ad hoc way. • Some performances involve restrictions on ticket sales (e.g. no unaccompanied adults, no children, epileptics only under advice etc). • Some tickets are associated with pre-ordered drinks that are collected at intermissions. One ticket may record several such drinks. • Tickets record seating information, time and date of performance and the information described above. • Pomegranate performances are booked on a "gathered field" basis, involving people being added to waiting lists which are resolved several times before the actual performance. Returning and selling on tickets • A sliding scale or refunds applies - this scale can change on the basis of performances. • Tickets returned less than 24 hours before a performance only involve refunds if they are subsequently sold on by the box office. • No waiting list currently operates for the Sterne auditorium but there is an informal system of late sales. • A waiting list operates for performances at the Pomegranate. Recalling Tickets The theatre currently has no system for informing patrons of cancelled performances or cast changes. When a small fire occurred recently in the Pomegranate, members of the public continued to turn up for the two weeks the venue was out of action simply because they could not be informed. Client Review The theatre management have commissioned an internal review of their booking system, with a remit to identify the problems it has and to develop an initial requirements statement for a computer system. What follows is a summary of their conclusions. Current problems A number of problems have been identified with the current system, including: • The system is insecure, liable to error and labour-intensive. • It is quite hard to know the exact situation with respect to ticket sales until the returns from the outside agencies are made. These are sometimes late or inaccurate and overbooking problems occur recurrently. • There is little scope for extending the number of places from which tickets may be purchased. • Web-based booking is impossible. • The phone booking system is expensive and unreliable. • No-one much likes the "gathered field" system in the Pomegranate and in any case it needs regularising. • The theatre keeps no list of previous customers and their preferences although there is a paper list of the small number of "banned" clients (but this is not made available to the external booking agencies!) • The theatre does not archive ticket sales and consequently finds it difficult to track successful productions. • The present system requires that the seating plan is entirely fixed. In fact there is some scope for varying it, on a performance basis (more children can get into the Pomegranate than adults etc). • Although tickets contain a lot of information patrons sometimes find it hard to understand - particularly with respect to pre-ordered drinks! Analysts Notes from interviewing Theatre Staff and users– (this is a sample set of notes and problems that may arise as a result of the systems analysis). Patrons 1. Patrons would like to be able to purchase tickets from home and certainly want to be informed about future productions. 2. Patrons do not want to have a system which involves tickets being physically sent through the mail. 3. Patrons would be happy to work an automated ticket-issuer, in the theatre lobby (thus preventing demand on the front of house staff just before each performance). 4. An electronic system for ticket returns would be wonderful! 5. The waiting involved in Pomegranate bookings actually prevents people from using that venue. 6. There is a general feeling that the theatre is quite arbitrary about late admissions, and some grievance about this (Camford has the traditionally wretched British transport system). Tickets. 1. It is so hard to be sure about the booking system status at present that tickets which could be sold often remain untaken and double-bookings often occur. 2. Ancillary information on tickets is hard to make out and causes confusion with respect to drinks and seats ordered. 3. A great many more venues would sell theatre tickets if they could but the need to purchase software and printers to generate tickets prevents this. General opinion is that this would result in more revenue for the theatre. 4. A web based booking system would be ideal. However the categories of discounts available are so complicated that this would be something of a challenge! 5. The theatre management accept that the discount system has to be clarified. Having no time to do this themselves, they would be interested in a simpler system, fitting in with the booking system more. 6. A single visual and up to date account of ticket sales for each performance is vital. The theatre would be prepared to change some aspects of its existing setup in order to achieve this. 7. Reconciliation of agency returns with ticket sales is done by paper and hand and is a nightmare. 8. Data on past sales and performances is urgently needed. 9. A frequent cause of dispute with members of the public involves policy relating to late admissions to performances. This varies from production to production (it is set by theatre companies, not the theatre management) and might perhaps be recorded on tickets. General observations (perhaps sensitive) • The general level of IT expertise within the theatre is low. Such expertise as is present is vested in the people who handle the finances - who have little or no experience of the practical process of serving the public. • It may be useful to think in terms of the provision of a non-integrated system. For example, a web page that displays the current situation with respect to ticket sales and performances might be designed independently of questions relating to online sales. Of course any such disparate solutions should in principle be integrable at some later date. • All interfaces must be brutally simple. They are to be used by non-sophisticates and are likely to be presented to members of the public during the course of ticket sales. The system will be used by theatre staff and their nominees, but it will be visible to a wider set of people and with the number of ancillary, temporary and volunteer workers used by the theatre, training is unlikely to be an option. • Our perceptions of the sophistication and expertise of theatre staff is such that we strongly advise a staged delivery over a considerable time period. The design must reflect that. Once staff get used to one facility, we could bring in another and where possible new facilities should be run in parallel with existing ones for a trial period that does not include the pantomime season. REQUIREMENTS Feasibility A feasibility study has established that a computerised system would provide a solution to the above problems. It would give timely and rapid access to information required, allow data to be organised in such a way to store all the relevant information, and allow a wide and flexible range of services to be provided, including archiving, and the maintenance of mailing lists. It is thought that a system running on a single PC at the box office would be the place to start. This should then scale up to a web-based system at some future time - and that should interface with the existing promotional web site. We would probably maintain the existing agency system until such time as a web interface can be built, so the first version of the system should incorporate consolidation software to reconcile agency sales; but it is possible to imagine doing this on a daily basis, using email. Requirements User definition: Two sorts of user are identified (not counting background technical staff). • Booking agents - initially, theatre staff, these people have basic keyboard skills, detailed knowledge of the existing system and considerable experience of the public. • System managers - who would set up data for each performance and trouble-shoot. The computerised solution must provide the following: Functional Requirements: Essential
Functions to handle ticket issuing, and record seat booking.
Functions to display accurate information about seat availability. Desirable
Functions to handle refunds.
Functions to maintain mailing lists.
Functions to maintain and retrieve archive data. . Non-functional:
An easy to use human interface for staff with minimal training (many of the staff are temporary or voluntary).
On-line HELP facilities.
Access control by username and password.
Secure automatic daily back-up.
It is desirable that the system should port to other platforms (so that the Playhouse can sell it on).
The system should automate ticket production and remove most of the burden relating to issuing tickets just before performances. Appendix Figure 1 A typical current ticket. This is a scanned view of a theatre ticket. It does not print well and more detail is visible in the electronic version! The Sterne Auditorium Figure 2 A schematic view of the Sterne auditorium. (c) Nic Hollinworth, 2006 Figure 2 is a highly schematic view of the Sterne auditorium. It is not accurate with respect to seat allocation. The view shows the three tiers and boxes. Persephone's Pit (the Pomegranate) Figure 3 A schematic view of Persephone's pit auditorium. (c) Nic Hollinworth, 2006 Figure 3 is a schematic view of the Pomegranate auditorium. It is not accurate with respect to seat allocation - it represents an old seat configuration that has now been replaced by three tiers of benches (for fire regulation reasons). Our information is that the "gathered field" system and the restrictions on agents issuing tickets for this venue date from just after this seat configuration was changed.