Case Study: Free Feet Socks Limited.
Background:
Free Feet Socks Limited (FFSL) is a Melbourne based business which has traditionally sold imported socks to retail outlets and through representatives who sell the socks at parties, people have within their homes (party plan). The business purchases socks from a number of sources in both China, United States of America and New Zealand, with delivery through the postal service.
The business was started by the business owner, Alan Masters who undertook all the ordering and selling however the business has now grown to include both part-time and full-time employees. The organisation is also looking to expand further into underwear and home goods like scented candles. Currently the business still has manual stock control and customer relationship systems which have worked well in the past and an off the shelf accounting system which is used to manage the accounts receivable and accounts payable of the business.
The sales people are given their own geographical area to sell in. This is so stores who are selling FFSL goods are not approached by more than one sales person, however sometimes the sales people prefer to work in pairs, particularly if they are targeting new customers. More than one party plan representatives may be assigned to one sales area. The retail stores are charged for the product at recommended retail price less a discount. The amount of this discount varies according to the volume of socks brought by the store and is normally assigned by the sales person when they gain a new client.
The party plan representatives are also sold the socks at recommended retail less a discount which is the same for all representatives. As these party plan representatives sell to private people rather than businesses, FFSL does not want to keep a record of who they sell to. They must pay for any orders at the time they order however head office want to be able to see a total of how much they order every year.
Although an off the shelf accounting package is used and email for communication with suppliers and customers there is currently a low level of computer use in the organisation. The Sales people use a FFSL supplied phone and their own laptops, tablets etc. The sales people and party plan representatives phone orders in to head office and telephone to check on the progress of orders. This means that currently some staff at head office almost exclusively handle telephone calls from sales people. The head office staff have got to know the sales people well as they have worked together for a long time and they often enjoy a chat about what is happening in head office, when the sales people phone to order. These phone calls are often lengthy as some sales people only phone their orders in once a week, this concerns Alan Masters as she does not know the value of the daily sales of each sales person, or who they are visiting as the sales people control their own schedule.
Although the manual systems for stock management and customer relationship management have worked in the past, Alan Masters and the new purchasing manager, Nils Lofgren and customer manager Steven Smith feel an information system could offer significant improvements to the work processes currently in place.
Steven Smith would like the sales people and party plan representatives to order products online as they make the sales. One of his requirements would be to enable the sales people to "check in" online at every retail outlet they visit whether or not they make a sale. This is so he can check what sales calls they make. The sales people are concerned that this takes away the autonomy that they currently have. While Nils Lofgren, would like to run a report once a month that showed stock levels and how long each unit of socks takes to sell. He would also like to make bigger orders less often to take advantage of smaller shipping costs per piece of merchandise and bulk ordering discounts offered by their suppliers.
Business Processes:
A JAD session with key stakeholders revealed the following information. The business processes described below are the system requirements for this information system solution:
• It has been decided to focus of building and implementing the customer relationship management application and run a separate project for the purchasing project later. Therefore, do not model any of the purchasing system (this is where FFSL purchase from their suppliers).
• Before a retail store can become a customer of FFSL, that store must fill in an application. Applications are reviewed by the management team and not all applications are approved. FFSL records the following details for all customers: Name, Business number, Address, Telephone, Email, Application date, Discount level, Sales area, and Date last visited.
• The geographical sales areas for the sales people have been defined for the whole of Australia using current population numbers, however FFSL does not yet have enough sales people to cover all of Australia so some sales areas do not yet have a sales person assigned while some sales people are assigned to more than one geographical sales area in cities such as Melbourne.
• Steven Smith wants to run a sales report on the first of every month that shows the amount of sales, per sales area and per sales person.
• Steven Smith also requires that the following information on each sales visit be kept, the customer, the date of the visit, sales people (s) who visited, and amount of order. Please note for unsuccessful sales visits to potential customers, it is planned that a customer called "potential customer" be created for each geographical sales area to track these visits.
• The party plan representatives are expected to manage their own customers and work load so FFSL so does not store any details of the parties held.
• Any payments for salaries or expenses to sales people are outside the scope of this system
End of Case Study
Part A
Question 1: Report \20 marks
Your manager Alan Masters is sure an adaptive systems development methodology would be useful in this project but there is little knowledge about these in the organisation. Therefore they want you to write a report discussing the various methodologies of adaptive development, such as Scrum, XP and UP (at least 3). State under what circumstances each one would be used and then make a recommendation for this project. To do well in this report you must use the detail from the case study in your report as examples, rather than given general information.
The following sections need to be included;
o Adaptive methodologies – general introduction to the methodologies.
o Adaptive methodology 1
General discussion
Advantages
Disadvantages
o Adaptive methodology 2
General discussion
Advantages
Disadvantages
o Adaptive methodology 3
General discussion
Advantages
Disadvantages
o Recommendation
Your target audience is executive business people, who have extensive business experience but limited computing knowledge.
Your report should be no less than one thousand (1000) words and it would be best to be no longer than one thousand five hundred (1500) words long. Appropriate referencing is required. The textbook Satzinger et. al is a valid resource, however it is expected that at least five (5) other resources will also be used.