Project Assignment 1: PROBLEM AND CONTEXT ANALYSISal495/eport/docs/INFO627problemcontextanalysis.pdf · Project Assignment 1: PROBLEM AND CONTEXT ANALYSIS Group 3: Adam Lerman Abdalla

Project Assignment 1: PROBLEM AND CONTEXT ANALYSIS

Group 3:

Adam Lerman

Abdalla Hashem

Danijela Lazarevic

James Mallon

Date: January 31, 2010

Company: PTI

Lerman, Hashem, Lazarevic, Mallon

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 3 1.1 Purpose of the problem analysis document .................................................................. 3 1.2 Change Overview .............................................................................................................. 4 1.3 References ......................................................................................................................... 4

2. Organizational Context And Problems ................................................................................. 4 2.1 Organizational Context ..................................................................................................... 5 2.2 Problem Analysis ............................................................................................................. 10

3. Change Analysis ................................................................................................................... 15 3.1 Business Process Analysis ............................................................................................ 15 3.3 Change Priorities and Constraints ................................................................................ 20

4. So What?................................................................................................................................. 21


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0. Executive summary

PTI, a global software company headquarted in suburban Pennsylvania is currently expanding and must integrate employees from various locations. Currently, there is a need to integrate the testing and development environments, in addition to creating a robust centralized internal collaboration and tracking platform. The goals of this system are to enable developers and testers to coordinate their efforts so that time and effort are maximized. The intent is to create an internal collaboration system including an improved issue tracking system for timely tracking of issues, organization, quick response time, and resolution of issues, as well as reporting, and sharing important files. Following through with a change in the business structure and the way that company employees report to one another will provide for the benefits as discussed above. In addition, it will be necessary to adopt a new system that allows for these changes to take effect, such as an issue tracking, defect reporting, internal collaboration environment. This paper seeks to discuss the company background, the changes proposed, and the implications of making such changes. In addition, the necessary prerequisites for adapting to this change will be mentioned. We start with an introduction to the business and its current problems. We discuss the changes that must take place with respect to the organizational context and provide a thorough analysis of the problems and business processes. In doing so, we provide a number of diagrams which help illustrate the current situation, and we propose changes along with their implications. Finally, we end with a discussion of the relevancy and where we wish to proceed for future outcomes.


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1. Introduction As the company, PTI, expands and hires new software testing employees, combined with the fact that the development team is located offsite, there becomes a need to integrate the testing and development environments. The business needs a robust centralized internal collaboration and tracking platform that would enable the development and testing teams to exchange and manage crucial operational information more effectively and efficiently. The company’s competitive advantage lies in its ability to provide a highly reliable software product that meets the customers’ needs which are linked to the ever changing pharmaceutical business environment. The ability to communicate and collaborate effectively, combined with an efficient and robust issue tracking system will enable the company to address software issues and potentially lessen defects which will result in a high quality product delivered on time to satisfy market needs. This in itself will increase customer satisfaction and retention which will translate into increased profit from the main product that the company produces. Additionally, improved collaboration and communication tools coupled with an enhanced issue tracking system will potentially streamline the software development process and consequently reduce development costs. The goals of this system are to enable developers and testers to coordinate their efforts so that time and effort are maximized. The intent is to create an internal collaboration system including an improved issue tracking system for timely tracking of issues, organization, quick response time, and resolution of issues, as well as reporting, and sharing important files.

1.1 Purpose of the problem analysis document The existence of PTI's highly dispersed environment requires effective collaboration and communication to better serve the company and its customer base. A need has surfaced for a better collaboration and communication system in addition to a complete and efficient issue tracking system. Lack of an adequate system has impacted the response time to customer issues, the length of the development cycle, and even created duplicate efforts and confusion in dealing with customer issues and developing high quality software in a timely manner. Additionally, this has driven up the cost of development and maintenance of software. The team has recognized that a need for an enhanced issue tracking system which incorporates the necessary tools for communications and collaboration is essential for the company in order to address the aforementioned challenges. During this phase, we are trying to validate our assumptions and analyze the stakeholders’ needs in order to propose a solution to the current challenges that face the development team, testers, and customers.

