ISY00243 Case Study file · Web viewThis case study is to be used throughout this Session to answer questions in set activities, which will be compiled into a report. Part A of this

You Can Fit In: Case Study ISY00243 2018 S3 Page 1

Systems Analysis and Design

Southern Cross University

2018, S3Image:https://www.theurbanlist.com/perth/a-list/readers-choice-perths-best-personal-trainer

2018, S3

ISY00243 Case Study

This case study is to be used throughout this Session to answer questions in set activities, which will be compiled into a report. Part A of this report, an “Initial Investigation” is to be submitted at the end of Week 6 (Friday 7 th

December 2018). The final report (including your Part A adjusted after marker feedback) is to be submitted end of Week 12 (Friday 8th February 2019).

You should use all relevant parts of the case study to inform your answers for the report. Additional information will become available through session which you may use to “enhance” your analysis and design but you should maintain a focus on your original scoping. Any such “enhancements” should be considered to be possible extensions of original work on the analysis and design of the information system.

CASE STUDY PART 1INTRODUCTION

You Can Fit In is a company that owns and operates fitness centres in various cities in Victoria and NSW. The fitness centres have done well, and the company is planning an expansion by opening a new “supercentre” on the Gold Coast, Queensland. Some people in the company anticipate further expansion to other locations such as Brisbane, if all goes well.

BACKGROUND

Adam Apple, CEO, heads You Can Fit In’s management team. Three managers report to him at the firm’s Melbourne headquarters: Donald Dollars, manager of finance; Sally Molly, manager of sales and marketing; and Chia Chen, manager, operations. The centre managers who run the 13 existing centres all report to Chia. Adam wants the new supercentre in Gold Coast to emphasis a wide variety of personal services and special programs for members. If the supercentre approach is successful, it will become the model for You Can Fit In’s future growth. Adam personally selected Mark Lewis, a manager with three years of fitness centre experience, to run the new facility.

Each of the centres employs both full time and casual staffing for the day to day activities of each centre. While the specifics vary across locations, the common jobs include front desk welcoming and payments, shop attendant who also handles stocks and stores, cleaning, instructors for classes such as aerobics and yoga, and for the centres that have a swimming pool, a life guard who observes personal safety issues.


The new supercentre will feature a large exercise area with state-of-the-art equipment, a swimming pool, a sporting goods shop, a health food store, and a snack bar – with healthy snacks, of course, including smoothies! In addition, the centre will offer child care with special programs for various ages, and a computer café. Adam also wants members to have online access to customised training programs and progress reports. For personal reasons he also has been thinking about including swimming lessons as a possible service to include.

It is recognised that the Gold Coast is a major tourism location and it is envisioned that such tourist visitors may provide a source of casual day customers, especially during periods of poor weather.

The You Can Fit In business currently uses OnAllAccounts, a popular accounting package, to manage its receivables, payables and general ledger. Membership lists and word processing are handled with Microsoft Office products Excel and Word. Adam believes the new supercentre will require additional data management capabilities, and he decided to hire Gates to the Job, an IT consulting firm, to help You Can Fit In to develop an information system for their new operation. The firm assigned Nina Stay, an experienced consultant, to work with the You Can Fit In team. Nina’s first task was to learn more about business operations intended for the new centre, so she requested a meeting with Mark. After introducing themselves, there was a discussion about the new information system. The transcript of their meeting is presented below.

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TRANSCRIPT: Initial Discussion between Nina and Mark

Nina: Tell me about your plans for the new operation. I’m especially interested in what kind of information management you’ll need.

Mark: Adam thinks that we will need more information support because of the size and complexity of the new operation. To tell the truth, I’m not so sure. We have had no problems with OnAllAccounts at the other centres and I don’t really want to reinvent the wheel.

