Time Management Plan
Provide “TO BE” process diagram by using Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) or Unified Modelling Language (UML). In this section you need to use Microsoft Visio to draw “TO BE” process diagram for your chosen organisation.
The assignment is the continuation from the previous assignment on professional skills for system analysis for the project on improving the order processing and payment solution for the Sainsbury’s e-commerce solution. Sainsbury is a retail chain business operating in the UK. It sells groceries products and apparels.
The aim of the assignment is to apply various modeling techniques used in system analysis and design on the proposed case study. It also covers various aspects of the project management process that deals with delivering the solution to the Sainsbury.
The rest of the parts of the assignment covers a detailed time management plan, WBS, TO BE process modeling, comparison between the AS IS and TO BE process models of the assignment, ER Diagram, system changeover planning, training and testing details. Following the information there will be a s brief report to the top management of the Sainsbury.
The WBS for the completion of assignment 2 is given below. It shows the breakdown of the activities and tasks to cover for the successful completion of the assignment.
WBS |
Task Name |
1 |
Assignment 2 |
1.1 |
Planning |
1.1.1 |
Preparing an outline for the report |
1.1.2 |
Draft Report highlighting the topics to cover |
1.2 |
Learning |
1.2.1 |
Collecting study materials |
1.2.2 |
Learning the concepts |
1.2.3 |
Learning the modeling techniques |
1.3 |
Creating the Report |
1.3.1 |
Preparing the Time Management Part |
1.3.2 |
Creating the TO BE Process |
1.3.3 |
Creating the ER diagram |
1.3.4 |
Writing the report |
1.3.5 |
Revision |
1.4 |
Submission |
Corresponding Gantt chart and planning is,
There are critical tasks in the schedule. The critical tasks are marked in red in the Gantt chart. The schedule shows the WBS of the activities required to complete assignment 2 successfully. Other than that it represents the information about the durations of each task, tentative start date and finish date of each task and the total duration, start date and finish date of the assignment 2 as a whole. It also shows the dependencies of the activities on one another. For example, it is not possible to start the learning task without the completion of the draft report. So, that is reflected in the predecessor column for the respective tasks.
The TO BE process is particularly focused on the order processing and payment functions of the e-commerce website of the company Sainsbury. To make the order processing faster and more secure, the TO BE process will be,
- Customer adds a product to the cart and may proceed to shopping again.
- Customer proceeds to checkout.
- The system will ask to login for existing customer. For new customer, it will ask to enter the postcode. If the postcode is serviceable then it will allow the customer to create an account and proceed.
- When the customer is logged in to the system, the customer needs to provide the delivery details and can check the tentative delivery date.
- Then the customer can make payment.
- The system will check whether the payment is confirmed or not. If the payment is confirmed then the system will confirm the order and send the order to the Inventory management and order processing unit.
- The inventory management and order processing team will work on the order. During this process, customer can track the status of the order by providing the confirmed order number. It will show the current status of the order.
- Once the order is ready, the company will ship it to the customer at the given address and via a shipping partner.
- When the system receives shipping completion notification from the shipping partner, it will update the status of the order and the order will be closed.
Now, the payment process is,
- A customer can select a convenient payment option from Pay on Delivery or Online Payment. In case of online payment, there are multiple options like using any wallet, using credit or debit card, net banking and so on.
- When the customer selects the Pay on Delivery option, then the system initiates a confirmation call to the customer. The customer needs to follow the instruction given in the call to confirm the order. Then the system confirms the order.
- On the other hand, if the customer selects any one of the other options for online payment, then the system will be redirected to a secure payment gateway. If the customer pays using the credit cards, then it will collect credit card information from the customer. Then it will send a notification to a credit checking company to validate the card and process the payment. Once the payment is validated and processed, then the system will generate an order confirmation. If the customer pays using debit card or online banking then it will generate OTP to confirm the payment. Once the fund is transferred to Sainsbury’s account, the payment receipt will be generated.
- The system will update order and payment details.
The process flow diagram for this TO BE process is,
The improvements are,
- Only registered customers can place orders.
- The payment gateway has improved security and authentication process. It helps to avoid credit card fraud and other fraudulent activities that may occur in a case of an online payment.
Compared to AS IS process model, the TO BE process model has brought following changed to the order processing and payment processing solutions.
- It has made the processes more secure. More user authorisation and authentication functions have been added.
- It will be automated to confirm order.
