Research Project Title: Office Productivity, Collaboration, and Business Intelligence (PCAB) Standardization

150 Points (15% of Grade)

Green-Chem has hired you as a Business Analyst, you will be responsible to conduct business requirements, decompose solution requirements into effective design definitions, you will gather and organize business requirements, analyzing data requirements, performing systems analysis and design activities, and supporting system development, testing, and delivery efforts.  This position will be responsible for supporting all phases of the system development life-cycle.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

May include, but are not limited to, the following:

· Facilitate and organize meetings with functional users and business managers to document procedures and to gather functional requirements

· Perform analysis and design activities for applications to be delivered

· Analyze data needs and create data models for applications

· Participate to enhances applications following established methodology

· Continually seeks opportunities to increase customer satisfaction and strengthen client relationships

· Assist in creating automated business process workflow

· Coordinate system signoff and meet all other change management requirements

· Research and resolve help desk issues that relate to the core application. (use Pareto)

· Provide quality assurance support during and after implementation

· Provide user training for individuals and groups

· Fully supports company goals of continuous improvement and operational excellence at strategic and tactical levels.

Company background

Green-Chem is a global manufacturer and supplier of materials that improves life every day. Headquartered in Houston with operations in Asia, Europe, North America, and South Africa. Green-Chem directly employs over 4000 people and owns assets over $4 billion dollars. During the last 2 years, Green-Chem has acquired four companies in the same market place; now it is going through “growing pains” particularly due to the duplication of office productivity software, collaboration software, and enterprise software, as well as business process. In order to solve this problem, the CIO, CFO, and CEO, decided to setup an executive committee to improve overall efficiency of the company, and decided to hire a consulting firm to conduct an “As-Is” analysis, and chart out a “To-Be” roadmap in alignment with the strategic goals and objectives of the company. Some of the highlights of this study “PCAB” include:

This study recommended items 4, 5 and 6 as the “Quick Hit Items, this initiative can be taken over by a small team of 6-7 members; team is to make recommendation in 3 months.

Table 1

	Items	Time in Months
1	Migration of SAP ERP to cloud based S4/HANNA (within 2 years)	24-36
2	Standardize on one vendor systems for plant management and for regulatory compliances	24-36
3	Keep Microsoft Office (Excel, Access, PowerPoint), plan to upgrade to Office 2019, recommended due to the fact enormous number of processes are being run using this technology	24-36
4	Standardize an email system such as Google Gmail, or Microsoft Outlook	3-6
5	Standardize Microsoft Office365 or Google Docs	3-6
6	Standardize business intelligence tools. (Currently, Excel, Access, PowerBI, Tableau, and SAS are used.)	3

You are tasked to conduct requirement analysis and make recommendations to the senior executive committee. Your role is to work as the Senior Business Analyst/Assistant and report to project manager (Zara Ann). You will gather and organize business requirements specific to this project, the deliverable will be to make recommendations on items listed on Table 1 – items 4, 5, and 6.

The following information will help you (Business Analyst):

Project: Office Productivity, Collaboration, and Business Intelligence (PCAB) Standardization

Table 2: Provides percent of widely used software in the corporation and user satisfaction rate (1=high, 2=medium, 3=Poor)

Office Productivity Software Cloud

Collaboration Technologies – Email – Calendar

Business Intelligence

Desktop Microsoft Office 2016/2019Productivity

Cloud Microsoft Office365 Productivity

Cloud Google

Google Mail Calendar

Microsoft

Zoom

Cisco

Microsoft

tableau

Misc.

MS (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Access)

Microsoft 365 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Access (PC), Publisher (PC)

Google Docs (Docs, Sheet, Slide, Forms)

Chat, Meet, and Gmail

Chat, Teams, and Voice

Zoom

WebEx Product tool include one click integration with MS Office, etc.

Power BI

Tableau

SAS

1 75%

3 25%

2 20%

2 30%

3 50%

1 30%

1 20%

2 35%

1 50%

2 15%

User Satisfaction Rate and Current Usage % in Green-Chem

Satisfaction Rate: 1=highest 2=medium 3=lowest

*Microsoft = MS

Key Stakeholders and Project Sponsors

Project Sponsor-Member Executive Committee: CEO Andy Chen

Project Sponsor-Member Executive Committee: CFO John McNamara

Stakeholder-Member Executive Committee: CIO Andy Chen: Neil Kroger

Stakeholder Senior V.P. Plants –Member Executive Committee: Jim Davenport

Stakeholder Senior V.P. Global Operations–Member Executive Committee: Albert Garcia

Stakeholder Project Manager: Zara Ann

Stakeholder Team Member – Solution Architect: Neil Kaspersky

Stakeholder Team Member – Senior Business Analyst: Yourself.

