Requirements Gathering Lab Activities

1. Requirements Gathering Lab Activities

2. The company we did the online seminar scheduling project for was very pleased with our work. It seems the project came in on time and a bit under budget! Based on this good experience, the company has approached us with another possible project. • The potential project concerns creating a seminar management system. That is, a system for them to use to manage the seminars themselves (not just the enrollment of attendees which was the focus of our previous project with them). At the high-level, they envision an automated tool for doing this. At the present they employ a third party firm, ClassManage, that does this for them. Our customer has become somewhat disenchanted with ClassManage for two main reasons. • First, ClassManage’s fees have escalated considerably over the past few years, and our customer believes they might save considerable money by doing this work in-house. For example, In addition to a 30% increase in their normal fees over this time frame, ClassManage has recently added a new fee of 20% of the cost of hotel classrooms for making these arrangements with the hotels, though the hotel rates have actually been stable over this period of time. • Second, and just as importantly, the level of service our customer is getting from ClassManage has degraded over that same time frame. For example, ClassManage does not respond quickly to requests for increased seminar capacity when the need arises, has been inconsistent in reporting who actually attends the seminars (and whether they are there for the entire seminar in the case of multiple day events), has been inconsistent in ensuring that our customer receives the participant evaluations of the seminars, and has been uncooperative in scheduling the specific instructors (who are independent contractors paid directly by our customer) that are requested. • Here are the main services that ClassManage currently provides for our customer: 1) Classroom reservations with hotels for seminars based on a range of dates and city location our customer provides for each seminar (our customer is billed directly by the hotel for the use of these rooms). 2 Scheduling the instructors for the seminars (again, the instructors bill our customer directly when the seminars are completed). Our customer maintains a list of approved instructors and provides this on a regular basis to ClassManage. 3) Generating class rosters and sign-in/sign-out sheets which are sent to the hotel to the attention of the instructor a day in advance. These are to be mailed (in a pre-addressed envelope) to our customer by the instructor at the completion of the seminar. 4) Generating class evaluation forms (currently pencil and paper forms) to be passed out by, collected by, and mailed (in a pre-addressed envelope) to our customer by the instructor at the completion of the seminar. 5) Generating and shipping to the hotel several days in advance of each seminar classroom directional signs. 6) Managing classroom size capacity with the hotel. 7) Ensuring that the appropriate instructional materials are shipped and tracked for each seminar. These materials are printed and shipped by another vendor (who bills our customer directly and whom our customer wishes to retain). .

3. Requirements Gathering # 1 Teams: With your team, discuss what you know so far and develop an agenda for your first meeting with the customer group. More specifically, each team should do at least the following: 1) Decide what clarifications you would like to achieve about the information you have gotten so far. 2) Decide what additional questions you will ask of the representatives during the meeting. 3) Decide what, if anything, you might plan to present at the meeting. 4) Identify your primary objectives for this meeting. 5) Write your responses to these issues on a flip chart, so that later each team can present their “plan” once they complete their customer meeting. We’ll then evaluate/critique the plan in light of the actual meeting results. Customer Team: With your team, discuss what you hope to achieve with this potential project in preparation for a meeting with the I/S Analysis team. More specifically, each team should do at least the following: 1) Come to consensus about the business problem(s) you are trying to address with this project. 2)Come to consensus on the major outcomes you envision for the project. 3) Decide how you will approach the communications with the BA Team. 4) Decide what, if anything, you might plan to present at the meeting. 5) Identify your primary objectives for this meeting. 5) Write your responses to these issues on a flip chart, so that later each team can present their “plan” once they complete their SA meeting. We’ll then evaluate/critique the plan in light of the actual meeting results. The next slide shows the Context DFD for the original system which we implemented

4. Context DFD Attendee Info* seminar_cancellation Email Sys seminar_cancelled Class Admin registration_decline completion_rosters confirmation_of_cancellation request_for_transcript class_rosters Seminar Registration System catalog_search_req payment_info Corporate Financial System registration_req_w_cc credit Seminar Attendee registration_req_w_corp_pmt action cancellation seminar_cancellation confirmation_of_seat daily_report confirmation_of_cc_pmt new_seminar transcript Seminar Mgr certificate search_results Seminar Info* * Customer will convert current data

5. Potential Features • Online check-in (roster) • Hotel manager's view of attendees to assess room requirement • Print vendor view of material? • Email to replace mail • Digitize all old data - data store • Host all in-house • Customer maintains hardware/ contractors (us) maintain software • Choose hotels automatically based on instructor/enrollee availability • Maintain hotel DB • Contract w/ hotels –survey monkey • Contract directly with print vendor- eliminate ClassManage • Automate survey (assessment of seminar by attendees. Once completed and submitted, attendee will receive certificate) • Instructor verifies attendance (500 participants – what then?) • New/ enhanced website – SEO • Hotel provides paper directions to seminar room(ie. Cardboard)

6. Requirements Gathering, Part 2 • You have completed your first official meeting with the Seminars R Us company that has asked you to consider a potential project to create a seminar management system. It is their hope to use this system to manage the delivery of the seminars (not just the enrollment of attendees which was the focus of our previous project with them). At the high-level, they have envisioned an automated tool for doing this. • In that initial meeting, you should have discovered the primary business problem(s) driving the project. You should also have captured what major business objectives the customer would expect from the project. • Activity 2.1: A week has passed and you are now preparing for your second meeting with this customer. The main objective for this meeting is to come to a mutual agreement on the major features of the proposed automated system. Toward this end, you have decided to present to the customer a first draft of a ContextDFDthat shows the main inputs and outputs of the proposed system. By way of those dataflows, the diagram will identify implicitly the functionality needed to turn those inputs into the expected outputs. • Your task now is to: • 1) Prepare this first draft Context DFD for the proposed changes • 2) Have a follow-on discussion with the customer team (we’ll do this as a group) around this diagram in order to refine it so that it captures the major features of the system. • Activity 2.2: Using the refined Context DFD: • With your team write the first draft of the business requirements for this project. • 2) At your next meeting with the customer team, share these requirements and refine them collaboratively.