Using the paper developed in Weeks One and Two, add an additional 3 to 4 pages (1,050 to 1,400 words) describing your user acceptance testing plans for ensuring the Business Enterprise Software performs at an acceptable level. Include the following: Devel

9 Brewton’s Enterprise, Inc. System Implementation

Brewton’s Enterprise, Inc. System Implementation

Shaquita Boss

August 22, 2016

CMGT 445

James Sternieri

Company Overview

Brewton’s Enterprise, Inc. located in Eugene, Oregon has requested our project management services to implement the Enterprise Business Software application. The company offers an array of products with a mix of clothing styles, appealing primarily to teens and young adults. Brewton’s Enterprise, Inc. has four satellite offices in Los Angeles, New York, Houston, and Atlanta. These offices, including headquarters in Eugene, serve as distribution centers for products sold by Brewton. The company employs 240 employees. Each of these locations has a warehouse manager, an administrative assistant, a human resources representative, sales and customer service coordinators, shipping and receiving personnel, and facilities maintenance personnel. All locations stock a full complement of Brewton products for delivery to purchasing customers. In addition to these functions, headquarters, located in Eugene, also provides human resources, purchasing analysts, sales and marketing personnel, accountants, systems personnel, and operations personnel.

Key Stakeholders

Brewton’s Enterprise, Inc. has nine (9) key stakeholders who will take interest in the implementation of the project implementation. It is very important that we make a huge impression on the key stakeholders due to the fact that they will have the deciding factor on whether we will collaborate with Brewton’s Clothing Retail. Below is a list of the key stakeholders with a brief description of each individual:

Mark Brewton, Chief Executive Officer- Constructed from a small retail store, Mark has managed to turn Brewton’s Enterprise, Inc. into an Enterprise with four satellite offices located in Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, and New York with the headquarters located in Eugene. Mark uses inputs from his staff and direct reports to manage the daily operation of the company. The fact that the CEO openly takes input from his staff speaks volumes about his character and that he has direct involvement with the company. It also shows that the opinion from his staff is considered with the decision making process.

Barbara Scharer, Chief Financial Officer- Barbara manages the finance and accounting functions within Brewton’s Enterprise, Inc.. She maintains appropriate levels of investments, retains adequate operating capital, and arranges for lines of credit as needed. She oversees the accounting function of the organization where her employees use desktop software products to perform their work. Barbara is looking forward to making use of the new Business Enterprise System, leveraging its integrated reporting capability to better track the business. She would like to determine why the company is not as profitable as it might be and feels the software will help to identify areas in which improvements might be made.

William Hunter, Chief Operations Officer- William Hunter is responsible for the purchasing organization, which places orders for products to be sold, office supplies, equipment, computers, etc. Bill and his staff are also responsible for physical plant security and making sure the strategically located warehouses are properly stocked with products to be will be delivered to their customers. Products are centrally received and accounted for before they are distributed to the warehouses. Warehouse personnel work on orders as they are received, pulling products together, packaging them, and shipping them to their customers.

Jennifer Morales, Sales and Advertising Director- Jennifer oversees the selection of products to be offered for sale on the company’s web site and works with purchasing to acquire those products. She works with the IT organization to make sure that products are effectively and accurately presented on the web pages. She also maintains a relationship with an internet advertising firm that provides links on other sites to direct potential buyers to the Brewton web site. Her staff of sales associates and customer service representatives takes orders over the phone and assist customers with their selections. Orders are sent daily to Operations for picking, packaging, and shipping.

Roger Tomlinson, Human Resources Director-The employment needs of the company are addressed by Roger Tomlinson, who handles the recruiting and hiring of qualified personnel for the company. He also oversees running of biweekly payroll, government reporting, and processing of insurance payments, as well as other payroll deductions. Roger’s staff conducts compensation surveys to make sure employee pay remains competitive in the industry, and in line with corporate financial guidelines. Roger plans to use the Human Resources module of the new system to streamline job applicant data, from the receipt of resumes through the interviewing process and hiring of candidates.

Mike Benson, Information Technology Director- Mike Benson’s staff is responsible for maintaining the company’s technical infrastructure, such as the network, employee workstations, the web site, and associated hardware. His staff negotiates software agreements with vendors, performs routine maintenance, and monitors network usage. Mike meets regularly with his staff to receive status updates on projects underway. Mike has some concerns about the implementation process, because his staff members do not have the bandwidth to take on a new project the size of the ERP system implementation. He is considering hiring additional staff to take on this responsibility, but also wants to evaluate the possibility of bringing in consultants to do the work.

He knows that preparing for testing of the new system and scheduling training for all users will be a challenge in order to keep the business functioning normally and getting everyone familiar with the new system. The development of training materials and user documentation will also be a consideration. Mike feels that there must be some good alternatives for accomplishing these tasks.

Gary Holmes, Systems Administrator- Reporting to Mike, Gary Holmes sets up user IDs for all employees, and installs desktop software on PC workstations as needed. Gary is sensitive to the need to maintain state-of-the-art equipment and software to support the technical operation and seeks to keep all systems up-to-date and running at peak efficiency. Gary is somewhat apprehensive about the new system that has been acquired. He wonders who will be asked to support it and who will fix it when technical problems occur following implementation.