Stakeholder Team Member – Systems Analyst: Nancy Hewitt

Stakeholder –Team Member – Training & Development: Roxana Guerrero

You Business Analyst are responsible to create a Stakeholder/Project Register

Deliverable 1: List in a table using MS Word, key stakeholder names, job titles, email address, phone numbers, and level of participation (Weak, Strong, Very Strong).

You are responsible to setup a communication plan

Deliverable 2: You will specify the frequency of communication, i.e. weekly, monthly, or biweekly. This plan will be provided to all stakeholders at the kick-off meetings. A short meeting must take place between team members, preferably for half an hour at 9:00 AM in the morning (Monday-Friday). The meeting must be recorded and archived on Project Shared Drive to be accessible to all team members. Your deliverable will be Meeting Agenda only.

Requirements:

Project Goals and Objectives

As Green-Chem has acquired several companies during the last two years, the goal of this study is to eliminate productivity tools duplications. Office productivity tools on premise or cloud based programs such as Google Docs or MS 365

· Collaboration/email/calendar/meeting tools – recommend only one tool instead of several communication tools

· Business intelligence tools – recommend only one tool for enterprise business analytics; there may be exceptions to meet the needs of an organizational unit.

· Use Table 2 – provides user approximate usage and satisfaction rate. You should conduct surveys to get current feedback from:

· subject matter experts

· power users

· Knowledge workers.

Deliverable 3: You will create a software satisfaction survey, which helps you measure your software’s ease of use, collaboration capabilities, and security features among other things. Deliverable will list survey questions, not more than 7, for sample, all key stakeholders, department managers, subject matter experts (SMEs) must be included, other survey recipients must be drawn from a stratified sample size of 200.

Deliverable 4: You as the Business Analyst will create a Requirement document

1. Develop an organizational chart to help you put their roles into perspective, include only key stakeholders

2. Develop a RACI matrix for this study, format follows:

Tasks – Responsibilities R=Responsible-performs work A=Accountable-reviews or approves R’s Work C=Consulted, has the information to help the R complete work I=Informed needs to be notified of results, but not consulted	*Product Owner
Approves Deliverables
Requests and approve change
Approves requirements process to be used
Veto proposed solution
Note: check page 8 for product owner assignment, use pg. 13 for deliverables #4

Deliverable 5

3. Elicitation: In business analysis, it refers to a structured approach aimed to "draw out" information and forge a consensus among Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) regarding the requirements of application/software development. Another method is to read and analyze product reviews, vendor website, Gartner, Forrester, and several other sources, which provide valuable analysis in comparing software products. You can use some of the following:

a. Research Technique – benchmarking and market analysis

b. Experimental Techniques – prototyping, observation

c. Collaborative Based Techniques – Interviews, survey/questionnaires, requirement workshops.

Note: Develop a short table to list above techniques and time spent in hours on each activity

Some thoughtful considerations

a. Business leaders and technology partners wants to know more about the project, which typically means understanding what’s in it for them. Make sure you provide benefits that you can use in interviews, workshops, etc. with these stakeholders to seek confirmation of their expectations.

b. Before engaging the stakeholders for requirement scope definition, you have performed basic analysis and looked into user stores, and frequency of complaints in the help-desk system related to the software under review. Refer to Pareto diagram on Page 152 in your textbook. Develop a Pareto diagram, following is sample, use your own data, and draw diagram. Part of Deliverable 5

Software	No of Complaints 2021
Office 365	250
Google Doc	140
Zoom	215
WebEx	275
MS Teams	300
Google Meet	250
Tableau	175
PowerBI	225

c. You conduct workshops using Zoom, WebEx, etc.. to define scope:

a. Prioritized expected benefits (ease of use, time to train, integration with other products) – compare:

i. Office Productivity – Google Docs vs Office 365

ii. Collaboration – MS Teams, WebEx, Zoom, Google Meet

iii. Business Intelligence – PowerBI vs Tableau

b. Barriers to an enterprise-wide management solution

Note: You may include that MS 2019 office productivity tool should not be replaced, as it is vital to support business processes, Excel and Access are embedded in organizational business processes, may be can be looked at some future date.

