Elicitation Techniques

APPLIED SYSTEMS ANALYSIS 9

Applied systems analysis

Name

Date

Running head: APPLIED SYSTEMS ANALYSIS 1

Description of the company

Columbia Sportswear Company is American based company that distributes and manufactures sportswear and outwear. This company was established in 1938 and is one of the most successful sportswear companies not in the United States but across the world. For instance, its annual sales average $1.37 billion and its market capitalization is approximately $1.18 billion. The company’s headquarters are in Oregon, Washington County and besides sportswear the company also produces camping equipment, headgear, footwear and skiwear. This company’s sales went up as a result of the fabric technology which it used to manufacture its jackets. As a result of this success, the company acquired Sorel Corporation which is a footwear maker in 2000. Despite this success, the company faces stiff competition from other sportswear manufacturing company such as Champion.

Stakeholders

In designing this system there are several stakeholders whose needs will have to be addressed. One of the stakeholders is the company’s management team. While formulating the system, the management team will have to be involved at all phases. This is because it will have to ensure that the system being formulated will be appropriate for the company. Besides this, the management team will be required to guide the people formulating the system. This will ensure that the system being formulated fits their customers as they are the ones that fully understand them. Besides this, the management team will also ensure that the system conforms to the company’s values, objectives and ethical standards.

Shareholders are also important stakeholders in the formulation of this system. This is mainly because they are interested in the company’s profits. Because of this, they need a system that will attract a lot of clients and customers. The increase in the number of clients means that sales and profits will also increase. Customers are also important stakeholders in this process. This is because the system will be formulated in regards to their needs. For instance, the system will have to conform to their values and ethical standards. It will also have to be simple so that every customer is in a position to easily use it (Pride & Ferrell, 2010).

Statement of work

The stiff competition that this company is facing has made it difficult for it to earn the revenues and profits it desires. This has made the company to look for new ways of marketing its products. As a result of this, the company has decided to look for a software system which will not only enable it to market its products, but also form a formidable relationship with its customers. The system to be formulated should therefore be able to collect customers’ information, besides advertising the company’s goods and directing them on how to purchase them.

Feasibility study

Before going on with this process of coming up with a system that will enable this company to acquire new customers, a feasibility study will have to be conducted to ascertain the possibility of the new system.

Economic feasibility: Based on the company’s revenues, it is in a position to finance all financial requirements of this project. For instance, it is in a position to purchase all software needed to make the system successful.

Organizational feasibility: The organization has adopted technological use in its activities such as production. This implies that it will be easy for this company to integrate the new system in its marketing operations.

Technical feasibility: The company employs highly qualified and competent employees only. Besides this, it regularly trains its employees how to use new technologies whenever they are discovered in the market. As a result of this, the company has the technical know-how needed to effectively integrate this system in its operations.

The SDLC selected

Before developing a new system, there are various steps that the project manager should put in place in order to ensure that the system becomes successful. This stems from the fact that the project manager usually wants to come up with a high quality systems apart from just completing the project. For instance, in this case, the project manager should ensure that the new software system has all features needed by Columbia Sportswear Company. The system must be in a position to meet customers’ demands and at the same time be very simple. The systems’ simplicity is to enable customers to use it easily. A complicated system might make it difficult for customers to use it something that might in turn make the company to lose customers to its competitors.

In order to ensure that the system selected is appropriate, the project needs to come up with an effective software development cycle. Based on the needs of Columbia Sportswear’s Company, the Water Fall Model will be ideal. This model comprises of planning, implementation, analysis and testing phases. In the first phase, the company will be able to first come up with plans on the new system. In this phase, the management team for instance will identify reasons why the company needs a new system and the features it should have. The manager will therefore allocate the funds needed to come up with the new system. In the second phase, the manager will have to analyze the features of the system and the impact that these features will have on the accessibility of the system. Besides this, the manager will also be able to analyze the net benefit of the new system. Once this is done, the manager will go on and implement the plan by creating the system. The manager will have to test the system in order to ascertain if it meets the company’s needs. For instance, the manager will have to contact several customers and ask them to use the system in order to get their views. These views will then be used to improve the quality of the system and also ascertain its suitability.

