Documenting Business Requirements

Scenario

Perfect Potteryis a chain of pottery studios in the Kitchener, Ontario area. The stores sell pottery, but also offer studio time and workshops to customers who wish to make their own items. The company has approximately 150 employees across all stores and is expected to keep growing as they expand their stores across the province. They would like to streamline the business by creating a digital experience that allows customers to shop online, book studio time, and register for pottery workshops. They would also like to create an online store that allows customers to purchase pottery items online for local pick-up.

You are the Business Analyst on the Delivery Team that has been hired by Perfect Pottery to deliver the solution. The project is being led by the IT team and sponsored by the company's Vice President of Operations.

The VP of Operations, who is the Executive Sponsor for the project, has come up with a vision for the product that includes the following 3 elements:

1. Website: The solution should include an updated and rebranded company website that features the company's products and services in an online store.
2. Customer portal:The solution needs to include an online customer portal for registered users where they can manage their studio bookings, class registrations, and payments.
3. CRM system: The solution will require a cloud-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to store customer account and payment information which connects to the website and portal.

To begin the project, you have brought the Customer Team together for a Kick-Off Meeting. The purpose of this meeting was for you learn more about what each team member hopes to achieve with the solution. During the meeting, you asked a series of questions and recorded the answers. (See transcript below.)

Project Team Members

Name	Project Team Role	Job Title
Miriam Murdoch	Executive Sponsor	Vice President of Operations
Raul Ajderi	Stakeholder	IT Manager
Thomas Perry	Stakeholder	Marketing Manager
John Nguyen	Subject Matter Expert	Sales Team Lead
Anita Cortez	Subject Matter Expert	Store Manager
Lauren Dirksen	Subject Matter Expert	Workshop Coordinator

Kick-Off Meeting Transcript

BA: Can you tell me what pain points you're experiencing that led to this project?

VP Operations: I brought in your team of consultants for this project because we would like to expand our business and we want to be able to support our customers more efficiently. If we can give our customers the option of shopping and registering for workshops online, then we can support a growing customer base with fewer in-store employees.

Store Manager: I love this 'self serve' idea because I think our customers will enjoy not having to come into the store or phone the store just to book studio time or sign up for a class. Everything is going digital now, so we should too.

Marketing: I'd like to use this project as an opportunity to implement the new branding and style guide that my team has been working on. I'd really like to modernize our brand to match the modern services this project will let us provide.

Sales Team Lead: The website will have a few functions. It's a sales tool to let potential customers know about our products and services. But the website is also the jumping off point to the customer portal. So there needs to be a seamless customer experience between these two systems. We don't want the customer to feel like they've been taken to a completely different site.

IT Manager: Just from an IT standpoint, we could support more customers with fewer people if the customers were able to manage their own account information and registrations. But that also raises security concerns. We're dealing with personal and financial information, so we need robust security measures across the solution.

BA: There are 3 parts to this project - the website, the portal, and the CRM system that supports both. Let's talk about the website first that will support your e-store. What's your vision for this?

Workshop Coordinator: We will need the obvious things on the site, like our contact information and an 'About Us' page, but it's also our opportunity to showcase our business and the local artists who teach our workshops. We want to highlight our customers' pottery photos and testimonials so that we're creating a real sense of community. We also want to publish content on the website, like blog posts with pottery tips or featured artists, that keep the site current and increase our site's SEO ranking.

Marketing: As well as featuring our services, I'd love if we could push banner ads out on the webpage every few weeks. As new events or promotions are launched, we could create custom content for the banner. The banner ads aren't as high priority as the blog posts though, in my opinion. But I would implement the banners before implementing customer testimonials, since we don't have any testimonials collected yet.

Workshop Coordinator: On the website homepage I'd like to see a view of the next few upcoming workshops and events. These events could be linked to the portal for quick registration. Also, the homepage should include a view of the latest items that have been added to our online shop.

Marketing: Something to consider in the future might be the option for customers to subscribe to our monthly email newsletter. We can alert customers to sales and promotions this way.

Sales Team Lead: We'll also need an Account Management section on the website where people can update their address, phone number, payment information, etc. This information will be stored in the CRM system but interfaced through the website and portal when a customer is logged in.

Store Manager: The online store aspect of our website is something totally new for us. It should feature the one-of-a-kind pottery items that we have for sale. Every piece is unique. The shop part of the website should let people filter by store location and artist. For this phase of the project our store items will be for pick-up only, but maybe in a future phase we will offer shipping. That's why filtering by store location is important. We also want to be able to categorize the products by type (like bowls, mugs, etc.) and by artist.

Marketing: My team has been working on our social media presence, so we would love if our website included links to our social media pages. Perhaps not in this first release though since we're still working on that initiative.

BA: Now let's talk about the portal. What's your vision for that?

VP Operations: I see the portal as being the place where people can book studio time and register for workshops. Payments should also be handled through the portal, with the user's saved profile information being pulled from the CRM system. While the website is more about sales and promotion, the portal is about self-service.

Store Manager: I would love if we could have an app version of the portal experience, but that is something to consider for a future project. For now, it will be enough if both the website and portal allow for customers to have a mobile experience with responsive design. As we're building our solution, let's also make sure the mobile experience is well-designed throughout.

IT Manager: Obviously having a desktop experience and mobile experience are both important, and we'll need a security strategy for this. I'd like to enable two-factor authentication across all aspects of the solution.

BA: We've discussed a lot of great ideas, so to end our meeting, let's talk about scope. What are some things we should focus on or prioritize for this first release?

VP Operations: I'd like to prioritize the user experience for this project. There's no point in us creating a website or customer portal if it's going to be difficult to use, because then our customers will get frustrated and call or visit the store anyway. The main goal here is to give our customers some autonomy when booking studio time and registering for classes. This frees up our store employees to offer more support to the customers working in the studios.

Marketing: Implementing the solution with our latest branding and having a responsive design for the website is high priority for the Marketing team.

IT Manager: The CRM system needs to support a self-serve account management feature for both the website and portal. Also we'll need to support online payments with credit card. In a future release maybe we could also support other payment methods like PayPal.

Sales Team: My priority for the website is getting our services listed, having our contact info displayed, and getting the blog posts up to make us more visible in searches. Banner ads can come in a later release.

Store Manager: My priority is to free up the store staff from handling the bookings and registration by allowing customers to manage that themselves. We've also never sold items online before, so having an online store is exciting, even if we're only offering items for local pick-up at this time.

Workshop Coordinator: The priority for this project, from my perspective, is to help build our local pottery community. I want to create an inviting online presence that features the work of our talented local artists and inspires potential customers to come in and try working with clay for themselves - whether beginners or experts.

Assignment

Based on the transcript provided, and the background information above, document:

• 3 Business Objectives that are directly related to the scenario
• 3 Success Metrics that are related to the Business Objectives
• 3 Business Risks based on the scenario
• 3 Assumptions and/or Dependencies related to the scenario

WARNING:You cannot submit the examples from the PowerPoint slides or from the in-class workshop as part of your assignment. You must submit your original work. Failure to do so constitutes academic misconduct.