Deliverable 6: You will develop the Requirements Scope Document, using the following guidelines:

1. Introduction

a. Document Audience

2. Purpose of Document

a. Business Opportunity

b. Project Objectives

i. Increase productivity

ii. Reduce cost (licensing, training)

iii. Reduce enterprise risk (access authorization, compliances)

c. Vision Statement

d. Problem Statement

i. Incompatibilities

ii. Learning curve

iii. Support Cost

3. Benefits

a. Single source of truth

i. One system

ii. Ease of document sharing

b. User adoption

c. Ease of use

d. Enterprise-wide standardization

e. Improved processes

4. Stakeholders/Sponsors

Project will only be successful if stakeholders and sponsors are engaged

Deliverable 7.Your deliverable will include a comparison table, with headings for office productivity, collaboration, and business Intelligence.

· Office Productivity – Google Docs vs Office 365

· Collaboration – MS Teams, WebEx, Zoom, Google Meet

· Business Intelligence – PowerBI vs Tableau

Sample Table comparing databases from two vendors Microsoft and Oracle

Microsoft SQL Server Database	Oracle Database
Total Score out of 10 8.0	Total Score out of 10 6.5
User Satisfaction 3.0	User Satisfaction 2.0
Pricing Model 1.0 Free Monthly Subscription Annual Subscription One-time Payment	Pricing Model 1.0 Free Monthly Subscription Annual Subscription One-time Payment
Technical Support 1.0	Technical Support 0.5
Performance	Performance
Vendor Credibility/Financial 2.0	Vendor Credibility/Financial 2.0
Training 1.0 Face-to-Face Recorded Videos Written Simulation Train the Trainer	Training 1.0 Face-to-Face Recorded Videos Written Simulation Train the Trainer

Deliverable 8: Create a bi-weekly progress report forward to Project Manager, Zara Ann, she will review it and forward report to project sponsors, and key stakeholders as outlined in communication plan.

Note: Create a sample progress report as deliverable; you report must list few issues, and few unresolved issues.

Deliverable 9: Executive Summary – your recommendations

Provide three paragraphs of text written in Word, make sure to spell/grammar check not to exceed 250 words, for all three categories of software, provide at least three reasons for your recommendations.

Also provide a PowerPoint not more than 5 slide with embedded audio or video

Deliverables 10: Create a Gantt chart with list of task with durations. The time to complete the project is 90 days. Use MS Project Manager.

Project Deliverables

MIS 3305 – Fall 2022 – Project Instructions

You will work alone on this project, the purpose of this projects is to make students use contents covered in class and practiced in business analysis, and how these techniques are enabler for organizations in improving operational efficiencies and strategic competitiveness.

No	Things to Do/Task for details see research project details	Points
1	Cover page will have the Project topic, course number, course description, professor’s name, and University’s name. Document fonts Arial 11 points.	5
2	List of the references used should be provided on the last page – Use APA format to cite all sources (Word, References, Style: APA, Bibliography). Also, see , or “Ask a Librarian”	5
3	Deliverable 1: List in a table using MS Word, key stakeholder names, job titles, email address, phone #, and level of participation (Weak, Strong, Very Strong).	7
4	Deliverable 2: You will specify the frequency of communication, deliverable will be Meeting Agenda only.	5
5	Deliverable 3: Create a software satisfaction survey	10
6	Deliverable 4: Develop an organizational chart to help you put their roles into perspective, include only key stakeholders, also, develop a RACI matrix	10
7	Deliverable 5: Develop a short table, and a Pareto diagram.	10
	Deliverables 3-7 due on or before Sunday April 10
8	Deliverable 6: Develop the Requirements Scope Document	25
9	Deliverable 7: Develop a comparison table, with headings for office productivity, collaboration, and business Intelligence.	25
10	Deliverable 8: Create a sample progress report as deliverable; you report must list few issues, and few unresolved issues.	7
	Deliverables 8-10 due on or before Sunday April 24
11	Deliverable 9: Executive Summary – your recommendations Provide three paragraphs of text written in Word, make sure to spell/grammar check not to exceed 250 words, for all three categories of software, provide at least three reasons for your recommendations. Also provide a PowerPoint not more than 5 slide with embedded audio or video	25 9
12	Deliverable 10: Create a Gantt chart with list of task with durations. The time to complete the project is 90 days. Use MS Project Manager.	9
	Total Points	150