RME Project Assignment: Analysis & Design Of Information System

Question

Task: For the purpose of this assignment, you are assumed to be the principal software consultant appointed to shoulder the systems analysis responsibilities in the project outlined in the case study. You will plan and manage the project as well as investigate and document its systems requirements. For this assignment, you will produce a report that discusses this project based on your understanding of it and the related investigation results through the tasks below.

1. Define the aims of the report.
2. Identify the project objectives.

Task 1: Approaches to Systems Development

• How would “Repair-Made-Easy (RME)” go about developing its information systems?
• Justify your choice for the selected approach to systems development.

Task 2: Systems Requirements

• What are the primary functional requirements for the new system?
• What are the non-functional requirements for the new system?

Task 3: Project Cost/Benefit Analysis

• Perform and discuss your Project Cost/Benefit Analysis.
• Provide an Excel spreadsheet with details about your Project Cost/Benefit Analysis.

Task 4: Project Management and Scheduling

• Show a Work Breakdown Structure and a Project Schedule (in the form of a Gantt Chart). Explain both of them and discuss how they relate to each other.
• Given the system goals, requirements, and scope as they are currently understood, is the Project Schedule reasonable? Why or why not?

Task 5: Systems Information Investigation Techniques

• Who are the stakeholders involved?
• Explain your choice of the 3 most useful investigation techniques.
• Justify the usefulness of these 3 investigation techniques.

Reflection and Conclusion

• Present your reflections about this project (e.g., achievement and constraints).
• Briefly summarize your findings.

References (must include at least 5 references with their related in-text citations

• For this report, please use the Harvard Referencing Style for citing references: https://www.cqu.edu.au/data/assets/pdf_file/0022/44392/HarvardGuideT12019final2.pdf

Answer

1.Introduction
The aim of information system project management assignment is to develop a web based application for RME incorporation. RME stands for Repair Made Easy. It is a company which provides all the spare parts for the computers where the computers involve the desktop and notebooks. The web based application should be available for all the stores under RME because all the sales and stock details will be updated in the provided website, so that it will be helpful for the company to analyse the total income they have made through the spare part business.

The objective of this proposed system is to overcome all the drawbacks that the team has faced while using the existing one. In the existing system, the excel sheet has been maintained to record all the spare details that are in stock and the parts that has been distributed. But when the business has started growing the maintenance work has become very vast and difficult part. In order to overcome all those issues, web based application had been developed.

2. How Systems Development approaches illustrate in RME project assignment?
Software Development Life Cycle is the basic approach that is used for project development. In the SDLC phase it includes requirements gathering, analysis, design, implementation and project delivery. The approaches that are used today are Scrum, Agile, Kenbon, etc. There are some of the traditional approaches that can be used for the development. Those are waterfall model, iteration and spiral model. All approaches includes all the phases described above where some can be managed easily and time can be saved. In case of RME project we can use the agile methodology for the development where this method focuses on the people and the project can be divided into different parts and delivered one after the other. In RME the main task is to maintain the sales and stock details of various branches, so the projects critical module will be separated from the others and the development will be made accordingly. Since RME is a web based product first the requirements gathering will be done with the client and the analysis phase will be started. Once the analysis is done project budget will be estimated and the design will be started. The basic prototype will be delivered to the client for the further approval so that the main implementation can be started. When the agile methodology is used the modules will be delivered immediately once the implementation is done. This is done to make the changes to the system module after module to avoid the issues in the future. Agile also helps to maintain the system easily in the future and the enhancements can be made easily without any issues. When the other approaches are used then the whole product will be delivered first and more issues for approval takes more time. Thus the agile approach has been chosen to implement RME.

3. Systems Requirements
Functional Requirements: The functionality that is included in the RME project are development of the web based application for the RME incorporation to store all the details of the sales and stock of the spare parts of the computer notebooks and desktops. The functionalities of the RME project described in this information system project management assignment are mentioned below:

• The admin module is created for the RME incorporation, in which the admin will be adding all the spare part details of the notebooks and the desktops. Available stock details of the computers will also be added to it. Overall rights will be provided to the admin so that he will be maintaining the website.
• The team from the RME incorporation says sales team will update all the price details to the system.
• The customers or the dealers can create an account and search for the parts they need and make the payment via the payment gateway in order to purchase the products.
• Once the purchase or order is made then the stock details will be updated automatically.
• Here in the website the client can view all the sales and stock available and the increase in income.

Non Functional Requirements:

• RME is a user friendly website where all the users can view the products and make an order to purchase the spare parts. Any user can use this system without any difficulty.
• The system can be maintained easily where the details of the spare parts will be available in separate storage so that it can be accessed any time.
• Enhancements to the system can be made any time where it does not affect the other implementation part. The system will be developed in a way that is independent to the existing one.
• The development of the website will be done on the Linux operating system so that it can be integrated into any operating system and can be used.

