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Soccer League - Final Capstone Proposal
Soccer League - Final Capstone Proposal
Client:
Course:
Team Members:
William Barajas
Mercedes Garcia
Thomas Krause
Eric Ybarra
Executive Summary
Managing a sports league of any kind is a time-consuming task. In soccer, managers are
responsible for scheduling games, finding volunteer referees, and keeping track of scores. In
addition, managers are responsible for seeding playoff games accordingly and ensuring all teams
know their standings. Keeping referees and teams posted can be difficult when doing things by
paper or posting things through social media since not everyone is easy to contact or available at
specific times. Adding to that, not everyone uses social media. Parents and spectators who miss
any games, currently have no means of receiving a recap of the best plays of the game or what
the final score was at a moment’s notice. However, much of these tasks can be automated in this
For this project, our main goal is to create a mobile application alongside a website that is
capable of providing users of this service the ability to track team statistics. There will be no
issues whether the end user has a smartphone that is either an Android or is an IOS device to the
extent that they will have access to an alternative. The website will have all of the applications
features and will be available via any computer or phone with internet access. Additionally,
league admins will be able to manage their own league by having access to different tools such
as being able to start multiple leagues, removing and adding teams, and assigning different roles.
The time frame for completing the project will span over an eight-week period beginning
The population that will be affected by this project will include league administrators,
coaches, players and any soccer interested in their local soccer league. The client that will help in
testing the application and website will be South County Soccer League. South County Soccer
PROPOSAL FOR A SOCCER LEAGUE TRACKING APPLICATION 3
League is a privately held organization dedicated to providing recreation for local boys, girls,
and adults.
The purpose of this project is to provide a means of simplicity and reliability in order to
have everyone involved in the organization as well as soccer enthusiasts solely focused in the
sport.
PROPOSAL FOR A SOCCER LEAGUE TRACKING APPLICATION 4
Table of Contents
Introduction 5
Approach/Methodology 9
Ethical Considerations 9
Legal Considerations 10
Project Scope 11
Resources Needed 12
Milestones 12
Final Deliverables 13
Usability Testing/Evaluation 13
References 17
Appendix 18
PROPOSAL FOR A SOCCER LEAGUE TRACKING APPLICATION 5
Introduction
South County Soccer League is one of many soccer leagues that have a problem. Being
able to track various items at once can be overwhelming. Managers are responsible for
scheduling games, finding volunteer referees, and keeping track of scores. Keeping referees,
managers, teams and players up to date can be a difficult task when it comes to doing things by
paper which in turn can become a time-consuming assignment relatively quick. Our solution for
our client, South County Soccer League, is to create a mobile application alongside a website
that makes it easier to keep track of teams, games and players. Not only will this product benefit
managers, referees, and players but soccer enthusiasts who would like to follow their favorite
local soccer team’s performance. Some of our team members have been part of a local soccer
team and have experience firsthand how difficult it can be when everything is done on paper or
over social media. Not all soccer players, staff, coaches have social media which causes a
problem to solely use the traditional method of pencil and paper. This led our team to come to
the conclusion that this is a problem that needs a solution which we can provide. This project is
sponsored by South County Soccer League but it can be used by any soccer league regardless of
their location.
I. Provide an app and website based on the same code base and API where leagues can keep
II. Allow users to register and follow teams, create their own leagues and teams, assign
III. Provide ability to track teams in a league and their scores, games played, games in
progress, missed, won, lost, and tied. Team placement should be viewable in the App and
online.
IV. Provide ability to create divisions in each league and for referees to track all game events
such as yellow cards, red cards, score and by which player, halftime, substitutes, game
V. League admin should be able to assign roles for different users and invite them to the
teams.
