Scenario
Backyard Adventures (BA) is a guided tour and water sports rental company in Jacksonville, Florida run by two brothers, Shawn and Harry Weaver. They advertise Backyard Adventures in several local and regional magazines and web sites, but the Weavers don’t feel that it is attracting new business.
BA rents space at a nearby marina, where Shawn runs the office, and handles rentals on the days Harry’s busy with the tour groups. BA has two main business segments: rentals and guided tours but also does some instruction on the side if needed. Customers are required to make reservations in advance for scheduled tours but sometimes space is available for extra customers. Rentals are booked by reservations and walk-in customers.
Melissa Smith, a local college student, handles the telephone inquires and reservations. Daily she enters the reservations in a binder, with tabs for each business activity. This list is used to back-up the Microsoft Access database that she uses to record reservations. Each morning, she runs a report that will print out the reservation list for the day. Not only does she maintain the reservation database, but she also uses an accounting software to keep BA’s books.
Although the BA database handles the basic information, Harry has noticed some drawbacks. On several occasions the reservations for the tours have conflicted with his availability. Shawn and Harry would like to get information about rental patterns, customer profiles, advertising effectiveness and future business opportunities. They have been talking about either updating their system or replacing it with a new information system that would meet their current and future needs but needs more details on which option is feasible for the company. Your job is to help come up with a plan to address these issues.
Writing the Report
You will have some discretion as to how you would like to structure your report to best deliver your proposal, but your report must address the following questions about each step in the systems analysis design process:
Planning: Define the scope of the problem. You know that BA has a mix of manual and computer-based techniques and they want to update their system or buy a new system. Explain the steps in a feasibility study to determine the anticipated cost and benefits for the best option for BA.
Requirements: Justify the functional requirements. Explain what documentation will be used to analyze the needs of the end users to ensure the new system can meet their expectations?
Design: Use the information that you received from the system requirement documentation to explain how you will design the new or updated system. What are the necessary specifications and operations of the user interface that will meet the functional requirements? Will you use a logical design or a physical design and why?
Development: Explain the development paths that will help start production using these three key topics: the impact of the Internet, software outsourcing, and in-house software development.
Testing: Discuss how the system will be tested to determine if the proposed design meets the business goals.
Implementation: How will the system be implemented? Who will use it and what is the training plan? What would be the cost of implementing the system? Discuss the post-implementation evaluation plan, does the system meet specified requirements.
Maintenance: Does the system need any updates to improve performance? Identity all maintenance activities that will help with making the system operate more efficiently.
