Summary: Riordan Manufacturing

Individual Paper, Part 1
James Roop
BSA375
May 27, 2012
John Maloney

The Riordan Manufacturing Company has submitted a service request to analyze the human resources department. The goal of this analysis is to integrate the variety of tools already in use by the company into one system for the whole company to utilize. The system development life cycle will be used to complete the request and the goal of Riordan Manufacturing. The first portion of this paper will focus on the scope and feasibility of the project, as well as describe the information gathering techniques and design methods for the service request. Riordan Manufacturing submitted a service request to integrate all the current tools into one application for use by the
Knowing the needs requires a “grasp of how the company’s human resources work and the strength and weakness of the system.”1 The second item to complete is to have an understanding how the current system or systems work and which plant has the system. Fact finding techniques will be used to accomplish this. To ensure the analysis process has as much relevant data as possible, six stages of the information gathering process will be addressed. These six stages are “identification of the areas which information is required, creating the correct research questions, determining the source of data, researching to gather raw data, confirmation of the data, deriving meaningful information from the data to make goals and requirements.”2 The Human Resources department at Riordan already knows there is a need to create a system utilizing all the current tools, making the first step of the information gathering process complete. After the tools in use by which plant is identified, the project team can have questions answered by either Riordan or the team itself. The project team must make sure the questions which are asked are worded in a way that will produce the best answers. The best answers will provide the best results for the new system. Errors in the program because the team did not get the correct or best answer could “cost 10 to 100 times as much to fix”3
One area is to view the procedures in the current system and identify the tasks. Examining the tasks can identify the users, interactions between the users, and the tools they utilize. The team can then use this information to make specific questions to expand the observations, allowing for a better understanding of the system and requirements. By asking the senior and middle management and system users, the project team will better understand the requirements of the system and be able to create a system which may exceed the expectations of Riordan Manufacturing. The project team can use different strategies to find a complete understanding of the requirements, scope, and limitations of the current system used by Riordan. The efforts can consist of interviews and questionnaires if the company has the time and commitment needed to be productive to the project team. The project team can also gather data through observation, research, and interviewing the correct stakeholders. The interview process can serve one of six purposes. These purposes are initial introduction, familiarization and background, fact gathering, verification of information, confirmation of information, or as a follow up. Along with interviews, the project team can use questionnaires to gather the needed information. The questionnaires can be sent out before the interview to help the team find more or new questions to ask