Community sport leagues often struggle with keeping track of their schedules for practice
and games, in a manner in which all players can access it from one location with ease. These
leagues must also keep track of wins and losses as well as other statistics. Often, this information
is still being tracked by the manager of the league and schedules are being handout to players in
paper form. This can create a problem when schedule changes occur. Not being able to have one
location, either website or mobile app, where players and managers can easily access to find their
schedules and games stats, makes it difficult when there are inevitable changes to schedules or
game updates. For community leagues, there are few options to help with this issue of
scorekeeping and scheduling. Currently, there are very few mobile applications that offer
services to assist community sports leagues with their needs. One mobile application that offers
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such services to sports leagues is “LeagueApps”, where users register on their website and pay to
have access to the mobile app. Users can choose the sport they want and are able to customize
features. From their website, LeagueApp describe themselves as “The LeagueApp platform sets
you up for success by tackling time-consuming tasks, which allows you to get back to what you
love” (About us, 2018). If a user is interested in purchasing this service, the user must register for
a demo and select pricing. The actual features and services are not clear on their website, until
the user has registered and received a quote. This may deter a lot of potential users given the lack
of clarity from LeagueApp’s website. Because users have to register before being able to see
what LeagueApp’s features and services are, they have to wait until LeagueApp contacts them
via email to get a demo of their mobile app and later receive a pricing quote. For most
community leagues, this seems like a lot of unnecessary work just to have access to scorekeeping
and scheduling services. There are a few mobile apps that offer basic scorekeeping functions
such as “Scoreboard-On the Go”, “Score-Keeper”, and “Broad ScoreKeeper”. These apps do not
have other features other simple scorekeeping which is not ideal for community leagues given
that it lacks scheduling and game stat information. Example of current scorekeeping applications
offering more features are “GameChanger Baseball Softball” and “Scoreboard”. These apps are
user friendly and do not require prior registration for users to see what they offer. However, these
apps lack features for scheduling and other services that community sports leagues need to
facilitate their tasks and keep track of updates on games stats and ever-changing scheduling.
Although there are mobile apps that track team scores, there are few that offer more services that
are useful to community leagues. Of the few mobile apps that exist in the market, like
“LeagueApp”, make it difficult for potential users to learn about their services and features
without having to first register and hear back from them via email. There seems to be a place for
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a useful mobile app or website that allows community sport leagues to easily keep track of
scores, scheduling, and other pertinent team information all in one place where users are updated
with changes without the hassle of registering to see a demo of the app first.
Our project of creating a mobile application, as well as a website, will serve community
sports leagues for small local sports teams. The stakeholders include the league’s coaches,
players, referee volunteers, and managers. Community leagues are often small and are made up
of volunteers who donate their spare time to the league. They are adults with full time jobs,
college students, and high school students who all have busy lives and responsibilities outside of
their work in the leagues. These members volunteer their time as players, coaches, or managers
because they are passionate about playing sports and enjoy investing their time in the community
leagues. They love being part of a team, and are pleased to be able to compete with other local
sports teams. Because members are donating their spare time to practices and games, there leaves
little time to invest in the organization of league logistics such as creating and distributing
schedules for practices and games, scorekeeping, and game stats. Often, these leagues have
Facebook pages where members can check for any updates in schedules or game stats. In some
cases, there are group text messages where members can be reached in case there have been
changes in scheduling or game stat information. A few issues arise with the current
organizational procedures for these leagues. Because most members have full time jobs or are
full time students, the need to have to go to the member’s Facebook account to search for their
team’s page is time consuming and would have to dig through all the content on the Facebook
page in order to gather basic information. Users will benefit from our mobile app or website
PROPOSAL FOR A SOCCER LEAGUE TRACKING APPLICATION 9
contains all pertinent information in one place without competing with other content. They will
be able to easily access information about their team and players. This is beneficial because
members do not waste time digging to find information about their team or being distracted by
other content. Members will also not be bombarded by constant text messages when being
contacted for updates. Leagues will have an opportunity to organize their tasks with ease without
wasting their time printing schedules or updating their Facebook page. Our project will allow
league members to have more time to do what they love, play sports.
Approach/Methodology
We will begin our approach by mapping out the layout of the app and website. As well as
conducting a meeting to see how the work will be split up amongst the group then each member
of the team will conduct relevant research that pertains to this project. This includes reading
valuable information from a credible source that will help with the creation and enhancement of
the app’s and website’s features. Also, our group should keep remaining to brush up on their
skills and knowledge of NativeScript framework and REST APIs so that they may be applied to
the project.
