CaseStudy - Business Analyst Project Objectives
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This document contains information for an assessment of business analyst candidates. It includes descriptions of two projects - implementing new payroll software and a training scheduling system. It asks what departments would be involved in the payroll software project and what questions would be asked to understand the requirements of the training scheduling system project. Finally, it provides example requirements for a payroll system and asks to group the requirements and explain the groupings.
CaseStudy - Business Analyst Project Objectives
- 1. Assessment for Business Analyst Candidates I. Review the project description below. “The payroll department wants to purchase new payroll software package. Human Resources has received many complaints regarding inconsistent calculations and delays in payment due to the current manually intensive process. Senior management has approved this as a top priority for the company.” What departments would be involved with this project and why? 1. Payroll Department: They would be involved to provide information on the current process and what problems they are facing with the manual process. They would also be involved in using the new software. 2. HR Team: Validates the pay and the employee information and provides the information to payroll department. 3. Testing Team: To work on end to end testing to make sure that the new application is tested and delivered with no defects. 4. Business Analyst: To understand scope, high level business needs and feasibility of the project. To provide functional, non-functional, technical requirements based on the business requirements gathered. Also responsible to put the training material together and assists in testing. They are also involved in assisting the users for any problems that come up during the project 5. Project Manager: Develop project management plans, resource management, risk management, Time and budget estimation. They are responsible for overall delivery of the project. He is also involved in the procurement process. 6. Senior Management: Involved in business case and budget approval. They also support the project along with issues and exceptions handling. 7. Sourcing Team: Mostly involved in purchasing of the new payroll software and procurement process 8. Training Department: Involved in training end users for the new payroll software package with the assistance from business analyst. 9. Security Department: As payroll is a very sensitive area, they will need to signoff on any security aspects concerned with new system. 10. Production Support Team: Supporting the users with any issues that come up with after the project go live. II. Review the project description below. Project: Implement Training Scheduling Software
- 2. Project Statement of Purpose: Our organization’s training department has become very large, often holding several classes per week. We need a software application that can register students for scheduled classes, print student rosters, reserve classrooms, print student certificates, and report on department training expenditures. The software should streamline the administration of the training department and allow even more classes to be conducted in the coming years. This application may be purchased or written in-house. It must be installed by the beginning of our next fiscal year. This project has been initiated because we have more demand for training than our administrative personnel can handle. Classrooms and instructors are available to meet this increased demand. Project Objectives: Increase the number of classes by 30% that can be scheduled by the existing number of administration personnel Allow student certificates to be printed and distributed on the last day of class Provide instructors with an accurate list of students on the first morning of each class Remind students of their registration one week before each class via e-mail Notify students and instructors if a class is changed or cancelled via e- mail What questions would you ask to begin to understand the requirements of this project? Who would you ask them of? Questions asked for requirements gathering: 1. Student: What is the current process they are using to register for the courses? What is the problem they are facing when they have to register for the courses? Are they looking for any reminders prior to their training classes? If so then how many days in advance? What are the other conveniences that they are looking for regarding registration? What are the different information that they want to see regarding a particular training program prior to registration? 2. Training Head: What is the problem that they are currently facing with the training registration process? What are the current activities that they are involved with registration process Do they have a limit that they want for a particular class? What is their convenience regarding posting the certification after class completion
- 3. Is there any requirement for them to see the students on first day of class? 3. Administration: What is the problem that they are currently facing? What is the different activities that they will perform for training registration How sooner can the students add/drop out of classes? How do they currently process the registrants? What is the notification process that they want to have in the system for any changes/cancellations of the training classes? 4. IT department/ Project Manager: What are the hardware/software requirements based on the needs of the user? How much is it going to cost to build the application? How much time would it take to build the system? If decided the purchase how much could it cost and what would be the time line to make it available? How are we going to manage risk and resources for the project? 5. Upper Management: Based on the costs calculated for the software, how much budget is allotted for the project. III. Example Requirements for a Payroll System 1. We need to use an Oracle database 2. Employees are not allowed to be paid for more than 80 hours in one week. 3. The employee id number should be 6 digits long and assigned sequentially by employee original hire date. 4. We pay about 10,000 employees per week. 5. Employees must be able to choose between direct deposit or printed checks. 6. We must be able to withhold Federal, State, and City taxes. 7. Some employees reside in a different state than the one they work in. 8. Payroll checks are 8 ½ by 11 inch voucher checks with a stub
- 4. and should be printed onsite on the existing Hewlett Packard laser printer. 9. Employee timesheets must be approved by their supervisor before being entered into the system. Group the requirements into two logical subsets (List the requirements numbers in the boxes below). Explain you reasons for the groupings. G1-IT Driven G2-Business driven 1 2 3 4 8 5 6 7 9 Explanation: G1 requirements are related to IT. G2 requirements are driven by business/business rules. IV. Review this dataflow diagram and answer the following questions: 1. Give at least two examples of data elements that would be flowing through the dataflow arrow called “employee pay info”. Enployee Id/ Name, pay rate, employee type, worked hrs 2. Why does the process “Calculate net pay” have two input arrows?
- 5. Net pay is calculated by subtracting tax withholding amount from Gross Pay. It would need both this information to calculate net pay. 3. Would this diagram support an employee requesting direct deposit of their pay? No. This diagram does not talk about an employee requesting for Direct deposit or related process.