- It will help to avoid fraudulent activities.
- According to the AS IS process, it allowed any customer to place an order regardless of the registration status. However, the new TO BE process allows only the registered customers to place an order and make payment.
TO BE Process
As the organisation is already having an e-commerce website and corresponding business processes, so there will be no major changes in the information and communication technologies. However, there will be changes in the order processing and inventory management. The process automation may lead to changes in the current workforce. So, the changes must be assessed and the planned before proceeding with the project (Valacich, et al., 2015). Some major recommendations are,
- It needs effective management of the people associated to the business processes and the areas where the impacts will be maximum.
- There must be adequate user training. So that the employees get adjusted to the changes in the systems and in the business processes.
- There must be clear communication with the employees. They must have regular updates about the project.
- It will require some major system changeover. The changeover must be planned beforehand so that there is no disruption in the current business processes. The employees also must be informed about the changeover and instructed about their roles and responsibilities before, during and after the system changeover.
- Policies and procedures must be created to manage the workforce. The environment will require the enforcement of various security features to keep the data secure. So, there must be proper security and data protection policies for the employees to follow.
- To streamline the business operations, it will require to add various automations at different stages of the order processing and payment processing solutions. So, those system will require to get integrated with other business processes also
The Entity Relationship diagram is,
There are following entities in the ER diagram.
Entity Set |
Attribute |
Data Type |
Key |
Customer |
CustomerID |
Number |
Primary key |
FullName |
Text |
||
Street |
Text |
||
City |
Text |
||
State |
Text |
||
Postcode |
Text |
||
|
Text |
||
PhoneNumber |
Text |
||
Card |
CardNumber |
Text |
Primary key |
CustomerID |
Number |
Foreign key |
|
Card Type |
Text |
||
ShippingAddress |
CustomerID |
Number |
Primary and foreign key |
SerialNumber |
Number |
Primary Key |
|
Street |
Text |
||
City |
Text |
||
State |
Text |
||
Postcode |
Text |
||
Order |
OrderID |
||
OrderDate |
Date |
||
CurrentStatus |
Text |
||
CustomerID |
Number |
Foreign Key |
|
ShippedBy |
Number |
Foreign Key |
|
SerialNum |
Number |
Foreign Key |
|
Payment |
TransactionID |
Text |
Primary Key |
PaidAmount |
Currency |
||
PaymentDate |
Date |
||
IsPOD |
Boolean |
||
CardNumber |
Text |
Foreign Key |
|
OrderID |
Number |
Foreign Key |
|
ShippingPartners |
ShippingPID |
Number |
Primary Key |
Name |
Text |
||
ContactName |
Text |
||
Street |
Text |
||
City |
Text |
||
State |
Text |
||
Postcode |
Text |
||
|
Text |
||
PhoneNumber |
|||
URL |
The relationships are,
- Each customer can have zero or more number of cards.
- Each card will belong to a customer.
- Each customer may have more than one shipping address.
- Each shipping address will belong to a single user.
- Each order is delivered to a shipping address.
- A shipping address may receive multiple orders.
- Each order has one and only one payment.
- A card may be used for more than one payment.
- Each payment is used for one or more cards.
The normalized relations are,
CUSTOMER (CustomerID, FullName, Street, City, State, Postcode, Email, PhoneNumber)
CARD (CardNumber, CustomerID, CardType)
SHIPPING_ADDRESS (CustomerID, SerialNum, Street, City, State, Postcode)
ORDER (OrderID, OrderDate, CurrentStatus, CustomerID, SerialNum, ShippedBy)
PAYMENT (TransactionID, PaidAmount, PaymentDate, IsPOD, CardNumber, OrderID)
SHIPPING_PARTNER (ShippingPID, Name, ContactName, Street, City, State, Postcode, Email, PhoneNumber, URL)
The functional dependencies are,
CustomerID à FullName, Street, City, State, Postcode, Email, PhoneNumber
CardNumber à CustomerID, CardType
{CustomerID, SerialNum} à Street, City, State, Postcode
OrderID àOrderDate, CurrentStatus, CustomerID, SerialNum, ShippedBy)
TransactionID à PaidAmount, PaymentDate, IsPOD, CardNumber, OrderID
ShippingPID à Name, ContactName, Street, City, State, Postcode, Email, PhoneNumber, URL
Each of the relation is in 3NF as (Garcia-Molina, et al., 2016),
- There is no multi-valued or composite attributes in any relationship. Each relation has its own primary key. So, each relation is in 1NF.