Ethical Considerations
In the Soccer League app, there are current plans to show the team roster which could
potentially be accessible by anyone. As of yet, we have yet to discuss how to handle players and
children whose parents do not want them to be listed on the app or website. While this could just
be there name or initials and generally would be acceptable, we should consider options for
parents who want to keep their children’s information confidential. Going into the project, this
PROPOSAL FOR A SOCCER LEAGUE TRACKING APPLICATION 10
will be one ethical concern that we’ll need to be aware of. One possible solution is to allow the
parent to list an alternative display name for the player such as a first initial and last name or
only first name. Another solution could be to allow the parent to mark their player as private and
only show the player number without a name. The team will need to contact the league to see
In addition, since the application and website will require technology to access. There is a
chance some underprivileged groups would not be able to interact with it. Unfortunately, we do
not have the means to provide access to technology for them. However, one possible way we
could solve this is to allow the league the ability to print out the scores and match history for
these situations. The league would then be able to handle any situations that arise and handle this
For this project, there will not be any human study research required.
Legal Considerations
There are similar services out there to what the Soccer League App will provide. As of
yet, we have not done any research on patents in this area. Likely there’s no patents that would
interfere with the development of the application. However, the team will need to do our due
diligence to ensure we’re not infringing on a patent that could result in legal trouble. In addition,
the application will need to have an End User agreement for each user and league that uses the
application. This should ensure that users are aware of what their data is used for what is allowed
on the application. The user agreement should help protect the team from any lawsuits against us
by a league.
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However, we could also help circumvent issues by putting a disclaimer on the league
creation tool that leagues should have their own agreements with parents as most already have
Lastly, any technologies and external services used in the application should be given
credit for their work. For example, we have plans to use NativeScript for the application which
has a license agreement that should be visible and credit given to them according to their license.
In the application, this should be clearly visible along with any other services or software we use
in the application.
Project Scope
Timeline/Budget
Module Task
6 Testing
8 Presentation
Resources Needed
This project will require various resources during the development and testing phase.
The integrated development environment that will be used to write both server-side and client-
side code will be AWS Cloud9. NativeScript framework will be used for Android and IOS web
deployment. In order to work collaboratively, our team will use a version control system known
Milestones
The project will consist of many phases each having an achievable milestone. During the
first phase, the key milestone will be to come up with the project setup and create initial schema.
Phase two will consist of the development stage that will be composed of multiple parts. This
includes designing a user interface, creation of teams and leagues, management of player and
games, score tracking, and team statistics. In the testing phase, it will be composed of having
focus groups from South County Soccer League testing the application as well as the website in
order to receive constructive feedback about the following products. In the final phase, it will be
to refine any bugs found during the testing phase in order to produce a bug-free final product.
As this project will be tested with a focus group of teams from the league, various risks
could appear. This includes major unexpected bugs, like issues with functions that the website
will have or can have that the app might not be able support correctly. Not enough research and
PROPOSAL FOR A SOCCER LEAGUE TRACKING APPLICATION 13
understanding on how to build an application/website can also delay the completion of the
project or lead to it being incomplete. The dependencies that are required is the group and the
understanding of the work that is being put into the application, as well as a focus group to help
Final Deliverables
Final Deliverables includes a mobile application that android users will be able to use for
tracking various different statistics of their leagues, players, etc. Alongside the application, there
will be a website that will allow users that do not have access to an android smartphone to use on
any other smartphone or computer. Both the application and website will provide valuable
services that any community soccer league can find useful to their organization. One major
component to our application and website is a scorekeeping feature in which there is a record of
scores per team in any given game. Users are able to compile statistics from the data imputed
after every game. Aside from scorekeeping, we will also deliver an area for administrators to set
up a schedule for games and practice times. This will make it easy when changes or updates to
the schedule occur. Players and other members will be notified when possible changes occur,
whether it’s canceled games or location changes. An essential part of the application and website
is that we will provide a record of all the players and their stats. With all this we hope to turn in
an application that is what the clients seek and is easy to use and understand.
