INFO498 Preliminary Investigation and System Requirements
Preliminary Investigation and Requirements Report Template
Version 0.0: [Date published]
Presented by: [Presenter’s name]
Worksheet
Client approval: Yes No
Note whether your case study needs to be ready in time for a specific event:
Date: Event:
Template
Case Study for [Customer Name]
General Information
Company profile
[Briefly describe your customer’s products or services. Include information about the company’s history.
Example:
Wingtip Toys, established in 1956, is the premier supplier to toy retailers worldwide.
Revenues in 2003: $3.5 million
Estimated IT budget for 2004: $1.2 million
Wingtip Toys ceased IT development after September 11, 2001, and has not pursued any recent IT development.]
Business situation
[Identify the problems that your customer is facing and their goals and objectives. List the strategic business or competitive reasons that caused the customer to reevaluate its current situation. Be as specific as possible, citing examples when appropriate and including supporting customer quotes.
Example: As a result of the recovery of the market, Wingtip Toys wants to procure software for improved tracking of inventory and purchasing.]
Technical situation
[Provide a detailed evaluation of the customer’s current technical situation. Identify what the customer uncovered during the evaluation of its systems, the technical challenges the customer is facing, and how the customer believes it can meet the challenges.
Example: Wingtip Toys’ current environment runs on older computers that are no longer capable of handling the bandwidth necessary for servicing Wingtip Toys’ worldwide customer base. Additionally, Wingtip Toys would like to allow customers to automate their s and also would like to eliminate telephone and paper s.]
Problem or Opportunity
[Create SWOT or Fishbone diagram]
A popular technique for investigating causes and effects is called a fishbone diagram, or Ishikawa diagram.
]
Project Scope and Constraints
[In this section, include descriptions of each of the following as they pertain to your system:
· Project scope
· Project creep
· Constraints
· Present versus future
· Internal versus external]
Perform Fact-Finding
[Document how you conducted fact finding and how you diagrammed current processes.]
Fact-Finding
· Fact-finding involves various techniques
· Depending on what information is needed to investigate the systems request, fact-finding might consume several hours, days, or weeks
· Analyze Organization Charts
· Obtain organization charts to understand how the department functions and identify individuals you might want to interview
· Conduct interviews
· Review documentation
· Observe operations
· Conduct a user survey]
Current Processes
Requirements
List of Requirements
[Define system requirements, and list the general categories into which system requirements fall. Consider examples of systems requirements in the outputs category, the inputs category, the processes category, the performance category, and the controls category.
Example:
· System must handle registration for regular students and children in after-care.
· Must track the payment method and status of students including calculation of payments and amount due.]
Department of Information Technology INFO498: Information Technology: Capstone
Starting your Internship at Club IT
Club IT is a downtown music venue managed and owned by Ruben Keys and Lisa Tejada. They both graduated with degrees in Business Administration in 2005, and decided to follow their dream to open a nightclub. During college, they supported themselves by working as musicians, Lisa playing jazz violin and Ruben on drums, so they learned quite a bit about nightclub operations from experience, in addition to business principles learned from their studies. Lisa and Ruben have just completed extensive remodeling of the interior of Club IT and are pleased with the results. Its high ceilings and high energy lighting creates an ambience of fun and energy. For music, they hire live bands on Fridays and Saturdays and have a live DJ Tuesdays through Thursdays (closed on Sundays). The DJ uses a collection of MP3 playlists, playing hip-hop, techno, and electronic with some Top 40’s thrown in.
Lisa and Ruben run the office and maintain all financial and business-related records. They realize that while the resources they spent on remodeling are paying off well, their information management is lagging behind. Their next project is a full analysis of their information needs, and to start it off, they have hired you as an intern.
To prepare for your first day of work, you and a few friends decide to spend a Friday evening at Club IT. Your visit is very enjoyable – you have made some new friends, learned some new dance steps, and really rocked with the great band. Reporting to work on Monday afternoon, you wonder though, how much information technology a nightclub can possibly need, and if there will be enough information and technology analysis opportunities to justify your internship at Club IT.
Sitting in the empty club a few hours before opening, you have your initial meeting with Ruben and Lisa. They give you background on the club and an overview of their need to boost their information technology, data management, and decision-making capabilities. Your first task is to get acquainted with the club and its operations, so Lisa has you log into their website from her desk in their tiny back office.
The current IT configuration of the workstations used by Lisa and Ruben in the Club IT back office is as follows:
a. Pentium Processor
b. 1GB of RAM
c. Ethernet Adapter
d. 17” Color Display
e. Windows XP Professional
f. Internet is Comcast High-speed to modem hardwired to computer
Much of the work at Club IT involves manual activity (cooking; setting, serving and clearing tables; escorting guests to tables; etc.) conventional keyboard data entry is often impractical.
Before proceeding, please look over their current web pages to include employee only sections. higheredbcs.wiley.com/legacy/college/rainer/0470169001/club_it/index.html
System Requirements
During a meeting with Ruben Keys and Lisa Tejada, they express some of their current perceived problems. Keeping track of inventory has been a major problem. They have run out of the most popular menu items six different times in the last month while being way oversupplied in items that were not moving.
Both Ruben and Lisa are comfortable with MS Office, to include Access. They know an Access database would be better than Excel spreadsheets but they are not sure why or how to set it up.
Ideally they would like a system that would adjust inventory levels the moment an article is ed with the waitress. Then a notification or an automatic would be generated when certain inventory levels are met. They would also like to see reports that showed trend data such as: the sale of different items, if a particular waitress had higher sales, or if time of the day had an effect on sales of different items. Security is always a concern as Lisa is extremely worried about anyone gaining access to their data.
Your internship could last the entire summer but they would like to evaluate you for the first 8 weeks. During that time, they would like a completed initial proposal (containing a Preliminary Investigative Report and System Requirements) by week 4, and a System Design Specification by week 7.
A template for the proposal has been provided to you and any questions that you have for Ruben and Lisa can be asked in the forum entitled “Questions for Rueben and Lisa.”
Link to Club IT Website:
higheredbcs.wiley.com/legacy/college/rainer/0470169001/club_it/index.html