Goals: To enable developers and testers to coordinate their efforts so that time and effort are maximized. The intent is to improve collaboration and provide an improved issue tracking system for timely tracking of issues, organization, quick response time, and resolution of issues, as well as reporting, and sharing important files.


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The long-term implications for this change once the users’ tasks and business processes structured around the new system matures will be:

• High quality software product. • Better response time to software issues affecting customers. • Shorter development cycle which will result in faster time-to-market:

o To meet rising demands of a rapidly growing customer base, and o To ensure the company's goal of remaining the cutting edge technology leader

in the marketing and sales IT tools market is consistently met • Efficient use of resources (such as improved efficiency of developers and testers and

helpdesk) • Less time spent struggling with the development environment and issue tracking and

consequently more time spent on innovation.

1.2 Change Overview As was mentioned, the main problem areas are the company’s communication, collaboration, and issue tracking system or the lack thereof. Following through with a change in the business structure and the way that company employees report to one another will provide for the benefits as discussed above. In addition, it will be necessary to adopt a new system that allows for these changes to take effect, such as an issue tracking, defect reporting, internal collaboration environment. This paper seeks to discuss the company background, the changes proposed, and the implications of making such changes. In addition, the necessary prerequisites for adapting to this change will be mentioned.

1.3 References 1.3.1 Proscape Technologies, Inc. (2010). About Proscape: What We Do. Accessed on January 7. 2009 from <http://www.proscape.com/about.aspx>.

1.3.2 Group 3 - INFO627 Project Proposal

2. Organizational Context And Problems The following section describes the background of PTI, along with its organizational context. It discusses the problems at hand and the affected parties with respect to our proposed system. In order to develop the analysis, a survey was created with the intent of sending it to as many potential company employees as possible. However, due to confidentiality constraints, we were unable to distribute the survey thorughout the company in order to reach all the required stakeholders and obtain as much information as was desired. Therefore, the Group 3 team decided to proceed with the analysis of the issues based on the information collected while researching the company's website, as well as unofficial information obtained and collected among testers/developers, with whom one of our team members has had access. Some information, therefore, has been speculated according to the secondhand knowledge we gained about the business. However, we feel that this is an accurate portrayal of the company and its goals and needs, and it is as realistic as possible.


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2.1 Organizational Context 2.1.1 Organizational Description and Background

This section serves to provide an explanation of the company background and the way that work is completed. It will present and discuss the organizational structure, rich pictures, and descriptions of the workflows and communications. Particular unstructured issues may be discussed, such as the company culture, politics, local organization of work, etc. PTI is the innovator and global leader of closed-loop marketing software, providing seven of the world’s top ten pharmaceutical companies with improved sales-force effectiveness and sales and marketing productivity through its Tablet PC software. By allowing for continuous feedback garnered from real-time sales presentations, sales representatives are able to deliver more effective and personalized interactions on future sales calls. By utilizing the closed-loop marketing software, the marketing team is able to quickly and cost-effectively modify existing messages, change tactics, and prepare new strategies based on customer feedback. Finally, PTI products ensure marketing compliance and enhance overall company performance. Being a software company in a novel and higly competitive industry, PTI is very protective of its IPs and very secretive when it comes to discussing it within the company and even handling its operations. Most employees do not have a great handle on what others are doing at any given time, or even what their job responsibilities are. There is no transparency in the workflow or communication, and some issues get “swept under the rug” due to no overall governing body in each department. Most employees have a superior that they receive assignments from and to whom they report, but the reporting structure itself is not well-defined. In addition, job titles do not always reflect the overall duties performed and there have been many overlaps in job responsibilities. In the QA/testing department, the main collaboration during the software development cycle occurs while testing new software features and reporting defects to the lead developer. The lead developer is in charge of the testing team and assigning deliverables to any given member. In down times, between builds and during releases, the testers may be given assignments from the project/product management team to whom they will then report. The developers work from multiple locations and report to the lead developer and the CTO, who is then tasked to help ready the product for release. One problem with this, however, is that each developer works on and is an expert in a separate software module, the result of which becomes a small inconsistency between them in regards to such things as menus and icons. The main goal seems to be the creation of a useful working product, but attention to detail is not always first and foremost. While this does not cause any detrimental errors in the final product, it is not as professional and streamlined as could be from a best practices standpoint. In addition to the dispersed development environment, PTI also maintains numerous small national and international sales and customer service locations around the globe. Those offices are lead by a few global account mangers for each strategic location and overseen by the vice president of global operations. Customers’ issues are recorded in the current issue tracking system and sent to both the developers and application consultants. These issues are then managed and overseen by the account managers. The testing team is not part of the


