Question

A small appliances rental company in CT has several branches. It is renting TVs and other small home appliances to its customers. New appliances are recorded in the system before they are offered for rent. The first time a customer rents an item she/he needs to provide the necessary personal and payment card details. A deposit equal to the double amount of the estimated total of the rental bill (including insurance premium for possible damage) is charged to the card on the first day of a rental. Upon return of the appliance the actual price for the rental is charged to the customer card and the deposit is returned to the customer. A text message to customers who are overdue for more than 3 days is generated every day. The current system is run on old standalone PCs that are not connected in a central system. The owner of the company requested a software expert to develop a new centralized system that keeps track of all rentals.

Task 1. Formulate only the section on business requirements (as part of the System Request document) for the new system. (0.7 p)

Task 2. If you are the project manager, explain to the owner of the company why you will be using a Gantt chart in the management of the new project. Explain also why you will be using a PERT chart in the management of the new project. (0.7p)

Answer 1

Explanation:

System Request Document:

The system request is a general name for any document or system used to initiate the systems development life cycle process. Most often, organizations acquire information systems as part of a larger focus on process improvement and efficiency. These organizations need to invest in the right system to meet their needs: right functionality, right size, and for the right price. The business systems analyst role in most organizations is responsible for translating the organization’s needs into requirements, which are then used to select or build the right system for the organization. During the Analysis for Business Systems, the most significant role is played by standard model for systems development: the systems development lifecycle, or SDLC. This can be used to read and even create the specific deliverables that business systems analysts prepare during the SDLC. These documents provide guidance to the organization as they determine whether to build or buy and configure a system that meets the organization’s needs.

Gantt Chart:

A Gantt chart, commonly used in project management, is one of the most popular and useful ways of showing activities ,tasks or events displayed against time. On the left of the chart is a list of the activities and along the top is a suitable time scale. Each activity is represented by a bar; the position and length of the bar reflects the start date, duration and end date of the activity. This allows you to see at a glance:

• What the various activities are
• When each activity begins and ends
• How long each activity is scheduled to last
• Where activities overlap with other activities, and by how much
• The start and end date of the whole project

To summarize, a Gantt chart shows you what has to be done, ie the activities and when ie the schedule.

PERT:

PERT stands for Program Evaluation Review Technique. PERT charts are tools used to plan tasks within a project - making it easier to schedule and coordinate team members accomplishing the work.

In the light of the above discussions, the 2 tasks of the project are outlined as follows:

The Solution :

Task 1:

The  major business requirements as part of the System Request document are as follows:

1. To develop a new centralized system that keeps track of all rentals of the appliances and capable to perform the following specific activities:

a. Record new appliances in the system before they are offered for rent

b. Update all existing appliances available for rent at the store or currently rented to the customers

c. Record the personal and payment card details for the new customers

d. Update the personal and payment card details for the existing customers

e. Charge a deposit equal to the double the amount of the estimated total of rental bill to the card on first day of the rental

f. Keep track of the insurance premium charged along with the deposit and reflect any damage that needs to be claimed from the insuring company if any damage is detected on return of the appliance

g. Generate and send a text message to customers who are overdue for more than 3 days on a daily basis

2. To ensure smooth transition of data from the existing standalone non-networked PCs to the central database system

3. Capability to support and connect to LAN and WAN in the future for network upgradation

Task 2:

2.a. Necessity of Gantt Chart:

This project essentially consists of several subcomponents which needs to be assigned to different small teams of appropriate size for successful implementation of the project and the coordination and collaboration of the teams and their respective progresses on the project need to be monitored regularly so that all their activities are synchronised and move harmoniously towards the common deadline for the project. Therefore, the use of Gantt Chart will be of immense use to monitor and control the progress of the different teams towards a common deadline and to avoid bottlenecks and deadlocks.

2.b. Necessity of PERT :

This project requires existing data to be successfully retrieved from several standalone pcs and fed into the new centralised system which itself consists of several sub-components and thus the use of PERT will be of major help in order to ease out the  scheduling and coordination of team members in accomplishing the entire work.

This concludes the answer to all the subparts of the question along with the necessary explanations.

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