Nina: Maybe we should start by looking at the similarities – and the differences – between the new centre and the existing ones

Mark: OK, let’s do that. First of all, we offer the same basic services everywhere. That includes the exercise equipment, and in most centres, a pool and a snack bar. Some centres also sell sporting goods, and one offers child care – but none offer child-fitness programmes as intended for here.

It is true that we’ve never put all this together under one roof, and, I admit, we’ve never offered online access. To be honest, I’m not absolutely sure what Adam has in mind when he talks about 24/7 Web-based access. One more


feature – we plan to set up two levels of membership – let’s call them Basic and Full for now. Basic members can use all the basic services, but will pay additional fees for some special programs, such as child fitness. Full members will have unlimited use of all services.

Also, I understand that Adam thinks that being based here at the Gold Coast offers potential to attract casual customers who attend on a pay-as-you-use basis, just for single visits. I think that he is right, but we will need to work out a way to advertise our existence and services to that cohort. Our other centres also cater for such single use visits, but to be up front with you, they represent a very small part of our business. Adam also made mention to some “special features” that may attract visiting tourists such as a rock climbing wall, but we do not actually have one, so I am not sure as to what he has in mind.

Nina: So the vision for the services and the customers is at least slightly different for here at the Gold Coast compared to other locations?

Mark: Yes, but I do not really understand what Mark is envisioning. He seems to think that there may be families that would visit us here in a way quite different to our existing locations. He said something about wanting to make it a family outing…but I am not sure if he was serious or joking.

Nina: So with all this going on, wouldn’t an overall system make your job easier?

Mark: Yes, but I don’t know where to start, and I am not really sure what would be required to make that job easier.

Nina: Mark, that’s why I’m here. I will work with you and the rest of the team to come up with a solution that supports your business.

Mark: Sounds good to me. When can we start?

Nina: Let’s get together first thing tomorrow. Bring along an organisation chart and think about how you plan to run the new facility. We’ll try to build a model of the new operation so we can identify the system capabilities and the business benefits.

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ACTIVITY 1

1. Use the background information to create a short summary (one short paragraph) about the “You Can Fit In” business.

2. Create an organisation chart for the You Can Fit In business.

3. Use the information above to describe the area of the organisation under study (i.e. the business functions that will be handled by the new information system).

4. Add the background information, organisation chart, and business functions to your Report document in Part A: Initial Investigation.

There are examples of each of the aspects listed above in the text. However, make sure you do some other research. Use internet searches to find other examples and to look for examples that you could use to help you construct the things you need.


CASE STUDY PART 2At their initial meeting, Nina and Mark discussed some initial steps in planning an information system for the new facility. The next morning, they worked together on a business profile, and talked together about various types of information systems that would provide the best support for the supercenters’ operations.

They also discussed the possibilities of incorporating personal wearable fitness devices that capture and monitor parameters such as heart rate. They know that these have become popular in the general community, especially for people who are keenly seeking to monitor and improve their fitness. Although no firm decisions were made, they did discuss the possibilities that such devices may offer to enhance their business offerings. It was observed that there would even be the possibility of offering such devices for hire to their customers. There were clearly possible benefits for using such devices, but it seemed a big step to formally incorporate these into their information system.

Still, the idea had been raised and may be worth further consideration. They had each wondered about the possible benefits that could flow from such devices, but acknowledged that these were likely beyond their immediate needs.

Nina starts creating a System Vision Document for the new You Can Fit In system, so she can use this to define a vision for the new system. She is not feeling well, and running a bit short of time so has asked for your assitence.

ACTIVITY 2

1. Either by yourself or with another class member, brainstorm all the functions that the You Can Fit In system might fulfil. Keep it at a very high level.

2. Prepare a draft System Vision Document for the new You Can Fit In system. This System Vision Document will be revised when you find out more about the requirements for the system. An example System Vision Document can be seen in Figure 1.8 of your textbook (Figure 1.5 in the 6th ed).

