Many people now use diagrams now instead of written text as a form of communication this is because it can be easily understood and does not take along time to understand as they do not have to read through a huge amount of text to get the idea of it. There are many types of diagrams available to use in such cases.

Bar Chart – A bar chart is diagram which uses rectangular bars which can either be displayed horizontally or vertically to display the value of certain objects taken over any period of time. This is a great way to display information as the user instantly gets an idea of what its tying to describe and will be able to draw conclusions very quickly allowing.

Pie Chart – A pie chart is a chart that is circular, showing different values which are given a percentage of the circle so that the information is clearly displayed and is easy for the user to understand like the bar chart. This is very ideal for the likes of showing analysis but summarised for a user with less knowledge to understand.

Table – A table is a box containing information that is separated in to rows and columns showing all the preserved information and research in a well displayed and easily read table.

Flow Chart – A flow chart a common type of diagram within business’s showing a process and an action if not a few while showing the type of process and steps along the way, showing the designing, the implementation, the analysing and also the managing processes. This is very ideal for showing the design of a project or even the process used to analysis

Network Chart – a network chart is a chart that has a specific structure of symbols connected to each other showing the input, the hidden and also the output. This is ideal for a more complex analysis and is very good for showing all the input obtained within a project.

Decision Tree – A decision tree is a simple chart making the shape of what resembles a tree in order to help the user clearly see what is the best choice, or best action to be taken in order to continue forth in a projects development.

Context Diagram – A context diagram is a well laid out chart that displays several entities that show a lot of information of all the processes of a system including the inputs and outputs

Here is two examples of diagrams that are used instead of words example one is of how to put together a pulley system and how it works where as example 2 is of sales figures through out the year. Each is different but they both use the same visual method of explaining things to the end user making it easier for them to understand.

Example 1: When using a diagram such as this, it will allow the user to see what the system should actually look like, as if they had the written text they would have to imagine what it would look like and if its worded wrongly it will through the user off on what it should look like and they will end up building something else. Also from having it all clear and in front of them it will seem like a much easier task and that they will not feel burdened when building it as they don’t have to think that much.

http://www.qedoc.org/en/images/thumb/1/17/Pulley3a.png/300px-Pulley3a.png

Example 2: this diagram is used instead of plain text as its a lot more interesting, and sets out all the sales figures in a nice clear way. If it was just a text file many wouldn’t really care to read it but because it jumps out at you it will attract your attention. This is defiantly an advantage for a meeting, as it will keep the listeners more intone to what’s going on.

http://www.jpowered.com/graph_chart_collection/graph-images/bar-chart.gif

The Post Implementation Review meeting is a meeting that would happen straight after a project is completed. This meeting is designed to last a few hours where the people working on it get together and discuss the problems they faced developing the program and ways to get around this for the next bit of work. This can also be done at the end of each stage of development, for example if the project is to last a few years many will have forgotten all the problems from the start that needs reviewing, so by increasing the amount of meetings will prevent this but may be a more of a hassle to the staff. The meetings can also be split up into smaller groups of people as the idea is to get people to talk so if they feel pressurised to talk in such huge groups. This will get more feelings out and help get the problems out so they can be addressed and once addressed they should improve the workforce in the next project.

A structured walkthrough is a procedure for a group of people who review and discuss the different aspects of software development and maintenance work products. The main objective of a structured walkthrough is to find problems and to improve the quality of the end product. Errors occur as poorly stated requirements and inefficient code. Structured walkthroughs generally do not discuss solutions for the errors that are found. The basic purpose of a walkthrough is error detection, not error correction. When the walkthrough is completed, the author of the work product is responsible for taking the necessary actions to correct the errors. The author may follow up meetings to discuss potential solutions with other members working on the project. Structured walkthroughs should be conducted during all stages of the system lifecycle. Walkthroughs can be conducted in various formats, with various levels of formality, and with different types of participants. In some cases, it might be useful and expedient to include end users in walkthroughs this is so they can point out things that the business needs if it was unclear from research undertaking by the system analysis. Management representatives do not participate in structured walkthroughs. Regardless of the variations in format and participants, the basic activity and the major objectives of the structured walkthroughs remain the same. Before the structured walkthrough even takes place, many of the employees have to be given tasks to perform and know exactly what they are to be doing in the meeting. For example there is a scribe and they will have to be informed of what and what not to take down. This is the same for all the number of roles available. And after the meeting it is the author who will take all the notes on board and get them fixed for the end product.