- Then no relation has any partial dependency on the primary key of the relation. So, each are in 2NF.
- There is no transitive relation on the primary key through any non-prime attribute in any relation. So, all are in 3NF.
Testing is important for the development and deployment of any information system that helps in automation of one or more business processes of an organisation. The project will require system testing. System testing will help to verify and validate the integrated and automated solution for the business process. The proposed order processing and payment processing solutions are part of the information and communication technology infrastructure being used by the organisation. Two types of testing will be done for the proposed solution (Wang & Wang, 2012). Those are,
Black box testing
In the black box testing, the whole system will be tested from the users’ perspective. It will need to collect the feedbacks from the end users of the proposed information system. Analysis of the user feedbacks will help to understand whether the system has met the user requirements or not.
White box testing
White box testing will help to understand the internal logic and functionalities of the proposed information system. Various system logs, test cases, and the outcome of the test cases must be collected to understand whether the functionalities of the system are working properly or not.
Training is an important part for any project. The employees must have adequate training so that they can understand the roles of the proposed information system in the business processes better. It will also help them to interact with the system better and faster. They must also be trained about basic troubleshooting so that they can keep the business process running even if there are some basic errors in the information system (Satzinger, et al., 2011).
Comparing AS IS and TO BE Process
In this project the end users, management, and the customers must be trained to use the information system. However, for each group of users different types of training and training materials will be required.
- For customers, the website needs to implement adequate help and online chat based support. Those will help them to understand how to use the changed order processing and payment processing systems. They can ask for additional help though the chat support as and when required.
- The employees will need detailed training about how to use the system, understand different outcome and functionalities of the system, about basic troubleshooting, and so on. They will require help materials, small videos, or interactive platform based training.
- The management will also have some training on how to generate reports and monitor the performance of the business. Again they can have small videos, help and support documentation.
To avoid major disruptions to the business process, it will require to follow the following system changeover processes (Satzinger, et al., 2011).
- The information solutions will be developed in isolation. When it will pass all tests, then it will be tested to check whether it can take over the workload of the current business process or not.
- For few days, there will be two parallel running processes to take over the existing order processing and payment processing solution.
- Before the implementation of the proposed solution, it needs to keep backup of all related business data like order and payment information so that there is no data loss or major disruption during the system changeover process.
The proposed order processing and payment processing solution has been successfully designed and implemented for the company. The scope of the solution is limited within the e-commerce solution used by the organisation. Other supply chain management processes and business processes are out of the scope of the project. It is recommended to keep monitoring the performance of the implemented system closely. If some issues arise, then the monitoring will help to identify and solve that faster and it won’t lead to significant system downtime.
Conclusion
The report includes the detailed project schedule, ER diagram, TO BE process model etc. It will help the top management to understand different aspects of the system analysis and implementation, along with information about the testing, user training, system changeover etc. The initial time management plan shows the WBS and Gantt chart. It shows the activities to be done in the assignment 2 and the schedule to complete the activities successfully. Then there is the TO BE process. It shows the changed scenario of the business process that includes the order processing and payment system. The AS IS process was completed during the assignment 1. The comparison between the AS IS and the TO BE process shows the differences and how the requirements have been added to the TO BE process. It further shows the areas like the security, user authentication, secure payment etc. and how those have been implemented. Database is also an important part of any business information system. For the proposed information system changes on the e-commerce solution of the business, it needs to remodel the existing database. The ER diagram shows how the changes have been made. Following that, the normalization process and the data dictionary shows the detailed relational design of the database. The discussion on the testing and the system changeover has been planned according to the requirements of the proposed changes in the system. Together, all information gives clear idea about the proposed changes and how those will be implemented.
Reference List
Bocij, P., Greasley, A. & Hickie, S., 2015. Business Information Systems. s.l.:Pearson.
Garcia-Molina, H., Ullman, J. D. & Widom, J., 2016. Database Systems. s.l.:Pearson.
Satzinger, J. W., Jackson, R. B. & Burd, S. D., 2011. Systems Analysis and Design in a Changing World. Boston: Cengage Learning.
Valacich, J. S., George, J. F. & Hoffer, J. A., 2015. Essentials of Systems Analysis and Design. NY: Pearson.
Wang, S. & Wang, H., 2012. Information Systems Analysis and Design. s.l.:Universal-Publishers.