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issue tracking process and, therefore, a loss of knowledge occurs due to improper sharing of critical information, which makes issue tracking difficult and results in replication of QA efforts. The following organizational chart depicts PTI’s company structure:

The current structure of the company leads to a potential fragmentation of reporting responsibility, with large teams overseen by a single person. Communication flows are not always ideal and certain issues that should be given some attention may get overlooked by important persons because they were not reported by certain managers due to personal interests. For instance, the need for important software fixes or enhancements may not be reported to operations and product managers because QA reports directly to the developers instead of an intermediary body. Therefore, it is at the discretion of these developers to report these issues, which may not be done due to personal interests or offenses taken since these software projects are their “babies.” In addition, since different departments are not in direct contact with each other, there leads to information hiding and loss interdepartmentally.


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Some of these problems can be seen in the next unstructured rich picture as told from the QA/testers’ point of view. As we can see, there is a great divide as to how these individuals view the organization, as separate entities almost totally unrelated. They are unaware of what the rest of the company does, especially in regards to the global operations in the international division.

Between the QA/testers’ point of view and the view of upper management, we can see a vast discrepancy in the understanding of the company structure and workflow. It is easier to tell how the departments are interrelated and how each piece fits together. This highlights the need for better information sharing and company policy discussion.


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Project/Product Managers

Upper Management

CustomersApplication Consultant

Quality Assurance Team

Sales

I need to know what is going on in my company so I can make important business decisions!He-he, look how small they all are!

How do I communicate with my colleagues more efficiently? I don’t even know how many of them are out there?

Issues, enhancements! I need to find a competitive edge to sell our products, but I think they are all hiding stuff from me!

I may have issues, but I am paying for this.

I know what I am doing is great but I don’t know if it is meeting customer needs.

There has to be a better way to record and communicate customers’ issues!

Progress reports

Issues/Enhancements

QA

NE Developers

How do I know which VM are available and ready for QA?

They call this an issue tracking system?

Requirements fulfillment

Revenue reports

IssuesIssues/

Enhancement requests

Potential Customers

Potential Customers

Midwest/WC Developers

Estoy en el otro hemisferio.

I am a bit behind, 2-4 hours, but what’s the rush?

Requirements fulfillment

Was ist hier passiert?

Who is doing what? How far are they on whatever they are working on? I have new people starting this week...

Technology push

Technology push

Account management

Competitors

How do they do that? Closed-loop what?

Currently, the way that work seems to get done, is that developers create a software product that they submit to the QA/testing department for review and defect testing. It is this department’s job to test each software module and the overall product for a build acceptance test, following a set of test scripts. They do so on virtual machines provided by the lead developer, along with the information of which module to test and where the necessary files are located. The defects are then reported back to the lead developer who decides which defects should be fixed, what enchancements should be made, and what the priority of each is. The CTO then discusses with the president what the software will include in the next release and final decisions are made. It is then that the product is discussed with the rest of the company and the sales team attempts to obtain new customers, selling the product along with teaming up with new business partners.

When customers have an issue, it is submitted through an issue tracking system which is viewed by application consultants and developers, who then respond to the customers’ requests and determine whether the issue is a defect or should be billed as a consulting proposition. In addition, product managers help to oversee the process and provide updates


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to customers through knowledge base articles. Account managers work separately to ensure that customers are satisfied and their needs are being met.