There are various advantages associated with using this model. One of the advantages of this model is that all phases are usually completed at the same time. This saves the company a lot of time and resources which would perhaps been used to complete different phases at different times. This model has a rigid structure which is easily understandable thus making it easy to follow these phases. Besides this, each phase has a review process which enables the manager to ascertain the quality of the system before moving to the next phase. Since the project of coming up with a new system does not involve a lot of things, this model is the best as it suitable for small projects.

Project schedule

A project schedule can be defined as the list containing the activities that the company will carry out in a project. These activities and deliverables usually have starting dates and finishing dates. The activities are usually determined by resources allocated to them, time needed to complete them and their budget. In Columbia Sportswear’s project, the acquisition of new servers will be the milestones. This is because these servers are the most important features of the new system. This is likely to take around three months as the company’s to supply them will have to bid for the contract. Since the company intends to end up with an effective system, it will have acquire high quality servers, and this can only be achieved through critically scrutinizing the companies that will bid for the contract. Once the servers are purchased, the manager will start to look for qualified employees to use in the project. For instance, these employees will have to prove their skills in Information technology before the project manager. This is likely to take around two weeks. Once the servers and staff are acquired, the manager will have to purchase the software needed for the applications. Purchasing software will not be a difficult task as they will be purchased online. However, this process will take around three days as the manager has to analyze the nature and type of software suitable for the new system.

Assessment plan

Once all items needed for the project are availed, the project will kick off. However, the manager will have to constantly assess the project. This assessment will enable him or her to report to the stakeholders how the project is going on. Besides this, the assessment plan will also enable the manager to identify if the project is behind or ahead of time. This plan will also assist the manager to compare the actual costs and the estimated costs of the projected, hence being able to know whether to make adjustments to the project or not. The manager might decide to assess the project on either weekly or monthly basis. However, this application system is very sensitive thus requiring the manager to monitor it on weekly basis as simple errors might bring about immense problems.

Staffing plan

The manager will have to come up with a good staffing plan in order to ensure that there are adequate employees to perform the duties associated with the project. To achieve this, the manager will have to identify the number of staff needed to perform duties related to the project for instance output, input and deliveries. The manager should consider the level staffing by looking at the positions needed in key project activities. Besides this, the manager should also be able to forecast supply of labor in the labor market. To do this, he or she will have to know the number of employees that the organization currently has and compare them to the number of people performing similar tasks in other organizations (Caruth, Caruth& Pane, 2009).

Communication plan

For the project to be successful, the manager will have to come up with an effective and efficient communication plan. This plan will ensure that information reaches its destination in time and in its original context. To come up with an effective communication plan, the manager will have to identify the situations when he or she will need to communicate. This will assist him or her in passing the intended information to the recipients in time.

Risks management plan

In project management, the manager has to come up with various measures of mitigating risks that the project might come across in its course. In projects, there are various risks that come up. For instance, accidents are usually common and if they are not foreseen, the y might end up negatively affecting the project. The other risk associated with projects is misuse of the company’s funds especially during the purchase of materials and services needed in the project. To avoid such risks, the manager will have to come up with ways of avoiding, controlling the impact of the risks or transferring them to other sources such as insurance companies (Royer, 2001).

References

Caruth, D. L., Caruth, G. D., & Pane, S. S. (2009). Staffing the contemporary organization: A guide to planning, recruiting, and selecting for human resource professionals. Westport, Conn: Praeger Publishers.

Pride, W. M., & Ferrell, O. C. (2010).Marketing. Australia: South Western Cengage Learning.

Royer, P. S. (2001).Project risk management: A proactive approach. Vienna, Virg: Management Concepts.