3. Add your System Vision Document to your Report document in Part A: Initial Investigation.

You have been given a little information about what is required but there are a lot of gaps. You are expected to fill these gaps by working out some details. Make sure that your system vision document presents critical information to the organisation about the potential benefits.


THERE HAS BEEN A CHANGE OF PLANNina is not able to continue with the project!

The IT consulting firm, Gates to the Job, is aware of your early work with Nina, and have been advised by Mr. Lewis that he was impressed with your apparent professionalism at earlier meetings. Even though you had not been directly involved in the discussions between Mark and Nina the draft documents that you produced for them have gained you support.

All parties acknowledge that to date only preliminary discussions have taken place. It is determined that with you now taking over you should be given the opportunity to conduct the next round of the discussion…this time, with the CEO, Adam Apple who has seen your draft System Vision Document and is seeking to have some input to “modify” it.

You have been surprised at some of the information that Adam has been giving you. The discussions never became heated, due to your professionalism, but you have been making mental notes about how this compares and contrasts to the information that had been provided by Mark. For the sake of space, we pick up the transcript of discussions as it nears completion.

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TRANSCRIPT: Initial Discussion between You and Adam

…picking up some of the closing comments between yourself and Adam Apple after forty minutes of discussion…

You: So, just to get this clear…you are of the firm view that the Gold Coast “Super Centre” is a test case for the company. I will have some level of autonomy to pilot various aspects of technology and functionality into the information system?

Adam: Correct!

You: And all that you have said whether consistent or in conflict with what Mark has said before, stands. That is, what you say is more correct than what Mark has said?

Adam: Correct!

Look, don’t get wrong. Mark knows about fitness and training. He is top of his game, truth be known, and has been the personal trainer for several Olympic athletes, and, remarkably, across several differ sports.


Mark is a trainer by blood and focussed on maximising personal best performance outcome for each of his clients.

Where I come in, is representing the broader company, and I want to maximise the outcome for the business. This does not mean that we are not interested in training Olympic athletes, for example, because we are…and that’s why I have hired Mark. He will be invaluable for our elite athlete program when we begin it, but we are very keen on expanding our customer base to capture average people who seek some regular activities for general fitness, and elderly people who want light training, and people who are trying to regain mobility, and…

You: And families…

Adam: Yes…and families…because if we can become successful as a family outing option for tourists who get caught by bad weather making the beaches out of action and the theme parks are out too. They can come to us and still do something physical rather than just shopping or seeing a movie.

You: You are asking a lot. By that I mean, you are identifying many different customer groups, and they may not all want to use technology the same way. Your comments about wearable fitness devices makes sense to me now that I know about your pending elite athlete program, and I understand the desire to bring in a physiotherapist a few days a week to give personal direction to people rehabilitating from injury…and they would also make great use of a wearable device too because it could track their week to week transitions of performance.

Adam: Exactly! You understand! I am so glad to have you on-board controlling this for us.

You say calm but know that you would have visibly winced from this last comment. You proceed to speak very slowly and precisely.

You: I do not exactly control this. You do.

Adam: What do you mean? I do not know how all of these technologies are going to work together. That’s why you are doing this for us. That’s why I say that you are controlling this.

You: Please, you need to appreciate, that not all things are equally doable, or equally viable from a business perspective or from an information system perspective. It may be best to not try and do all things at once. For example, the climbing wall. It may be a great idea, and yes, we could capture the weight of customers so as to better enable the buddy system based on equal


body mass, but it is optimistic to seek to put in place a 3D tracking system that will track and plot climbers 3D space cumulative distance traversed.

Didn’t you mention something about having problems getting insurance for that side of things.

Adam: Sorry…it was just an idea….which I had discussed with Mark, so that’s why he made earlier comments on a climbing wall. The climbing wall is no longer part of our immediate intentions. Sorry that did not get back to you, but everything else makes sense doesn’t it?

