System Analysis and DesignCase Study: Wicked Party Planners Limited.

Background:

Wicked Party Planners (WPP) is a business that assists people by organising, planning and coordinating their special events. It provides services such as designing and printing invitations, handling registration for any gifts, organising and scheduling details for the events like venues, flowers, decorations, catering, vehicles and photography. They will finalise guest attendee details and organise and book accommodation for the guests if needed.

WPP gets its business in one of several ways: Clients respond to advertisements placed by WPP in specialist magazines and websites; clients contact WPP because of recommendations from past clients or guests, or; clients contact WPP because of recommendations from other businesses who have been involved in past WPP events. These recommendations are extremely important to WPP and they try and track how any new clients have heard of them. They then offer a referring client a 5% discount on their next event. For businesses that refer clients to them, they try and maintain a record and send the business a small gift. They keep track of the gifts that they give businesses so that they do not constantly replicate the gift.

When clients initially make contact with WPP, an interview is held to gather general and specific information about the desired details for their events. Examples of the type of information collected include: type of event, who, when, where, anticipated number of guests, price range, special wishes, party specifics and any other relevant information that the clients feel are important.

Once these details have been collected, the office manager assigns an event manager to the event. The event manager will then prepare anevent proposal and quote for the clients. This plan and budget is expected to be finalised within two weeks of the initial interview. Once the clients sign off in agreement to the proposal and a final price is finalised, additional staff are allocated as needed to support the planning and organising of the event. The staff are specialised into categories such as wait staff, bar tenders who need a responsible service of alcohol certificate, car parking staff who need a current driver's license, set-up (for decorating etc) and cleaners. The WPP project team works closely with the clients and other businesses to ensure that the clients experience a stress free lead up to their event and that the actual event is exactly as expected.

The types of businesses that WPP sub-contract for events include venues, caterers, bands and DJ's and florists. They try and maintain a range of equipment which they hire to clients and keep track of this in an asset register.

The next working day after an event a review meeting is held with the project manager, the owner John Allen or another member of the management team and members of staff that are available. In this review meeting a document is completed showing a review of the sub-contractors such as venues and caterers performance. This is ranked from Very poor, poor, average, good and very good.

At the moment WPP use standard project management and office software. Business has increased and the organization want to be able to produce an event proposal, event timeline more efficiently and maintain more effective organizational learning from past events that can be shared among event managers and other staff.

In your role as a Business Analyst you have been approached by John Allen as owner of WPP for guidance on evaluating and selecting a suitable information system solution for their business.

Business Processes:

A JAD session with key stakeholders revealed the following information. The business processes described below are the system requirements for this information system solution:

- Before a venue is used by WPP an inspection is carried out and details such as facilities available, number of guests licensed for, alcohol licensing arrangements, a fee for the use of the facility is also negotiated. This fee is reviewed every year, based on the establishment date and renegotiated if necessary. WPP records the following details for all venues: Name, Business number, Address, Telephone, Email, Review date, Fee, and Date last used. Notes are also keep on the venue as part of the event review process.

- For Bands and DJ's they maintain information on contact details, current charge and type of music. They also maintain a record of comments made by staff and customers about the music.

- The management team would like to be able to run a report as they want that highlighted venues or sub-contractors whose performance was average or below.

- John Allen wants to run a sales report on the first of every month that shows the amount of event, per week and per event manager.

- Any payments for purchases, salaries or expenses to staff are outside the scope of this system

End of Case Study
 
Part A

Question 1: Essay

Your manager has done some reading and is sure that an adaptive systems development approach is necessary for the new information systems project for WPP Limited.

Your manager has asked you to write short essay on adaptive systems development discussing the various methodologies of adaptive development, such as Scrum, XP and UP .Briefly discuss each methodology and then state which methodology you would recommend and why. It is expected that you use the detail from the case study in your essay.

Your target audience is executive business people, who have extensive business experience but limited computing knowledge.

Your essay should be no less than one thousand (1000) words and it would be best to be no longer than one thousand five hundred (1500) words long. Appropriate referencing is required. The textbook Satzingeret. al is a valid resource, however it is expected that at least five (5) other resources will also be used.

Question 2: Memo

Review the WPP Limited case study and answer the following question with reference to the information in the case study.

Your manager has requested that you write a brief memorandum for the owner John Allen and her management team commenting on the different ways you might handle the deployment of this system. There is some resistance from the staff who have many years of experience event planning using the current tools.

There is limited information available to you at this time but you are required to make reasonable assumptions based on the information that you have. Assumptions should be noted and specifically mentioned within your memo.Your memo should be no less than seven hundred and fifty (750) words and it would be best to be no longer than one thousand (1000) words long.

Part B

Modelling and Diagramming

Review the Wicked Party Planners Limitedcase study and answer the following questions with reference to the information in the case study.

Do NOT extend the scope for any of the following solutions beyond that specifically described in the case study above.

You are permitted to make reasonable assumptions where necessary but these should be noted.

It is recommended that you review all documentation for this case study before finalising any single solution. Ensure that the required consistency has been included within and between each question solution.

Question 3: Event Table

Review the WPP Limitedcase study and prepare an event table for the information system to support the business processes as described. Use at least the following headings for the Event Table:

Question 4: Domain Model Class Diagram

Review the WPP Limitedcase study to prepare a domain model class diagram for the supporting information system.

Solutions must follow the methodology as outlined within the Satzinger et al textbook. Solutions are expected to show:
- The class name and attributes list for each class and sub class as required
- All required associations
- All attributes as specifically mentioned in the case study must be reflected
- Other attributes as needed to support the described functionality.

It is not necessary to show methods, however you may include them if you wish. Solutions are expected to align with the components as shown in figure 4-21.

Question 5: Design Class Diagram

Prepare a Design class diagram for the Customerand Event classes ONLY. These two classes should be part of the Domain model class diagram solution for the previous question.

Each of these design class diagrams are expected to have a complete attributes list and a comprehensive methods list which supports the specified functionality as described in the case study.

Solutions must follow the methodology as outlined within the Satzinger et al textbook. Solutions are expected to align with the components for the ‘Design class diagram for Student' as shown on the right hand of figure 10-8.

Question 6: Use Case Diagram

Review the WPP Limitedcase study and your event table solution from question 1 to prepare a Use Case diagram for the supporting information system.

Solutions must follow the methodology as outlined within the Satzinger et al textbook. Solutions are expected to align with the components as shown in figures 3-13 and 3-16.

Question 7: Use Case Description (intermediate)

Prepare a Use Case intermediate description for the 'Creates Customer' use case, as documented in the event table solution and the use case diagram solution.

Solutions must follow the methodology as outlined within the Satzinger et al textbook. Solutions are expected to align with the components as shown in figure 5-2.