A scrum is a predefined method of managing complex work. This is used as an aid to system manager and can also be used for running software management teams. In a scrum there are two types of roles, there is the pig and the chicken. They both are different yet will affect the system. A pig is someone who is designing the project and building it for the end user. The scrum is a way of using the workforce to a best a quality as possible making the process as effortless as possible allowing the managers to focus there attention on other bits of work. The chicken however is people that will be using the end product or will be linked to it in some way. These are important as if they are not kept informed certain needs that they want may not be completed or they may not be happy with the end result in some way or they just want to be informed in the proceedings of the business.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=7512t_2bUi6QTHB_2f1kQ0Nurg_3d_3d

The first question is asking do they like salad, this is key as if the majority asked do not this shows that there is not a very big market for the salad shop but if they do like them it will mean there may be a market for it. It is laid out in a simple 50-50 answer so that the user can only answer one way, making the question simple and easy to understand. The second question asks how often the customer eats out in a week. This would give a slight indication of the chances of someone coming back into the shop after they have already been that week. So the shop an idea how many customers they can expect to get a week. The third question is asking do they eat salad at home or out on the go. This will show if people that eat salads would be willing to pay for them or would they rather to make there own. The fourth question talks about where they would usually eat lunch this question doesn’t really find out much, just really what the most popular place to eat at the minute is. This will allow us to aim to beet that particular shop through bench marking against it. The fifth question would ask how much they spend on food when eating out this will give us indication of how much the customers are willing to spend. This will give us an idea of how high to set prices and because there is no other shops offering anything like that the prices can be set as high as the customers are willing to pay and not have to worry bout it being cheaper elsewhere.

                Question six is quite a simple one; this asks about if they would use the shop if it was available to them. This question has 3 answers 2 definite ones, being yes or no and one unsure answer. This will show us who would actually go as even though they may like salads, most people will not go to a shop just for salad. This question is more valuable answer than the first question as it gives us a better indication of the customers mind. The seventh question builds on the sixth as it asks how often they would go if they had the shop in the university. So we can see the number of times they would actually go per week giving a better indication of the customers expected or how popular it will be. The eighth question asks how often they are in university the longer they are in the more likely that they are to visit the shop. This is just to find out if the people that are interested are in a lot of the week. Question 9 and 10 go together to find out what the customer likes and would they actually choose salad over there favourite food.

                This questionnaire will be handed out to 100 people around the jordanstown campus. To ensure that it is handed out to the correct people I will have to do it on 5 random days to get the most reliable result. This is so that I can get people who are in different days as when I do the survey it is not necessary the ones that will be in the shop everyday. The second way ill be making sure its reliable is by making the questionnaires are handed to a variety of people not just a specific type of person. Ill also have to ask people that do not go to the university like school children as they are often seen passing through as well as students and lectures. Although there are complications I feel this method will be the best way to achieve the required results which are reliable.

                There is a number of problems that cannot be fixed, the first is that people are not always of their word if they say they will do something they may not, this could be for a number of reasons. If they were frustrated and I bother them with a question they may give wrong results as they dnt care at all about it, secondly they may try to be nice and say it’s a good idea but really thing its not. This could give a huge misunderstanding of wether or not the business will succeed. The next problem is that I am limited to the amount of time I can spend doing questionnaires, as even I asked everyone for a year the next year could be different all depending on tastes etc. this makes it hard to judge if it would be a good idea or not. And the final difficulty is that I may not ask the right people and get a completely wrong idea of the market for the product. If I where to ask and everyone wanted it, it would lead me to believe that the whole university wanted it where as it could only be that 100 that I had asked.

                I will be undertaking a feasibility study on your business ABC bakeries; I hope to be able do a complete study so that we can be at the best possible foothold to improve the business for you. I will be looking at in particular your methods of production; the reason behind this is that if we can develop a way of creating the more efficiently it will save lots of time. Secondly I shall investigate the distribution process, due to the goods being perishable means all goods must be sent on time. I believe this will need to be perfected so that as few as possible goods are not wasted. Also delivery time is also important to have it as short as possible to keep the customers happy. Finally the last thing that I will be looking at in detail is the management of the business, because of the nature of your management being use to large retail, it may be necessary to train them to store level, also new management will be needed who are trained in web ecommerce. Overall ill be looking for the ways I can improve the business in anyway possible in the cheapest most effect way possible.

                Currently ‘ABC bakeries’ is working at a basic retail store level. By taking this study I plan to investigate if it is economically feasible to improve the system in such a way so that it can stop all the small problems it has.

