Riordan Manufacturing
Riordan Manufacturing is a global plastics manufacturer from plastic bottles to custom designs of plastic molding and computer fans to room fans to meet customers needs. Riordan Manufacturing has four plant locations: San Jose,CA; Albany,GA; Pontiac,Mi; and Hangzhou,China. Hugh McCauley (COO of Riordan Manufacturing) wants to take advantage of a more sophisticated technology system for the HR Department. The project's time frame is to be completed in a six month time frame to be up and running for use in the second quarter. In order to start and have the systems integrated between all facilities it is important to determine key stakeholders, gather information, and a project scope for global industry.
Information Gathering Gathering the correct information is very important in order to develop the needs of the stakeholders/users that are involved in the project. The planning would start with a meeting with IT staff, management, and users to get more of an insight of what Riordan Manufacturing wants and expects the system to do. Analyzing the steps needed to implement the changes and prioritize the steps. The range of the specifications of each department will also be taken into consideration to help the analyst in seeing the needs in whole for a new system integration for the HR department of Riordan Manufacturing. I think that a Joint Application Development would be a good fit for the developing project since the company only has four plants of which one is overseas, bringing together stakeholders to discuss individual system needs, expectations, and functions this can either be done by having meeting in the main headquarters or having a web conference to save time and work around everyone's schedule. Once all the key stakeholders are together with IT analyst they will be able to directly ask and answer questions regarding pros and cons of current system and how will the new system benefit their department as to being more efficient and user friendly. Finding out what steps can be made to improve the current system will there be more or less steps when using or looking up data in the new system, will it be more organized are things that the users might be concerned about.
Key Factors Traditional methods to determine how user and stakeholders that use the system feel about it is to interview them individually or in groups. By using the Joint Application Development the analyst can see more of a reaction and observe how everyone feels with answers/questions being discussed, also being able to review business documents on how the current system has been functioning will be beneficial to know what to fix. Once everyone agrees to what functions they would like to have and understand how the new system will work and if there will be some sort of training involved when using the new system.
Project Scope This would be what the company has projected as their time frame for the project. For the most part it will be an outline of the purpose, requirements, and goals to be accomplished for the end result of the final product. According to the service request SR-rm-0022 the project should be completed in about six months in order for the new system to be utilized in the second quarter of the next year. The Joint Application Development will allow analyst to gather all the information needed from management and users/stakeholders. The SDLC phases consists of the requirement analysis, design, implementation, and testing. Maintenance is usually an ongoing phase that will continue until the cost outweighs benefits to the business. The 1st phase is gathering all the requirements to make an analysis of the project: cost, schedule, pros and cons, and expectations. What are the software tools and hardware that will be included according to budget wise and meeting the requirements for the project. Then a diagram is