2.1.2 Organizational Goals

The organizational and business goals are discussed in this section, including a description of how and where the company operates and how the company is affected by its current situations. Unique features of the business force the company to respond in certain ways, thereby affecting its goals.

PTI's headquarters is located in suburban Pennsylvania with development offices disseminated through a few major U.S. cities in the Midwest and west coast. Additionally, the company has satellite sales offices in Western Europe and Asia. This highly dispersed business environment gives the company high visibility on and accessibility to the underserved global market. PTI’s goal is to remain the leading global provider of highly effective and efficient marketing and sales software, while building trust in the quality of its product and rapidly growing its customer base in the global market place. Closed-loop marketing software is somewhat of a novel technology and PTI is one of the first movers in this industry segment working on securing the status of the market leader. Therefore, an important goal is to ensure that enough language packs are available to cover the wide customer base, and that the sales team is efficient and effective in working with diverse populations whose culture may be vastly different from our own. PTI expects to meet local needs as well as the universal standards in pharmaceutical sales.

PTI’s priorities are on its customers, and the company’s intentions are to deliver high-quality, effective software solutions driven by modern technology, customer feedback, and ongoing enhancements. In order to succeed and remain competitive, they must meet customer demands, paired with revolutionary insights and designs for new software solutions. The company is only as strong as its market, and it must meet growing demands for the ability to create effective sales presentations, along with a faltering economy and the constant change of the pharmaceutical industry. They must keep up with changes in technology and the way that the pharmaceutical industry markets its products, along with new government laws and mandates. It is, therefore, their goal to remain one step ahead of the competition by foreseeing future needs and meeting the demands and expectations of their customers while spending as little money as possible to do so.

PTI differentiates itself by its cutting-edge technology behind its highly effective marketing and sales tool that serves leading pharmaceutical companies in their marketing and sales efforts. The technology enables customers to proactively use its sales force efforts to collect and analyze customer feedback, producing immediate performance reports. The technology platform is highly flexible and scalable in terms of various pharmaceutical industry sub-segments, international-specific logistic requirements, customers sales force size, etc.


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2.1.2 Implications For Change

Due to the previously discussed problems and goals as stated in prior sections, this section will discuss the implications for change. This includes what the organization needs to emphasize and what it may change, in addition to what this means for the company.

The company is expanding its development and testing resources:

• To meet rising demands of a rapidly growing customer base, and

• To ensure the company's goal of remaining the cutting edge technology leader in the marketing and sales IT tools market is consistently met

The current company infrastructure is showing warning signs of persistent QA and scheduling tools insufficiencies, lack of a centralized documentation repository, and overall internal communication process inadequacies. The current internal infrastructure is not suitable for expansion and will not be able to meet future demands. Thus, the company has an urgent need to rethink and reorganize its current collaboration and communication tools and processes. The current issue tracking system needs to be expanded to allow critical QA information collected in the field to be utilized by internal resources in order to preserve this knowledge and gain efficiencies of such process.

In order to meet its goals, a small change in the reporting structure may be inevitable. This will allow the correct people to receive the updates necessary to prohibit information hiding and enhance transparency. Interdepartmental communication should be improved so that everyone is aware of the current developments in the company and its current status in the market. This may, in part, be aided by internal meetings which involve everyone in the company, instead of only upper management. In addition, more governing bodies could be implemented to oversee consistency and information sharing.

A new mode of communication, collaboration, and file sharing could be executed to provide testers with the knowledge they need to efficiently perform their duties and share their work. This will allow everyone to be on the same page and avoid redundancy of effort.

