Business Analysis ilab wk3

Transcript of interview with Ray Pairman, Field Service Manager, OfficeFix Inc.

Subject: Initial requirements for the Mobile Service Knowledge Base project

Analyst: Thank you for meeting with me to talk about the new Mobile Service Knowledge Base project.

Ray: It’s my pleasure. I’m excited about what this new system will be able to do for our department, so I’m happy to help.

Analyst: How, exactly, do you expect this new system to help you?

Ray: As you know, we send service technicians to customers’ locations to repair office equipment like copiers, fax machines, and computers. We work on many kinds of equipment and there are different repair procedures for every make and model. Right now, our techs have to haul around a whole stack of service manuals, and then waste time finding the right manual and flipping through it to find the steps for the service procedure they need to perform. With the Mobile Service Knowledge Base, they’ll have the most common service procedures stored on a handheld device and will be able to call up the instructions they need right on the screen. It should save our folks a lot of time.

Analyst: What do you think this handheld device should look like?

Ray: Well, the most important thing is a nice big screen so the tech will be able to see the instructions, and any illustrations or videos that go with them. A mobile phone or PDA would be too small—we’d probably want at least a seven-inch screen. It should be light enough to carry easily; no more than a couple of pounds. And battery life is important—the tech would need to get through a full 8-hour day on one battery charge.

Analyst: Would you need a color screen?

Ray: Oh yes, a lot of the service procedures have color illustrations.

Analyst: So take me through how you see this being used. Say a service tech walks into the customer’s office on a call . . .

Ray: The customer would point out the piece of equipment to be fixed. The tech would read the make and model number from a label, and enter that into the handheld device. It would bring up a list of the most common service procedures that might be needed on that piece of equipment. The tech would choose one from the list, and the device would display the instructions for performing that procedure. The tech would then refer to the instructions as he or she works does the work.

Analyst: Entering the make and model—would they be typing that in on a keyboard of some sort?

Ray: Our people are great service techs but they are not necessarily great typists or computer users. We’d want to minimize the amount of typing necessary, and in general make this whole thing as simple to use as possible.

Analyst: We could do something like give them lists to choose from, rather than type things in. They might start with a list of all the equipment manufacturers. Once they pick a manufacturer, then a list of all the models from that manufacturer would appear for them to pick from. How does that sound?

Ray: That sounds great. They wouldn’t need to type at all!

Analyst: Is a service procedure mostly text—a set of instructions like step 1, do this, step 2, do that, and so on? You also mentioned illustrations and photos, and I think I heard you say something about video?

Ray: Yes, all the procedures have step by step written procedures, and most of them also have graphics of some kind, like a diagram or a schematic. Some of them have photos, and a few of them have short video clips showing how to perform the procedure. We hope to add more video clips as we go along; the techs find them really helpful.

Analyst: How many different service procedures will need to be stored on this device?

Ray: Well, we currently service equipment from 50 different manufacturers, and about 20 models from each manufacturer. And we want to store the 10 most common procedures for each model.

Analyst: That’s today. Do you think those numbers will increase over, say, the next five years?

Ray: Yes, the number of models we service is always increasing. We might need procedures for twice as many models five years from now.

Analyst: That’s a fairly large amount of data. I’m interested in the videos because they can take up a lot of storage space. How long are these video clips?

Ray: Not too long—about 5 minutes each.

Analyst: What digital file formats are used for all this?

Ray: The procedures are supplied to us by the manufacturers as PDF files. The videos are in either AVI or MOV format. So the system will need to support storing and displaying data in PDF, AVI and MOV.

Analyst: You said your main goal with this system is to save time, so let’s talk about speed. How quickly will this system need to work?

Ray: A service tech should be able to enter the make and model, and select the needed procedure, in no more than 30 seconds. The procedure should be pulled up on the screen within 5 seconds after the tech makes that selection.

Analyst: What will happen if the system fails to work? Will the service tech still be carrying around the printed manuals to fall back on?

Ray: No, we want to eliminate their having to carry around any printed manuals. So if the system doesn’t work, it will be a big problem. The tech will probably have to reschedule the service call for the following day, which will make the customer very unhappy.

Analyst: It sounds like the system will need to pretty reliable, then. Obviously you want it to be as dependable as possible, but no system is perfect. What would you consider an acceptable rate of failure, where the service tech is unable to get the correct procedure from the system?

Ray: No more than one out of every one hundred service calls. Any more than that would definitely be unacceptable.

Analyst: Are the service procedures sensitive or confidential in any way?

Ray: Oh, yes. We license that information from the equipment manufacturers, and they’re very touchy about it. We need to make sure that only our authorized service personnel can access it.

Analyst: So, each service tech should log in to the system with a username and password before using it?

Ray: Yes, that would work. Also, if the device is unused for, say, fifteen minutes, the screen should blank and they should have to log in again. That way, if they leave the device lying around in the customer’s office, no one else will be able to access it.

Analyst: What if a device were lost or stolen?

Ray: That could be a problem. It would be great if we could somehow disable a device remotely from here if it’s reported missing.

Analyst: Is there anything else I should know?

Ray: No, I think we’ve covered everything, at least for now.

Analyst: Well, this should give us enough to get started on the requirements specification for the project. If I have any questions later, would it be OK to call or email you?

Ray: Definitely.

Analyst: I’ll type up my notes and send them to you for review early next week, just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Thanks again for your time. This sounds like a fun project and I look forward to working with you on it.