Case Description:

Assessing Loan Applications (Adapted from Chapter 3: Essential Process Modeling in Fundamentals of Business Process Management by M. Dumas et al, 2013, Springer-Verlag Berline Heidelberg.) Once a loan application has been approved by the loan provider, an acceptance pack is prepared and sent to the customer. The acceptance pack includes a repayment schedule which the customer needs to agree upon by sending the signed documents back to the loan provider. The latter then verifies the repayment agreement: if the applicant disagreed with the repayment schedule, the loan provider cancels the application; if the applicant agreed, the loan provider approves the application. In either case, the process completes with the loan provider notifying the applicant of the application status. A loan application is approved if it passes two checks: (i) the applicant's loan risk assessment, done automatically by a system, and (ii) the appraisal of the property for which the loan has been asked, carried out by a property appraiser. The risk assessment requires a credit history check on the applicant, which is performed by a financial officer. Once both the loan risk assessment and the property appraisal have been performed, a loan officer can assess the applicants eligibility. If the applicant is not eligible, the application is rejected, otherwise the acceptance pack is prepared and sent to the applicant. A loan application may be coupled with a home insurance which is offered at discounted prices. The applicant may express their interest in a home insurance plan at the time of submitting their loan application to the loan provider. Based on this information, if the loan application is approved, the loan provider may either only send an acceptance pack to the applicant, or also send a home insurance quote. The process then continues with the verification of the repayment agreement. Once a loan application is received by the loan provider, and before proceeding with its assessment, the application itself needs to be checked for completeness. If the application is incomplete, it is returned to the applicant, so that they can fill out the missing information and send it back to the loan provider. This process is repeated until the application is found complete. The process for assessing loan applications is executed by four roles within the loan provider: a financial officer takes care of checking the applicants credit history; a property appraiser is responsible for appraising the property; an insurance sales representative sends the home insurance quote to the applicant if this is required. All other activities are performed by the loan officer who is the main point of contact with the applicant.

Based on the above description, answer the following questions. Please state your assumptions or any information that you find is missing.

Q1. This organization wants to automate the assessing loan applications process and you have been contracted to work as a business analyst in this project. Based on the knowledge you have acquired in the course (including the textbook, lectures, and your course project), answer the following questions: a) List the 3 most important persons you should interview and explain why. (4%) b) Select 3 of the seven Steve Alter temptations and explain how you are going to avoid or reduce them for this specific project. (6%) c) Provide a work system snapshot for the assessing loan applications system there is no need to specify environment, strategies, and infrastructure. (9%) d) What would you recommend to automate and what remains manual, and why? (4%) e) Given your answer to (d) above, list 6 functional requirements, 2 non-functional requirements, and 2 criteria for assessing alternatives for this work system. (15%) f) Provide 4 useful and applicable performance indicators that you can use to measure the success or failure of the system in (e) above. (4%)

Q2. (i) Draw a UML Use Case Diagram for the assessing loan applications work system. Your diagram should have at least 4 use cases and at least one <> and one <>. (ii) Provide a situation (e.g., communicating with the loan officer) where you will use this diagram and explain why. (13%).

Q3. (i) Draw a level 0 Data Flow Diagram (about 5-7 processes should suffice) for the assessing loan applications work system. Please ensure that your diagram is consistent with your UML Use Case diagram in question Q2 above. (ii) Provide a situation (e.g., communicating with the loan officer) where you will use this diagram and explain why. (14%)

Q4. (i) Draw a BPMN diagram for the assessing loan applications process starting from receiving a loan application to knowing the applicants eligibility (i.e., no need to model the acceptance pack, home insurance, and repayment). (ii) Provide a situation (e.g., communicating with the loan officer) where you will use this diagram and explain why. (17%)

Q5. (i) Draw a R2M diagram for the assessing loan applications work system. Your diagram only needs to show roles, services, requests, and responses; you are not required to represent the associations of services, requests, and responses. (ii) Provide a situation (e.g., communicating with the loan officer) where you will use this diagram and explain why. (14%)