2.2 Problem Analysis

The internal operations of the company with regards to testing and development are functioning in a highly dispersed work environment, in which many employees telecommute from multiple locations on a regular/daily basis. This results in a challenging communication and collaboration environment where ideas are exchanged, developments are made, and modules are created without regular face-to-face interaction. The issue tracking system currently in place is used primarily to collect customer feedback, and is perceived as inadequate for the testing environment and developmental-testing collaboration. Additionally, virtual machines are assigned to the testers, ad hoc, to install and test the software using previously created test scripts. All development- and testing-related documentation, such as installations, database files, documents, etc. are stored on an FTP site


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for download, along with the developers’ machines and the one long-time tester employee. This results in information fragmentation and resource sharing that lacks proper management and ownership. As the business expands and new testers have been recently hired, proper communication, collaboration, and resource sharing management becomes an increasingly important topic in the organization.

The following cause-and-effect diagram depicts a number of issues inherent in the testing/development environment:


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Among the problems depicted in the problem cause-and-effect diagram, we can see four main clusters of related issues. These have been broken down into the problem statements below which outline the major needs for change:


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Element Description

The problem of… Inadequate internal collaboration and communication channels

Affects… The company, its developers and testers, along with product managers, salespeople, and account managers

And results in… Lack of communication, information hiding, duplication of work, overall decreased efficiency

Benefits of a solution… Providing a better form of collaboration and communication may result in:

• Enhanced efficiency • Information transparency • Reduced effort • Reduced expenditures • Shorter time to software release

Element Description

The problem of… Lack of centralized knowledge repository

Affects… Developers and testers

And results in… Increased time to complete work, minimal efficiency, duplicate files and work effort, greater expenditures

Benefits of a solution… Providing a central location for storing and updating information, files, knowledge materials, etc. will result in:

• Less wasted company time • Greater productivity • Less work effort and more efficiency • More defects found that can be

corrected • Less expenditures • Faster time to product release


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Element Description

The problem of… Lack of effective issue tracking system for internal and external use

Affects… Developers and testers, product managers, account managers, product consultants, customers

And results in… Duplicate issues submitted, long response time to resolution, reduced customer satisfaction, information hiding

Benefits of a solution… Providing a comprehensive tool for tracking current and past issues will lead to:

• Better planning for future product enhancements

• Requests management, prioritization, and successful product road map development

• Improve customer service and allow for immediate updates

• Reduced number of repetitive issues submitted

• Fewer staff necessary to work issues • Reduced expenditures

• Better and more reliable product updates and faster release time

Element Description

The problem of… Need for a work order system to provide an integrated testing environment

Affects… Developers and testers

And results in… Redundant work, lack of communication, reduced efficiency, increased work effort and time to completion

Benefits of a solution… Creating an integrated testing environment may enhance:

• Employee efficiency • Company expenditures • Work effort • Employee satisfaction • Less confusion


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3. Change Analysis

3.1 Business Process Analysis

The following diagrams depict the business process flow and swimlane analysis of the overall company workflow and development/testing processes, respectively.

Development of software solutions

track software issues

Recruit competent personals

Provide customer support

Ensure product quality

Collect customer feedback

Work closely with customers

Provide training

Market software products

Research market trends

Test software

Research technology trends

Enhance product quality

Customer

Product issues & enhancements

data

Marketdata

Business process Entity/data storeKey:

Potential existing


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Kn o w le d g e Mg mn tI s s u e T r a c k in gT e s t in gD e v e lo p me n t

G e n e ra t e D e v e l o p e r D o c

G e n e ra t e VM

G e n e ra t e T e s t Sc ri p t

G e n e ra t e Wo rk O rd e r

D e v e lo p e r

Wo rk O rd e r I s s u e d I s s u e G e n e ra t e d

I s s u e T ra c k e d Kn o w l e d g e St o re d

Kn o w l e d g e Sh a re d

T e s t e rPr o d u c t Ma n a g e r /Sa le s Ma n a g e r /

C u s t o me r

C l o s e Wo rk O rd e r

From our analysis, there doesn't appear to be standardized processes in place for knowledge management, knowledge sharing, or issue tracking and resolution. As the company continues to grow, the knowledge gap will increase, further magnifying the existing issues. Currently, there is a comprehensive disconnect between the developers and testers and the process in which they share information and the potential feedback loop from product managers, account managers, and customers. Without this necessary sharing of information, it becomes quite difficult to properly enhance the software modules and repair identified defects. The development team does not have a process to document or track the modules they own and they do not have a process to effectively disseminate or share their information with the other developers or testers.