Nancy Davis, Web Developer- Nancy Davis is a web developer, reporting to Mike. She is responsible for maintaining the company’s web site, working with Jennifer Morales, to keep the content of the site attractive and user-friendly. She does not think that the new system will affect her work in any way.

Jim Travis, Network Administrator- Jim Travis, the network administrator also reports to Mike Benson, maintaining all network hardware and connections, including web access. He is responsible for maintaining security of the Brewton data assets and providing threat detection of unauthorized access to the corporate network. Like Gary, Jim is wondering how the new Enterprise Business System will fit into the existing configuration of the technical infrastructure. He fears it will require the purchase or lease of a new server and will likely increase his workload significantly. He knows that the implementation will require, not only a production environment in which the new system will run, but will also necessitate creating a test environment for user acceptance testing, and a training environment in which users will be trained to use the new system. He wonders if the training could be conducted in the test environment so as to save some resources.

Challenges

Some challenges that we have the possibility of facing are that everyone is not anticipate the changes to the software application. Over half of the stakeholders have very valid concerns about the implementation of the new software system. They have concerns about how the system is going to assist them in their jobs, who is going to fix and maintain the system, and why is this new implementation needed in the first place. The goal is to ensure every stakeholder that this system will not just assist certain areas but all areas of the company whether it’s invoicing, Customer Relationship Management, purchasing, Human Resources, Accounting, or the Supply Chain Management. The Business Enterprise Software will incorporate all modules of the company which will create a more efficient system. Each Module of the system will run independently but will utilize the same database. The system will help keep everything well organized, accurate, and will also save time with inventory. On top of that the system is more up to date with the technology of competitors.

Project Communication Plan

In order to keep stakeholders notified of changes, we will need all key stakeholders to provide contact information. Every ninety (90) days face- to- face meetings will be held with key stakeholders. During the face-to-face meeting the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) will be reviewed with key stakeholders. We will provide overall updates and completed milestones pertaining to the project. We will also review future milestones and notify key stakeholders of upcoming tasks and estimated time of completion of each task. Emails will be sent to key stakeholders between face-to-face meetings to notify stakeholders of the status of the project, if the estimated time of completion changes, or if any unexpected situation comes into existence. Phone calls to key stakeholders will be held only if absolutely necessary however, our contact information will be providing to executive key stakeholders if there any questions or concerns.

To ensure the client that needs will be met, we will conduct structured walk-throughs. The reviews will be provided to the project manager. The project manager will review and make changes as needed (Tilly & Rosenblat, 2016.) The project manager will briefly describe the reviews with key stakeholders in the face-to- face meetings. We will also be holding project status meetings for members of our team every thirty (30) days to discuss milestones and tasks updates, any issues or concerns within the project, and also discussing estimated completion dates.

Documentation Required

During the project there will be an enormous amount of documentation that is required from both ends. This is to ensure that our team provides the client with exactly what they need. Of course the requirements documentations are need so that our team can manage all attributes and entities that will be need for the project. We will also need documentation of key stakeholders contact information so that we are able to update key stakeholders as necessary.

Architecture documentation is required to provide the plan of structure. The documents will give explanation to the overall structure of the software to the clients (Wikipedia, 2016). I feel that keeping the clients more involved as much as necessary tends to decrease the stress level for the team allowing us to appropriately communicate necessities.

Technical documentation will provide more about the code itself. The technical documentation will be available to necessary personal. User documentation will be provided to the client on completion of the project. The user documentation will give a full description of how the program is used and how it functions. This will allow clients to utilization proper utilization of the program. The user documentation will provide text and video examples for users.

Outsourcing VS. In-house

Outsourcing is to simply purchase services from an outside vendor ("Outsourcing", 2016). There are tons of different reasons why companies would consider outsourcing. The biggest question is rather it’s worth it. For bigger projects outsourcing would be more ideal. It could possibly cut cost of the project. But if the project is something simple or something that is something that will better off done in house, then outsourcing may not be a wise choice. With outsourcing, you have to have a certain level of trust that the project is going to be as expected. On top of that, the you may not be able to be as involved in the overall development of the project. In other cases, somethings are better done using outsource. In the event that there is a time crunch, outsourcing would be perfect. But somethings to consider is being very direct with the requirements, to differ from the needs and the wants, and to communicate. As long as the communication is up to par outsourcing is not such a bad idea.

Data Conversion Plan

To successfully migrate the existing data to the testing platform, our team has decided to use the trickle migration approach. This approach will allow for both old and new systems to operate during the migration process. This process uses time increments to complete the project (Successful Data Migration, 2011). As the project manager, I will use Microsoft Project to create a project plan. All associates will have access to this plan so that everyone is aware of the project’s schedule. During the face to face meetings we will go over the project’s schedule. We will cover the milestones that has been completed, milestones having complications completing, and future milestones as well. We will also brainstorm to diminish any dilemmas that shall arise. If the schedule or budget is affected it is our duty to notify the client.

The very first step to our data conversion plan is to extract the existing data from legacy system.

Test Environment

Testing Methods and Procedures

References

Outsourcing. (2016). Retrieved from http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/small/Op-Qu/Outsourcing.html

Successful Data Migration. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/oedq/successful-data-migration-wp-1555708.pdf

Tilly, S., & Rosenblatt, H. (2016). System Analysis and Design (11th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

Wikipedia. (2016). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_documentation