rewrite2

Professor

21st of February 2014

Course Project: Close Out Report

Introduction

This paper's purpose is to present all the necessary documentation to finalize system development life cycle and close this project down. Petrie's Electronics Loyalty Program turned into a success story. This was not easy to achieve, as many changes and challenges for both development team and Petrie's personnel did occur. At some point, this project was at serious risk of being a failure due to sever, additional requirements made by Petrie's departments. Eventually, with a slight time (almost 1 and a half months) and budget (8% of initial budget) extension.

Final System Acceptance Criteria

The system was thoroughly tested with real data for a considerable period (almost a month) in our facilities. Critical metrics were measured and adjustments were made to improve performance and fix bugs before normal installation. New system was operating along with the old one and this turned to be extremely helpful for both sides. Data traffic with which our system was tested, was almost triple the traffic we normally expect. System worked all this period without any interaction. Every minor change that was required, was made in less than an hour and without users identify it, as data was backed up. Users with intermediate and basic computer knowledge operated the new

Resources: Were the right personnel assigned to the project?

Concerning human resources assigned to this project, I have the feeling that all involved personnel was highly skilled and motivated, although their main duties consumed much of their time and effort. All showed great interest and personal interest in this promising project and the result is a proof of this. Everyone had something useful to offer, from marketing department to design supervisor. It was interesting how one's idea could invoke more useful and handy ideas to be presented and lead to a high quality system.

What are some maintenance challenges you see for the CRM system? How can we reduce the cost for the six types of maintenance mentioned in Chapter 10?

Like any qualitative system of CRM, Petrie's Loyalty system will need a detailed, but easy to follow maintenance system. Having talked this issue with development team, we have come to the estimation that a major update of the system may be needed in 5 years from now. Till then, minor updates will be provided by the vendor for free as agreed. Moreover, every Friday evening a log report of performance metrics will be automatically sent to vendor's facilities for reviewing and evaluation by development team.

Because our system is web-based, maintenance procedures can be more easily conducted and changes are more easily implemented remotely and in specific hour ranges that traffic is reduced. With our careful and thorough analysis and design that were reviewed many times along with professional implementation in our facilities made by developers, we have reached a point at which we believe only minor maintenance tasks will be required. I have to mention specifically here the pilot system that was implements in our facilities at the same time with the old system. Having that made, crucial bugs were fixed before main installation took place.

What preventive maintenance tasks need to be scheduled? What other types of maintenance will be needed? How can we measure the effectiveness of maintenance?

Corrective maintenance is expected to take place during the first month after system's installation. Again all expenses have been included in system's price. Adaptive maintenance is not expected to take place, since every possible aspect and requirement is believed to have been anticipated through numerous life cycles of the system. A room has been left for perfective and preventive maintenance for an extra fee of $150 per hour for development team.

Concerning preventive maintenance, numerous measures guarantee that only minor maintenance will be needed in this field:

· there has been a forecast the system to interact with triple the size of our current customers

· minimal design and less pictures will assure that the site will be loaded efficiently by all browsers and all operational systems

In an effort to measure maintenance effectiveness, we have to first measure the following factors:

· number of failures

· time between each failure

· type of failure

For this purpose a special process has been established that will be published soon in an effort to be followed by Petrie's personnel as soon as possible. A check off list has to be filled up every time a failure occurs. This form will be accessible in company's corporate network. The next thing to do is of course informing IT department for this failure.

Describe the process you recommend for controlling maintenance requests and configuration management.

As mentioned above, this form for entering failure's details is critical to be filled the soonest possible. The user shall be very careful and provide accurate details as this information will be provided as is to the development team of our vendor. This process is meant to minimize risks and guarantee flawless operation of the system after a 3-4 weeks period.

Apart from this, it has been recently established a process through which all maintenance requests will be handled in an effort to improve performance and productivity. All requests will be mailed to IT department. The requester will categorize his/her request as being critical, improving or useful. Every Tuesday and Friday morning, IT team will evaluate these requests and will deliver a categorized list of all maintenance requests gathered so far categorized appropriately to Executive Manager. Executive Manger will call meetings on his will to prioritize the tasks to be done.

Describe the most important lessons learned.

This project has a lot to offer, not only to our loyal customers, but to our company as well.

A publication about lessons learned is almost ready and will be delivered after evaluated by our team. Some of the key points concerning the lessons learned during this strenuous period of system's development are:

· requirements shall be clear and identified the soonest possible. Ideally, all requirements should be written down during analysis phase

· timeframes must be strictly followed. This means that if a decision about taking over a specific plan is made, this has to be prioritized against other tasks

· regular meetings of team members is essential and paramount for project's prospective

Conclusion

Concluding, we have to mention that this important system finally found its way to production. Many problems were revealed along the way, most of them resulting from communication and cooperation among company's representatives / departments. Nevertheless, having company's prosperity in mind all stakeholders did their best and the result has to be granted to every one of them. I hope to work again with them in an even more promising project in the future.

References