Another unintended consequence of these actions is a lack of code consistency and proper data structures. These issues can lead to resources being improperly allocated because existing code needs to be rewritten or a better understanding of the code base is needed in


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order to troubleshoot defects. The testers are unsure where the testing modules are located, which modules they are responsible for, and how to properly track and provide feedback on the found defects. There is limited communication between the testers which often leads to duplication of efforts. The lack of knowledge sharing does not allow the tester to fully understand the functionality of the software. Thus, the learning curve to test additional software modules is greater and resources may be wasted trying to get up to speed.

There is an issue tracking program in place but it is primarily used by the customers. A customer does have the ability to log into the system to track their issue(s) but the tracking system does not integrate the developers and testers into one cohesive process. Therefore, the developers and testers do not derive any value from such a system because of its limitations, and the testers do not use the system at all.

Also lacking, is a process within the issue tracking system for both the developer and the tester to sign off on a customer-generated defect which would ensure proper resolution. In addition, there is not a tickler system which would alert the developer, tester, customer, account managers, and product managers the status on all opened tickets. Although the customers can use the issue tracking system, the product managers do not. Without a centrally shared repository, the product managers cannot communicate their issues to the development or QA (testers) departments to track and obtain resolution of their issues.

3.2 Stakeholder Analysis

This section describes the various stakeholder groups that are affected by the problems previously identified and why/how they are affected. The typical stakeholder groups and individuals will be acknowledged, in addition to an analysis of their different change-goals and how these can best be met. Additionally, the key requirements for change, where stakeholder groups are in agreement or difference in their needs, and what conflicts, tradeoffs, or constraints need to be managed will be discussed.

The following table presents a stakeholder analysis as performed by our group. It shows the involved stakeholders, their desires, and the impacts and strategies necessary for implementation.

Stakeholder/role What Stakeholder Wants the Project to Achieve

Assessment of Impact Potential strategies or problems in implementing stakeholder requirements

Project/Product Manager

Goal 1: To have an advanced/improved issues/enhancement change request system.

The system will be a comprehensive tool for tracking of current issues and planning future product enhancements. It will ensure centralized requests management, prioritization, and


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successful product road map development.

Goal 2: To have a widely available internal communication tool.

The tool will enable the cross-functional team to communicate project progress more effectively and result in improved project management effectiveness.

Sales/Account Mangers

Goal 1: To be able to track product improvements and enhancements, and innovations in the development pipeline.

The visibility of the enhancements in progress will enable sales personnel to keep customers interested in current product and excited about future innovations.

This requirement is in conflict with the organizational development process. There is an internal concern that this type of marketing/sales tactic puts unnecessary pressure on the product development cycle, building customer expectation beyond capabilities to meet them in a timely manner.

Developers/QA (testers)

Goal 1: To have an integrated testing environment.

This would provide a structured environment for the creation, storing, and tracking of all software-related testing materials.

This should have a low resource impact because it only involves the development and QA groups. Determine proper domains for creating testing tools such as VM's and documentation. Proper protocols need to be established to couple all necessary test artifacts.

Goal 2: To have an effective means to disseminate and communicate issues with QA (tester).

This would resolve the internal communication issues between development and QA (testers).

Need to extend the functionality of the current issue tracking system to include QA and to have it better utilized by development. This will require a lot of requirements eliciting and possibly a significant amount of development efforts.

Goal 3: To have a proper work order system for developers and testers to track testing of software modules.

This would ensure ownership of modules and improve communication between development and QA.

This could be added to the issue tracking system or could become an internal work order generation system.

Goal 4: To have intergrated system

This would improve overall knowledge and

Implement a comprehensive and improved issue tracking


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for knowledge searching.

potentially save resources. system. This could save alot of resources due to the knowledge share gained. Low impact implementation.

Goal 5: To enhance the issue tracking system to include all stakeholders to ensure proper communication.