You: I’m not so sure. You made comments about your health food store supplying organic products and having a dietician available a few days a week to consult with people on special diets, and to provide recipes for customers who may be involved in a specific weight loss training program and I can see that there will be benefits to people for all those things, but I do not think that the one information system should necessarily be trying to do all of these things, or to incorporate all of these things into a single information system.

I accept that there is scope to use social media to some advantage, especially for promoting your centre to visiting Tourists, and the intention of having “competition” days could also be something that you could promote that way, but remember that if this is set up, then you have to be willing to have someone effectively attend to that feature to respond. I do not think that this would be as onerous as having a dietician or physiotherapist available, but it would still involve some added running cost once the system was complete.

I must say, though, that I do like the concept of swimming lesson for children whose parents are in the gym. That would be something that an information system could help coordinate, in that you will need to have swim teachers organised ahead of time, and a booking system will be required to manage such coordination.

The 24 hour access also makes sense….essentially just a swipe card that tracks user identify, time of entry and time of exit. That, with the closed circuit televisions would enable you to fully account for all personal movements in and around the premises.

Adam: Well, I like the way you think! You’re the professional. If you think that something is a great idea, please included it. If there are somethings that you think should not be pursued, let me know, and maybe we can find middle ground.


Sorry to be pushy, but I am going to have go and run a parkour class soon. Can I leave it with you to review the project as you now understand it? Oh, and to your emailed question about client transfer usage policy, I confirm that all Gold Members can use their entry cards at any of our locations, world-wide if we ever get that far….

You: You truly do have some ambitions…

Adam: Got to think about the future possibilities…and, the Silver members, are going to be charged a local visit rate less a 10% discount.

You: So we actually have Casual rates, Silver Members who have a basic membership, and Gold Members who have a full membership.

Adam: And child or pensioner is half of what ever…

You: Yes. And that child or pensioner will be charged 50% for a casual visit or 50% for a Silver membership or 50% for a Gold membership.

I am going to need to revisit and rework some of the documentation about your business and the System Vision Document to incorporate the information from this discussion.

At least I won’t have to rework the organisational chart…not until you move Mark into managing the Elite Athlete Program, which I understand will be several months off, but which I cannot mention to anyone.

Adam: Correct!

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So, you think to yourself…the good news is, that I am now leading this project. The bad news is, that I am now leading this project.

You shack your head…nah, it will be alright. This is an opportunity! I need to embrace it. It will be fine, but I need to moderate Adams enthusiasm with a check on reality and costs.

I must take an objective view of all this. The company definitely needs an information system, but they should not try to do all of these things at once. It will be better to prioritise to do the most important, most useful and most feasible aspects first….and to leave open the option of future iterations being able to incorporate some of the other aspects discussed to extend and enhance an initial version of the information system.


CASE STUDY PART 3You are now leading the analysis and design project for the new Information System for You Can Fit In. You have been studying the nature and use of project management tools and techniques, so you are well positioned to develop some project plans.

You need to get ready for the next set of systems development tasks, which will be requirements modelling for the new system. You have access to documents that Nina had prepared outlining a broad information gathering schedule. You may need to further develop these into finer grain tasks but you accept that the overall parameters are suitable. Nina had previously commented to you that she thought that this would take six weeks.

Here is what had been documented as a high level work breakdown structure, including the duration Nina had estimated for each task:

First, you need to meet with fitness centre managers at other You Can Fit In locations (3 days);

You can then conduct a series of interviews (6 days); When the interviews are complete, you can review company records (4 days) while

also observing business operations, including how customers interact with the business processes and location activities (9 days);

When you have completed reviewing the records and observed business operations, you can

o analyse the OnAllAccounts accounting software (3 days) and o study a sample of sales and billing transactions (3 days);

After completing your study, prepare a report (1 day).