4. Project Cost/Benefit Analysis
Project cost analysis is provided to make the estimation for the project and the budget approval will be provided by the client for further implementation of the project. In this RME project assignment figure 1 explains about the cost estimation for the RME project and the RME should approve for the budget that is provided by the development team. The yearly budget includes the phase of maintenance and enhancement process of the project after many years. Here in this report the estimation is done for the sales and the annual income budget which includes the sales and recurring cost of the spare parts and the maintenance cost for the project for maintaining the sales and stock availability of the products.

Figure 1: Project Cost Analysis

5. Project Management and Scheduling
Work breakdown structure: The WBS for the RME project is given below. WBS describes how the modules will works and the flow of the project. The work or the modules are divided and it is described in Figure 2 of information system project management assignment. The WBS describes the main modules that are to be implemented first. The admin can update the product details and the view the sales and income details of the spare parts. The maintenance team will look after the sales and finance department to check the turnover.

Figure 2: Work Breakdown Structure

The project schedule chart has been given in the figure 3. Project schedule describes about the time taken for the team for completing the task or module one after the other. When the software development life cycle is used the project will be divided into many phases. The requirements phase explains about the information gathering process from the client and the proposal will be made for the project and the team will get approval from the client. Same way all the other phases will be divided and the time will be given for the each and every phase modules.

Figure 3: Project Schedule

The WBS and the project schedule are related to each other and the phases that are described in both the designs are similar. The project scheduling that is made for the RME project is reasonable because the chosen approach for the website development is the agile methodology where agile method can be used for smaller projects so that the time taken for the modules are enough and the task can be completed within the estimated time without any delay.

6. System Information Requirement Investigation Techniques
Stakeholders involved: The stakeholders involved in the RME project team are the client, project manager, users or customers, etc. The client is the person from the RME team where he will be available for the development and requirement gathering phase of the project. He is responsible for delivering the project requirements and the proposal approval will be provided to the development team by him. Next the project manager is the one who will be interacting with the development team and the client for enhancing and developing the project. Next is the user who is responsible for viewing and searching for the product and purchase the products.

Investigation techniques: The different types of investigation techniques available in software development are gathering information, defining the system requirements and prioritize the system requirements. These are the methods that are used for gathering the requirements from the client. Once this is done then the project implementation can be started. The first part involved is gathering the information from the client. It is for getting the whole information regarding the product and the doubts are cleared. Next is defining system requirements, in this parts based on the requirements gathered system requirements are documents. Next part is to prioritize the modules based on their criticality.

In any of the project development phase, requirements gathering are the important part where it is useful for developing the entire the product. When the gathered information is partial or invalid or not related to product then the time allotted for making the product will be wasted and there will be huge loss to the company. So that it is mandatory to gather the information from the client before starting the project implementation.

7. Reflections and Conclusions
RME is the web based product where it is used by the customers or the dealers for getting the products through online. The constraint that has been set in this RME project assignment is to maintain the sales and the stock of the spare parts that has been sold and stocks that are available. The requirements have been got from the client and further reports are documented accordingly. The project schedule and the work breakdown structure has been estimated and provided in the report for the client. The agile approach has been used for the development of the project so that the approval documents on each and every phase have been provided to the team. Agile also helps to maintain the system easily in the future and the enhancements can be made easily without any issues. Thus the report has been generated for the RME project and the requirements such as functional and non-functional requirements are described. Based on the requirements gathered the implementation can be done.

Reference List
Various Approaches for Systems Analysis and Design. 2019. Janelle B. Hill. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.umsl.edu/~sauterv/analysis/termpapers/f11/jia.html. [Accessed 27 August 2019].

Work Breakdown Structure for IT Projects (WBS). 2019. Darwin. [ONLINE] information system project management assignment Available at: https://project-management.com/work-breakdown-structure-for-it-projects-wbs/. [Accessed 27 August 2019].

Develop a Project Plan for Your Website. 2019. Jia-Ching Lin. [ONLINE] Available at: http://dummies.com/web-design-development/develop-a-project-plan-for-your-website/. [Accessed 27 August 2019].

How To Identify Stakeholders For Your Website Project. 2019. Kris. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.npgroup.net/blog/how-to-identify-stakeholders-for-your-website-project/. [Accessed 27 August 2019].

Systems Investigation and Analysis. 2019. LaGreca. [ONLINE] Available at: http://facpub.stjohns.edu/~wolfem/4322/Chapter12/. [Accessed 27 August 2019].