This would greatly improve customer service and would allow all internal and external members to get immediate status updates.

Once the system is built out it should not take too many resources to identify users and determine proper security levels.

Customer Goal 1: to be able to report issues with software being used in a timely manner.

Better response time to customer issues. The requests can be monitored by technical support and addressed in a timely manner.

This may require changing the current process(s) of handling customer issues.

Goal 2: to be able to monitor/track progress of handling issues and resolution using the proposed system. This includes access to work-around procedures and access to their (customer) historical data

Higher transparency and, as a result, higher customer satisfaction. Additionally, for the organization, streamlining communications with customers and reducing number of help desk operators.

Transparency may conflict with company policies and, internally, may cause issues because of the ability of seeing what everyone is doing, especially on the software development side. Additionally, this will require careful implementation in terms of security requirements, as we do not want customers to see other customers’ issues which would lead to exposing trade secrets and loss of competitive advantage for some customers

Goal 3: to be able to suggest enhancements to software being used and a way to monitor/track progress/status and updates.

Higher transparency, Knowing what matters to customers, and as a result, customer satisfaction and customer retention. Also, this potentially will give leads to the R&D on how to enhance current products and whether or not the current products are adequate to handle customer needs

Security issues may arise. Access rights should be planned carefully as we need to preserve customer privacy.


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3.3 Change Priorities and Constraints

3.3.1 Priorities For Change

The table below depicts the four main issues identified above and their priorities for change in regards to their effect on the business:

Problem Scoreboard Analysis based on a 1-10 scale:

Business Goals

OPPORTUNITIES OR PROBLEMS

Customer satisfaction,

retention, and expansion

[weight x4]

Retain industry ledership by

supplying cutting-edge technology

[x3]

Improved realibility and

quality of products

[x2]

Software development cost

reduction

[x1]

Total

score

Inadequate internal collaboration and communication

channels

3 5 7 10 51

Lack of centralized knowledge repository

4 2 3 8 32

More effective issue tracking system for

internal and external use

10 6 8 4 78

Need for a work order system to provide an

integrated testing environment

3 7 10 6 59

The higher the rating, the better that solving the problem helps achieve the business goal.

3.3.2 Feasibility of Change

The problems/opportunities have been group and narrowed down into the following categories: 1. Inadequate internal collaboration and communication channels: There are two components to this problem, one is cultural, and the other is a dependency on solving issues 3 and 4. In the absence of solving issues 3 and 4, some cultural changes will need to occur in order to establish some baseline requirements to implement better communication processes. The company is wasting too many resources due to broken communication in regards to the way they collaborate. Correcting the issues identified in numbers 3 and 4 will produce the processes needed to enhance the internal communication and collaboration. As stated in number 3, there will need to be significant buy in; however, the results will benefit the whole company. 2. Lack of centralized knowledge repository: This may be the most feasible problem to solve in terms of complexity and cost, although it does have its share of dependencies. Satisfaction of this problem will stem from the robust nature of a modified issue tracking system and data being captured accurately. As long as the tracking system is available to all internal and external parties, the ability to capture relevant data is increased. Once the data is housed in a central repository, any number of search features can be implemented to display any intended results.


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3. More effective issue tracking system for internal and external use: This problem will require a fair amount of time to gather all of the stakeholders together to review their current processes and begin discussions centered around new processes so a comprehensive tracking system can be established. There does not seem to be as much interest in the other business areas outside of the development/QA testing group for such a system, although the issue is on everyone's radar. Therefore, it is going to imperative for the development/QA testing group to identify a sponsor, such as the CTO, for proper leadership. Once it can be shown that all divisions of the company will benefit from the upgrade, it will be much easier getting buy in from everyone. 4. Need for a work order system to provide an integrated testing environment: Since this problem mostly effects the development/QA testing team, it may be difficult to obtain approval. The most significant impact of implementation will be improved reliability and quality of the products. Internally, if it is perceived that their products already meet high standards, this may be a difficult sell. One way to ensure buy in would be to develop enhanced procedures to test with one of the developers and one of the testers and capture process improvement metrics. If increased productivity results in better reliability and quality, then this project has a high chance of getting funding.

