MINICASES 1. The state firefighters' association has a membership of 15000 The purpose of the organization is to provide some financial support to the families of deceased member firefighters and to organize a conference each year bringing together fire- fighters from all over the state. Annually, members are billed dues and calls. "Calls" are additional funds required to take care of payments made to the families of deceased members. The bookkeeping work for the association is handled by the elected treasurer Bob Smith, although it is widely known that his wife, Laura, does all of the work. Bob runs unopposed each year at the election, since no one wants to take over the tedious and time-consuming job of tracking memberships Bob is paid a stipend of $8000 per year, but his wife spends well over 20 hours per week on the job. The organization, however, is not happy with their performance, A computer system is used to track the billing and receipt of funds. This system was developed in 1984 by a computer science student and his father. The system is a DOS-based system written in dBase 3. The most immedi- ate problem facing the treasurer and his wife is the fact that the software package no longer exists, and there is no one around who knows how to maintain the system. One query in particular takes 17 hours to run. Over the years, they have just avoided running this query, although the information Minicases 119 in it would be quite useful. Questions from members con- cerning their statements cannot easily be answered. Usu- ally, Bob or Laura just jots down the inquiry and returns a call with the answer. Sometimes, it takes 3-5 hours to find the information needed to answer the question. Often, they have to perform calculations manually, since the system was not programmed to handle certain types of queries. When member information is entered into the system, each field is presented one at a time. This makes it very difficult to return to a field and correct a value that was entered. Sometimes a new member is entered, but disappears from the records. The report of membership used in the conference materials does not alphabetize members by city. Only cities are listed in the correct order. What requirements analysis technique or techniques would you recommend for this situation? Explain your answer. 2. Brian Callahan, IS project manager, is just about ready to de part for an urgent meeting called by Joe Campbell, manager of manufacturing operations. A major BPI project, sponsored by Joe, recently cleared the approval hurdle, and Brian helped bring the project through project initiation. Now that the approval committee has given the go-ahead, Brian has been working on the projects analysis plan. One evening, while playing golf with a friend who works in the manufacturing operations department, Brian learned that Joe wants to push the project's time frame up from Brian's original estimate of 13 months. Brian's friend overheard Joe say, "I can't see why that is project team needs to spend all that time 'analyzing things. "They've got two weeks scheduled just to look at the existing system! That seems like a real waste. I want that team to get going on building my system." Because Brian has a little inside knowledge about Joe's agenda for this meeting, he has been considering how to handle Joe, What do you suggest that Brian tell Joe? 3. Barry has recently been assigned to a project team that will be developing a new retail store management system for a chain of submarine sandwich shops. Barry has several years of experience in programming, but has not done much anal- ysis in his career. He was a little nervous about the new work he would be doing, but was confident that he could handle any assignment he was given. One of Barry's first assignments was to visit one of the submarine sandwich shops and prepare an observation re- port on how the store operates. Barry planned to arrive at the store around noon, but he chose a store in an area of town he was unfamiliar with, and due to traffic delays and difficulty in finding the store, he did not arrive until 1:30 PM. The store manager was not expecting him and refused to let a stranger behind the counter until Barry had him contact the project sponsor (the director of store management) back at company headquarters to verify who he was and what his purpose was. After finally securing permission to observe, Barry sta- tioned himself prominently in the work area behind the coun ter so that he could see everything. The staff had to maneuver around him as they went about their tasks; however, there were only occasional minor collisions. Barry noticed that the store staff seemed to be going about their work very slowly and de- liberately, but he supposed that was because the store was not very busy. At first, Barry questioned each worker about what he or she was doing, but the store manager eventually asked him not to interrupt their work so much-he was interfering with their service to the customers. By 3:30. Barry was a little bored. He decided to leave, figuring that he could get back to the office and prepare his report before 5:00 PM that day. He was sure that his team leader would be pleased with his quick completion of his assignment. As he drove, he reflected, "There really won't be much to say in this report. All they do is take the order, make the sandwich, collect the payment, and hand over the order. It's really simple!" Barry's confidence in his analytical skills soared as he anticipated his team leader's praise. Back at the store, the store manager shook his head, commenting to his staff, "He comes here at the slowest time of day on the slowest day of the week. He never even looked at all the work I was doing in the back room while he was here--summarizing yesterday's sales, checking inventory on hand, making up resupply orders for the weekend...plus he never even considered our store opening and closing proce- dures. I hate to think that the new store management system is going to be built by someone like that. I'd better contact Chuck (the director of store management) and let him know what went on here today." Evaluate Barry's conduct of the observation assignment 4. Anne has been given the task of conducting a survey of sales clerks who will be using a new order entry system being developed for a household products catalog company. "The goal of the survey is to identify the clerks' opinions on the strengths and weaknesses of the current system. There are about 50 clerks who work in three different cities, so a survey seemed like an ideal way of gathering the needed informa- tion from the clerks. Anne developed the questionnaire carefully and pre- tested it on several sales supervisors who were available at corporate headquarters. After revising it according to their suggestions, she sent a paper version of the questionnaire to cach clerk, asking that it be returned within 1 week. Al- ter 1 week, she had only three completed questionnaires returned. After another week, Anne received just two more completed questionnaires. Feeling somewhat desperate, Anne then sent out an e-mail version of the questionnaire, again to all the clerks, asking them to respond to the ques. tionnaire by e-mail as soon as possible. She received two e-mail questionnaires and three messages from clerks who had completed the paper version expressing annoyance at being bothered with the same questionnaire a second time. At this point, Anne has just a 14% response rate, which she is sure will not please her team leader. What suggestions do you have that could have improved Anne's response rate to the questionnaire