                The current system is very basic mainly having all records on paper and all records are collected at the end of the week. These records contain all the information like amount sold and costs they incur. This method is slow due to the large amount of time it takes for the records to be processed so when a shop runs into trouble or is selling nothing it normally takes a week for the head office to do anything about it, this is a key problem and will be addressed in the new system. The goods are made using large scale machinery designed for batch producing, however with the new retail stores, this machinery is not being used to full potential as it will not be making enough to cover the costs of running it. The amount of specialising required involves the machine to be stopped and changed to the settings of many different designs of cake, wasting time. The problem could be fixed by bringing smaller machines for each store and selling off the larger ones to help cover the costs. When it comes to the distribution of the products it’s got a similar problem of being more geared towards the larger scale market. Its use to set deliveries with huge orders, but now they have the problem of lots of small orders. To cope they should buy a small van which is big enough to be used for the deliveries. The old system gained all orders from people entering the shop however in today a lot is done via the internet, so an ecommerce website will need to be set up. With this system they will be able to send records to management a lot quicker allowing quicker responses, they will also be able to order in supplies faster and have the ability to have orders come in outside of open hours as internet sites are 24/7 only problem will be that this system will need someone to run it and keep it up to date and active.

The cost of this new system will be expensive due to the new hardware to be brought in but because of all there needed for, they do not have to be high spec and it should not be to hard to acquire, however when it comes to the system this will be the most expensive upgrade to ABC, due to it needing to be developed. This takes a lot of time and will require staff which means a lot more wages to be paid however when completed there will be reduced amount of staff in the future. Once the system is built it will need to be tested this could be done by the business but although this may seem free, if there is any bugs at all this could cause the wrong buns to be sent to the wrong place etc. this could damage the reputation of the business of reliability. Also the business will have to pay lawyers to make sure the business is following all the rules making sure it is fully legal as if it is not it will be a problem in the future which could bankrupt the business.

However once done there will be lots of benefits for the company, there will be less staff required which limits overtime as well meaning a reduction in staff wages. The next benefit will be that the assets of the company will be used to greater effect meaning less wasted resources. This finally will lead to better customer service and better management.

The team will consist of 20 members. They will have various roles to play at the different stages of the development. The first part of the development is the analysis stage. There will be 7 allocated to the analysis stage. This number will be required to go and visits the different shops and be able to record all the required data so that the system can be designed properly. There will be 10 dedicated to the design of the ecommerce site. The large amount is so that it can be designed quickly lots of expertise on hand. There will be 3 for implementation; these will be heading from store to store installing the new system. There is not that many because this will not take long to do and one or two stores can be done a day.

There are a number of ways to judge how the system worked, the first of which being that everyone registers fully with very few problems, so I believe it was successful. One of the problems I encountered was when I went to prove I had a loan to pay my fees the system did not pick up that I had it for about 5 mins which was a waste of valuable time and caused a queue behind me. The only other problem I could see was the waiting times at the start of the process but as the stages went on it came less crowded as everyone got more spread out. However the waiting times at the start could be up to an hour long but I believe this is very hard to stop, the only way possible could be to hire more staff in the first stages or move some from later stages to earlier ones.

The process was laid out in such a way that anyone without computer knowledge could become registered pretty easily. As there is no computer work until the user verified the details in LRC, but even so at this point the user had experts on hand to aid them. The computer work was simple for any one with a basic understanding of how to type, it was all laid out with simple instructions and all the data that needed to be entered you would have brought with you because of a letter informing the user what to bring. The only way I can think of upgrading this part of the system would be if the user was able to register online, that way they would not have to travel, if this was the case it would reduce queues but the user may still have to travel to the university to get their student card.

Once the user enters the first talk they are handed a sheet of paper,  containing the name and a lot of boxes that need to be filled in, it is not well explained what should be filled in however the user does not need to be able to understand it as if they miss a stage they will be referred back to it before they can finish registering, so its almost impossible to miss out on certain steps so despite the user interface not being friendly it doesn’t have to be as the current system is quite functional. As the user visits the different stations they receive stamps to prove they have done everything required at that stage. This is done until the final stage where the page is taken from them and they are just left with student I.D name and password details for them to keep, after this stage they get the student I.D Card and they are finished.

I believe that the current system is perfect for the job at hand as if they change it to be online like other universities this will cause a lot of confusion as the expert help will not be as readily available.