Transcript Course Outline

Last week
• PCB case study : presentations
• Access hours for labs
– MBA students have access to Lab. 2.110
all day Fri. Sat. and Sun.
• Exams : format
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Summer exam for MBA 642
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Friday 9th May at 4.30 p.m.
1½ hour written exam
Will cover material covered in lectures
It is assumed handouts will have been read
Answer 2 questions from 4
Essay type answers
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Requirements discovery
• Meetings with users (who, when, what outcome, …)
• Checklist of questions that clarify user requirements
• Describe existing processes
– Document how things are currently done
– Review inputs and outputs of current process (screens, forms, reports)
– Outline problems with current way of doing things (speed, risk of error,
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– What improvements are expected from system (single point of data
entry, faster reports, less manual work, …)
• How to design and communicate the proposed solution
– Review requirements documentation
– Walk-through solution
– Get sign-off from users
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Fact finding techniques
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Sampling of existing forms and files
Site visits
Observation of work environment
Research of similar systems
Surveys of users and management
Interviews of users and management
Prototyping
Joint Requirements Planning (JRP)
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Requirements Definition Report
• Introduction
– Purpose
– Background
– Scope
• General Project Description
– System Objectives
• Requirements and constraints
– Functional requirements
– Non-functional requirements
• Conclusion
– Outstanding issues
Appendix (eg. Questionnnaires & responses)
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Purchase request and payment
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Departments make spending requests
Budget is checked in the allocated budget file
If budget exceeded, request is rejected
Approved requests are stored and used to create
Purhcase orders (PO’s) for suppliers
• Goods received notes (GRN) are matched with
PO’s to identify any discrepancies
• When supplier invoice is received, 3 way match is
made between PO, GRN and invoice prior to
payment
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Example : Budget monitoring case
• What analysis method would you use and why?
– Interviews
• Management / Department interviews
– Describe the special approval process
– What are the “tolerance levels” for overspending of budget
– How many requests, how long to approve, backlog issues
– Documentation
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Copies of current spending requests
List of departments and corresponding budgets
Print-out from allocated budget file
Copy of spending summary report
Process for order supply of parts (PO’s?)
Copy of delivery advice details
– Requirements report
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Example : Budget monitoring case
• What sort of output would you provide?
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Requirements report
Questionannaires
Functional Decomposition
Data Flow Diagrams
ERD
Etc.
• How would you validate requirements?
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JRP
Prototype
Approving Requirements report
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ERP projects: resources required
Technical
Functional analysts
Developers
DBA’s
Software vendor
Hardware vendor
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Project
Project team
Process leads
Project Managers
Business
Users
User management
Steering Committee
Systems Integrator
ERP project resources : CSF’s
• Adequate on-site project team to engage users
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Specification
Testing
Conversion
Go-live
Key functional expertise for workarounds
Users with 4 weeks hands-on before go-live
Managers defend design decisions made
Project team keeps ownership of project
Prototype early, prototype often
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ERP project resources : CFF’s
• Adequate on-site project team to engage users
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Specification
Testing
Conversion
Go-live
Loss of know-how to SI
Legacy experts unwilling to make
jump
System untested by users,
processes not validated by users
workarounds
Key functional expertise for
Users with 4 weeks hands-on before
go-livebuy-in not secured
Management
Managers defend design decisions made
Project team gets bogged down in
Project team keeps ownership of project bureaucracy
Prototype early, prototype often No time for re-design in plan
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ERP-Local support for global processes
Technical Specification
Standard process
Global functionality
Minimal customisation
Upgradability
Low risk
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Development IS
International
Implementation
Support
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Languages
Currencies
Legal entities
Interfaces
Local reports
Enhancements
Localisations
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LOCAL
GLOBAL
Process design
Resource management issues
• High turnover of skills during project
• Rotating people through different roles on project
for education / development
• Training for project team
• Relationship with line management (seconded,
power user etc.)
• Reward for participation of end-users (eg. bonus,
promotion, …)
• Re-integrating team into existing organisation post
go-live
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Resources : process
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Process lead
Functional analyst
Power users
Application specialist
Users
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Process issues …
• Ensuring key process issues are resolved
• Do we invoice customers on shipment or on delivery?
• Who should open the new accounting period for Purchasing?
• Receivables are coming through from a legacy system, but it’s
impossible to identify the country of origin
• Sales orders being received in Euros are giving “Unrecognised
currency” errors and halting the interface job
• Currency exchange rates updated during month and skewing
month-end results, who should troubleshoot?
• Revenue from Professional Services is having to be manually
shipped at month-end : no legacy system
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Resources : data
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Data clean-up team
Data conversion team
Data conversion programmer
Legacy data team
Data quality testing and maintenance
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Data issues …
• Getting and maintaining clean data
– When creating a new customer, who has
control?
– 42 occurrences of Siemens in your customer
database, what do you do?
– Customers exist in ERP core database, but also
in several legacy systems. How do you make
sure they are in synch?
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IT resources : operations
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Database administrator
Systems administrator
Operators : core apps
Server operators
Storage technicians
HelpDesk
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Database issues …
• Guaranteeing “high availability”
• How often should Test be refreshed?
• How many environments should I have
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Test
Production
Development
Training
Business Simulation
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• If I implement a change to Production, do I need to implement
the same change across all environments?
• 20 programmers developing / testing new code every day: how
do I track releases to production?
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Systems admin issues …
• Ensuring system access for users
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New users
Changes to existing profiles
System downtime for maintenance
Forcing users out of system
Tracking source of corrupt data to user profile
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HelpDesk issues …
• Calls arriving at HelpDesk are either :
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Forgotten password
New user
Changes to user profile
Printing problems
Connectivity problems
Response time problems
System crashes
System error messages
PC problems
I need more training
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HelpDesk issues …
• …or :
• Functionality questions (how do I transact an
invoice?)
• Process questions (when should I post to GL?)
• Reporting (I need a revenue report)
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Project handover to HelpDesk
• Prior to go-live, implement procedures for :
– Logging calls such that it will be routed to the right person and
tracked, reported on and escalated
– Training for HelpDesk to be able to ask the right questions
concering an application issue
– Troubleshooting application issues to be able to deal with simple
“fixes”
– Ongoing consultation with application team regarding new
functionality being rolled out, common errors, planned outages, …
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IT resources : applications
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Configuration specialists
Interface specialist
Application support
Forms developer
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Configuration issues …
• Adapting to changes in business processes
– Eg. Can AR->GL interface be made real-time?
– For every order type in system, for every country, an
additional currency (€) has to be added to the sales
order configuration parameters
– Italy wants to intercept invoices to change the date to
delivery date, how do I do this?
– France wants to turn on “localisation”, who will test it?
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Interface issues …
• Improving quality of information received
– Sales orders being received in Euros are giving
“Unrecognised currency” errors and halting the
interface job
– 2 sales orders exist in system with same order number :
interface crashing
– Users creating quotes in legacy system, approving and
sending through to ERP, but quotes not showing up
until 4 hours later?
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Application issues (forms) …
• Business wishes to change / enhance process
– New field required on Sales Order to indicate if it was
converted from legacy.
– Screen required allowing field staff to ship certain
product lines (but not others)
– New form required to give users option to convert an
existing sales order in FRF to €
– New form required to be able to view customers for a
given country only
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People issues (business
readiness) …
Hands-on time
Training
Training logistics
Communication to business from project
Understanding local processes
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