Usability Testing/Evaluation
To test out application and website, we plan to apply an Agile approach and Test-Driven
Development (TDD). As we are writing our code we will test as we develop each phase and
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components of the application and website. In terms of usability testing, we will begin with
members of our team. For example, when William finishes his part, another member that has not
worked on William’s part will test it. We will do this throughout the process to make sure every
part is easy to use to someone who has not worked on that particular phase.
Once we have completed the application and website, we plan to have users with basic
computer or smartphone knowledge test it. Our application and website will be evaluated by
members of the South County Soccer League such as coaches, players, and volunteers. This will
assure that the application and website are simple for anyone to use. We plan to give the
members of the South County League a week to test out the application and website. We will
send out a survey for users to review the application and website. We will use Google Forms to
create an evaluation for users to provide feedback and rate the application and website.
In the evaluation form, we focus on the usefulness of the application and website. We
want to verify that the application and website meets a soccer league’s needs. Our goal is for the
application and website to have all the components needed for a community soccer league to
function with ease. We will have the users rate the usefulness of the application and website, we
have a rating of one to four, one being “Not useful” and four being “Very useful”. Another area
of interest is the ease of usability of the application and website. Users do not need to have
extensive knowledge in computers or complicated software in order to use the services that we
will provide. It is important that members of the South County League are able to use the
application and website to the fullest with little confusion. Usability of the application and
website will also be evaluated within our survey. We ask testers to rate the difficulty level both
the application and website. Testers will choose a rating from one to four, with one being
PROPOSAL FOR A SOCCER LEAGUE TRACKING APPLICATION 15
“Difficult” and with four being “Easy”. This will give us insight on the user experience and we
will know if it meets the user’s needs for an effective soccer tracking application.
In addition to a series of rating questions, our survey will also ask for tester/user input.
We ask the testers what they liked the most about the application and website. Testers will be
able to provide their feedback about features or usability that they like the most. This will let us
know if we met the needs for a soccer league to function efficiently with the use of our
application and website. We also ask what the testers how the application and website can be
improved. With this information we can see where the application or website falls short, given
that the testers suggest improvements for it. This will be the most valuable question for us
because it forces the tester to be honest about an area or aspect of the app in which they we were
not happy with. This will reveal if the function or usability is not working the way it is intended
to, this information can only be given by the South County League members. A piece of
information that is also valuable to us is if the testers are likely to recommend the service the
application or website provides. We ask them how likely are they to recommend the application
or website with a range of one to four, with one being “Not Likely” and four being “Very
Likely”. If the testers are likely to recommend the app or website, then it is a good indication that
it useful to them and that they are happy with the final product. Of course, if they are likely not
to recommend it then they are not fully happy with the final product and needs improvement. We
end the survey with a “Comments” section where testers are able to leave any comments about
the app or website. Getting feedback from users with basic computing skills is essential, and our
survey is constructed in a way that we are able to receive insight from actual members of a
soccer league.
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William Barajas
● Android application testing and support
● Overview / Home Page functionality
○ Show team placement and record in the league
○ Most recently completed game, who it was against, and who won
○ Upcoming event / game and its location and time.
● Login and Sign In functionality
○ Allow a user to log into the application
● Assist with any other development tasks where needed
Mercedes Garcia
● App Design
● Schedule / Event pages
○ Add Event / Game
○ Delete Event / Game
○ View Event / Game
○ Modify Event / Game
○ All other functionality for schedules and events
● Assist with any other development tasks where needed
Thomas Krause
● Database Schema and Design
● RESTful API development and modifications where needed
○ All functionality
● Team Selection and Sign Up functionality
○ Allow user to register and accept invites to teams
○ Allow user to select a team to view its data and be used in other parts of the app
● Cross compiling mobile application to the web and ensure compatibility
● Assist with any other development tasks where needed
Eric Ybarra
● iOS application testing and support
● Roster pages and functionality
○ Add member to team
○ Delete member from team
○ View team members
○ Invite team members
○ Allow only admins and coaches to make modifications to the team
○ All other roster and team role functionality
● Assist with any other development tasks where needed
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References
About us. (2018, June 18). Retrieved August 6, 2019. Helping Make Sports Happen. Retrieved
from https://leagueapps.com/about/
https://gc.com/
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Appendix
Soccer League Application and Website Survey