4. So What?

Looking at the current issues with software development and defects tracking in the company, we were able to classify/categorize the issues into 4 categories that are essentially related but each have different span and implications. In a perfect world we would address all of these areas of concern simultaneously. However, with budget, personal, and size constraints we can only address one cluster of these issues. The classifications that we came up with are as follows:

Inadequate internal collaboration and communication channels

These are longer-term changes that may be important but need more planning and perhaps other changes to take place first. Creating more effective collaboration and communications systems/channels would require, on one level, to have a better issue tracking system that is able to provide effective communication and collaboration for testers, in addition to a work order system. On a larger scale, other IT systems in the company need to have similar changes to improve collaboration and communications. Therefore, this would be a large-scale project that will touch on most or possibly all IT systems in the company and will impact different users’ tasks and processes. Such a project is a long-term project and will require a large budget and resources.

Lack of knowledge centralized repository

Low-hanging fruit (simple to implement): There are many different information repositories within PTI. Knowledge is found in the following places: 1. the issue tracking database, 2. the desktops of the develpers and QA testers, 3. the customers, 4. the product managers and, 4. the account managers. Since these knowledge stores are not centralized, the result is a considerable waste of resources. Combining these stores into one central respository will provide easy access to critical knowledge that has been accumulated across the company.


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More effective issue tracking system for internal and external use Big wins, but a little more difficult: This is a challenging yet rewarding change and the one we chose to analyze. There is some risk associated with a short time frame and not having access to all the stakeholders, but this problem touches all business areas, is recognized by most stakeholders, and has lots of value for PTI. Since this issue is prominent within the company, we felt our analysis would be well regarded and highly leveraged. We feel this problem will allow us to grow as requirements engineers and will provide us with an opportunity to define a challenging problem domain, elicit requirements, and define and refine existing processes in a real world setting. We look forward to spending the rest of our class time focusing on this change. Currently, there isn't much in the way of processes to faciliate a request from a customer or a developer. When issues arise, a developer creates and stores a VM in a number of places then emails the QA tester that a module is ready. Sometimes the VM 's location isn't forwarded and there is no accompanying test or developer documentation. Any questions or found defects are communicated between the QA tester and the developer via email. The developers and testers do not communicate with each other; therefore, they do not share any information pertinent to the overall software development process. A knowledge gap has surfaced since no one is really sure what the others are working on which can lead to a duplication of work efforts and a waste of resources. The issue tracking system that is currently in place is for the customers to log problems and only the developers see these issues. We feel a better process is greatly needed to enhance existing features in addition to adding more features within the issue tracking system to expand its database to all relevant stakeholders to improve communcation, increase knowledge, insure software reliability and quality, improve customer service, and maximize resources. We envision the issue tracking system process begins with a request from a customer or a developer. From the initial request the developer creates a software module that includes the system changes. Then a VM is created along with user testing documentation and developer documentation which is stored in a central location. The developer generates a work order that includes all of the testing information which is sent to a QA tester. The tester follows the directions and places any found defects into the issue tracking system. Each defect is corelated to the testing module so each module can be accurately tracked. Once all of the found defects have been satisfied, the work order can be closed. Since all relevant stakeholders have access to the issue tracking database based on security levels, they can query it for knowledge management purposes. In addition, knowledge audits can be performed to reduce duplicative work efforts. Need for a work order system to provide an integrated testing environment Big wins, but a little more difficult: An integrated test environment is needed but may require an advanced IT solution. This problem was the only one that directly affected the developer and QA testers. While there are some trickle down benefits from a solution, the stakeholders did not see as much value as they had in the other problem areas.

Documents

Project Assignment 1: PROBLEM AND CONTEXT ANALYSISal495/eport/docs/INFO627problemcontextanalysis.pdf · Project Assignment 1: PROBLEM AND CONTEXT ANALYSIS Group 3: Adam Lerman Abdalla