| Course:COMP1435 Information Analysis |
2018/19 | Coursework ID: 300436 |
Contribution: 70% of course |
| Coordinator: | |||
| This coursework should take an average student who is up-to-date with tutorial work approximately 35 hours | |||
| Learning Outcomes: Understand the problems associated with getting universal agreement on what the issues in an organization are.
Evaluate how to use an understanding of organizational issues to move that organization forward in a unified manner. |
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This is an individual piece of work.
The Questions
- Draw a Rich picture that clearly illustrates all of the problems and issues that exist today for the owners of Fascinating Holidays
(15 marks)
- Develop 3 stakeholder perspectives for the new business model from the following perspectives: Operational Director; “happy to change” Company Specialist; Marketing Director. These should be formatted as CATWOE’s and an explanation for each of your choices should be added. (15 marks)
- Evaluate how the perspectives developed in question 2 differ from each other and how, if you were a management consultant charged with running the new business model initiative, how you would go about attempting to move the company forward in a harmonious manner. (15 marks)
- Construct a business activity model consistent with the “happy to change” Company Specialist’s stakeholder perspective for the Fascinating Holidays new business model. (15 marks)
- New IT systems almost certainly need to be built for the new business model – state what you believe the most important systems would do. You should also describe key reports that would have to be produced. (10 marks)
- For ONE of the IT systems that you have identified list up to 15 functional requirements and up to 4 non-functional requirements. Ensure that you justify each of your chosen requirements, and that you describe how these requirements will link into the reports that you have described in question 5. For your functional requirements apply the MoSCoW technique to prioritizing those requirements.
(.5 mark for each functional requirement; max 8)
(1 mark for each non-functional requirement; max 4)
(up to 3 marks for MoSCoW)
(15 marks)
- Identify the most critical stakeholders that you believe should be included in any requirements gathering workshop exercise and explain why they should attend. (5 marks)
- Following the workshop it will be necessary to explore the high level requirements in more detail with each stakeholder individually. For each stakeholder identified in question 7 suggest a possible elicitation technique that you COULD use to define their detailed requirements and explain why the technique would be suitable. (10 marks)
Introduction
Overview of what you need to do
For this coursework you should explain all of your thoughts processes that you went through before writing your answer. In addition you should clearly indicate where you consider the case-study to be in need of clarification and how this would, in a real-life investigative situation, lead you to ask further questions of the stakeholders involved in this situation. When helpful, carry out research to aid your thinking with regards to answering particular questions (I am not going to say which particular questions – that is down to you).
Case study
Attached is a case study based upon a potential real life situation. It is deliberately ambiguous at times – something which all project managers, business analysts and management consultants will have to deal with in the real world.
Checklist of Activities
Deliverables
A written document consisting of diagrams and words, as appropriate; the word part should be not in excess of 1000.
Formative Feedback
During the course of your assessment there will be an opportunity for you to obtain verbal formative feedback from your tutor on your progress.
Case study – Fascinating holidays
Fascinating Holidays Ltd are an independently run Travel Agency that specialize in adventure holidays. The company has been in operation for 12 years organizing tours and independent holidays to destinations such as Greenland, Alaska, Myanmar, Borneo and Namibia. The agency has always specialized in the luxury end of the travel market, with most customers in the 40 to 60 age group, but the number of bookings has fallen during the recent recession. As a result, the Operations Director is now considering changing its focus to “real adventure” holidays in the more remote parts of the world – holidays that will stay in the memory forever. These would cost significantly less than the current tours but would involve “roughing it” rather than luxury hotels. However, the Managing Director of the agency has some concerns about the size of the market for these holidays, and is more concerned about driving down costs whilst thinking about ways in which to improve customer numbers. It is thought that the adventure holidays would appeal most to young people but there is a risk that they may be unwilling to experience the basic living conditions necessary in very remote areas. A further concern is that with the significant University fees that many young people have to pay that these holidays will be beyond their budgets.
Further research suggests that many elderly customers are interested in this type of holiday – perhaps as a final chance to explore something truly exciting at the end of a long life! However, this profile of people when using websites are found to have high input error rates and low completion rates, and this will be an issue as the company moves forward with its plan to be far more online.
The dangers inherent in this type of holiday also need to be addressed to ensure that costly compensation claims are avoided. It is clear to the Operational Director that “airline” style safety precautions will be needed and this will cost a great deal of money. With this in mind the Operational Director has stipulated, in order to minimize legal issues, that no-one under 18 can go on their holidays unless accompanied by an adult over the age of 25.
Initial research has revealed that many people are concerned about the impact that travel to remote destinations may have on the environment and indigenous populations. It will be important to reassure potential travellers on these points. A positive finding is that the improvements in worldwide communications means that travellers are reassured that they can keep in touch even from remote areas.
Fascinating Holidays Ltd will need to improve familiarity of its brand in the new market sector. The Marketing Department will be key in achieving this, and they have been given the challenge of improving brand awareness by 30% within a year. It has been estimated that the number of clients will need to double as the margins on the new holidays will be lower and this will mean selling holidays to a wider spectrum of people. An additional factor is that there is currently a substantial sum of government funds available to be spent on disadvantaged people and cheap adventure holidays will have a good chance of capturing some of these funds. Within two years the Marketing Director hopes to capture half of the overall “adventure” market.
To start this new initiative all of the existing Country Specialist staff will be called to a meeting, by their boss the Operations Director, to discuss what will be involved in this challenge – confirmation of adventure travellers’ requirements; exploration of new destinations, determining travel and accommodation facilities at each destination and identifying adventure activities. Preliminary research has shown that travel within some of the potential destinations can be notoriously troublesome. Whilst most country specialists love to explore new places (regardless of the hardships) there are some who may not be willing to adapt to the new style of holiday. For those country specialists that enjoy the challenge of visiting new places there is a strong belief that adding new places to their itineraries will persuade customers to come back time and time again. Once the new destinations have been finalized, the country specialists will be assigned to the new tours with familiarization visits where necessary. Additionally, in order to check the success of the new tours, Country Specialist staff will be expected to fill out detailed reports about each of the tours that they run. It will also be very important that Country Specialists keep themselves aware of all places in the world that are emerging as potentially exciting new holiday destination – the tourist hot spots in the world are often overrun as people from previously poorer countries become richer and add to the holidaying masses. There has never been a better time for places that the tourists don’t visit to build themselves up into tourist destinations – here the country specialist should be able to help and when they recommend a new place, the Operational Director may offer funds to the potential new destination in return for privileged access to the new destination.
Marketing will have to develop a marketing strategy for the new tours, particularly given the very different demographic that they will be targeting – they are already aware that they will have to move away from expensive advertising in quality newspapers and magazines to a much greater emphasis on digital marketing. This is expected to lower costs in the medium term but they may well incur significant costs in the short term for consultancy in digital marketing techniques. Management realize that this additional skill set will increase the employability of the marketing staff and that they will need to pay them a higher salary.
Customer services staff, who are the first line of contact for customers, will need to be trained by the Country Specialists in all the new holiday destinations so that they can effectively deal with enquiries.