ACTIVITY 3

1. Create a table, listing all tasks separately, with their duration;

2. Identify all dependencies, and indicate what predecessor tasks are required;

3. Construct a Gantt chart in Microsoft Project or other project management software;

4. Identify the PERT/CPM chart in the software, and identify the critical path;

5. Determine the overall duration of the project;

6. Take clear screenshots of the Gantt chart and PERT/CPM chart and paste into your Report document in Part A: Initial Investigation under Project Management.

7. Include the overall duration and critical path in your report.


You will have to offer ideas here and make sure that you cover the tasks needed. As well, you need to make sure that the tasks are at an appropriate level of detail to enable you to make an informed and professional decision about how long the project will take. Obviously there will be tasks that you will have to list at this early stage that you might not have to do or that depend on what direction the project will take. For example, the tasks needed if you implement an off-the-shelf package are different to the tasks needed if the system is developed in-house. Do you need more than one project plan.?


CASE STUDY PART 4As an analyst working on the development of the new system, it is your role to ensure that the project is feasible. Some of the reasons that projects fail are: incomplete requirements, lack of executive support, lack of technical support, poor project planning and lack of required resources. At this stage, you decide to do an initial project feasibility analysis, to see whether You Can Fit In should continue with its plan for the new information system.

ACTIVITY 41. What are the risks associated with this project? Create a list of up to 10 risks and

their likelihood of happening (see Study Guide topic 4, activity 4.6 for an example of how this should be set out).

2. Define the anticipated benefits of the new system. This should include both tangible and intangible benefits. Wherever possible, translate the intangible benefits into anticipated tangible benefits.

3. Define the expected costs of the new system. Look at the examples given in workshop activities for some examples of expense categories. It is OK to give estimates at this point. For our purposes the process is more important than the raw base costings that you identify for equipment and human resources.

4. Use two or more cost-benefit analysis techniques to decide whether to proceed with the project.

5. Identify any assumptions and interpretations that you are making with respect to the information that you have been given, that you are estimating, and that you are projecting (into the future).

6. Create a new section in Part A of your report: Risk and Cost Benefit Analysis. Insert your work from above, and give a clear indication as to whether it is feasible to continue with the project.

7. Does the proposed system present a strong business case? Why or why not? Include a recommendation as to whether the system should proceed, as the final part of your preliminary report. The Preliminary Investigation part of your Report can now be submitted.

Most of the processes you need here are in the text and your activities within workshop materials. Look carefully at how the ‘risks’ are worded and how the costs and benefits are laid out in a feasibility plan. Always use a ‘clear’ layout as your template. Define any scales that you are using for your analysis and declare your assumption.

Consider including mitigation strategies in your risk analysis. These are what you have planned to do in response to any identified risk eventuating. These


are most important for any high risk…risk…which are things that are reasonably likely to happen, and can have substantial adverse effect when occurring.


CASE STUDY PART 5You have been given a list of tasks to do, which includes interviewing staff with various job roles. This is part of the investigation, where fact-finding is conducted to find out more about the requirements for the proposed system.

ACTIVITY 5

1. What fact-finding techniques, apart from interviews, do you recommend to find out the requirements for the new system? Provide some examples of the information that you have determined through this process (Remember, this is a role play…while you will need to create your findings [make it up]… both your fact finding activities, and the “facts” that you determine, need to be plausible and sensible).

2. Identify at least two staff members with different primary job roles of interest to this project.

3. Develop a list of questions for an interview with each staff member. Identify the time anticipated for the interview. Review your topic on creating interview questions, and make sure you include suitable question types.

4. Include the interview plans in the Appendices for your Report.5. Include the recommendations for other fact-finding techniques, in your Report.

The questions and information you need to ask need to extend further than simply asking about design options. You need to get information that helps you plan the entire project from start to finish. For example, you will need to find out whether customers can easily use their membership at all locations, and whether all customers have the equivalent data sets used describing them, their activities and their accounts. So – questions and information raise more questions and result in more information.


Documents

ISY00243 Case Study file · Web viewThis case study is to be used throughout this Session to answer questions in set activities, which will be compiled into a report. Part A of this