You are a systems analyst working for Laggard, Inc. (Laggard), a wholesale distributor of bulk vitamins and fine chemical food additives. Laggard has stayed way behind the IT industry evolutionary curve.
The company relies on a software suite they developed more than 40 years ago. You have convinced the Laggard management to investigate replacing this legacy software before the hardware on which it runs can no longer be repaired.
You think the system at greatest risk for failure is the order processing system. Here is how it works today. A bank of telephone operators takes sales order calls from customers, transcribes the orders onto coding forms, and sends them to the keypunch department for encoding. During the night shift, computer operators run batch jobs to read in the orders, check customer credit, and print stock pick lists for those customers with good credit. If the batch jobs detect problems with customer identification, shipping addresses, credit, or any other issue, the errors print on an order reject report that is routed to sales, order processing, and inventory managers for review and resolution. Pickers, packers, and shippers annotate the pick list report that is used as a turnaround source document for updating inventory, customer records, and accounts receivable.
Laggard's aging software development team is nearing retirement. However, the members are still available to answer questions about the existing order processing solution. Relevant business people from the sales, order processing, and inventory management teams are also available to you.
Assignment
To get the modernization ball rolling, you will gather requirements for a new order processing solution, structure the requirements, and ensure they are correct. In addition, you will expose Laggard to web-based applications and mobile computing access. You are eager to get started, before the software team retires and the aging hardware fails. Here are your deliverables for this assignment:
Produce a legacy system replacement Baseline Project Plan (BPP) for Laggard. Begin with gathering and structuring requirements and end with a web-based order-processing prototype. Make note of the business and technology roles that will participate in various phases of the project, and be sure to include multiple review cycles for requirements review.
Create a one-page project scope statement explaining why Laggard needs this project.
Laggard management is risk-averse, so develop a project feasibility study of 2 to 3 pages in MS Word or PowerPoint examining the economic, operational, technical, schedule, legal/contractual, and political risks. Use your existing business or life experience to propose likely risks and mitigations. Stick to the two or three greatest risks in each category.
Interview sales, order processing, and inventory management team members, and develop an "as-is" data flow context diagram and a two-level drill down showing external entities, processes, data flows, and data stores.
Create the "to-be" DFD set indicating how online-oriented processes will replace batch processes
Develop the "as-is" and "to-be" ERDs showing that the "to-be" ERD has multiple ship-to addresses for each customer account, and that orders may have an unlimited number of line items. The "as-is" ERD does not have these flexibilities. Note which entity or entities correspond to which DFD data stores.
Write an MS Word document or create a PowerPoint presentation describing:
an order entry system interface and dialog design specification
the simplest success dialog sequence scenario for entering an order
two more complex success scenarios
two failure scenarios
how the failure scenarios relate to the order reject report from the current batch process
This document will be the interface specification for the order processing prototype you described in the project plan.
Include title and reference pages or slides, as applicable. Make sure your paper or slide presentation follows APA style according to the CSU-Global Guide to Writing and APA Requirements. Use three CSU-Global Library resources and/or outside academic sources other than the textbook, course materials, or other information provided as part of the course materials. You may not use Wikipedia for any CSU-Global assignment. For this assignment, a credible source is defined as:
A scholarly or peer-reviewed journal article
A newspaper article
A trade or industry journal article, publication, or website, including those from trade organizations