Consultant’s Analysis Report on Enterprise System
Throughout this course, you will be preparing a Consultant’s Analysis Report on Enterprise Systems for a project of your choosing that will culminate in the Final Key Assignment. You will not be developing any software or actually implementing a system, but you will work extensively with the concepts of good analysis of enterprise systems implementation. Additional information and the deliverables for each Individual Project will be provided in the assignment description for that project.
Project Selection:
The first step will be to select a project as the target for your analysis. This project will be used as the basis for each of the assignments throughout the course and should conform to the following guidelines:
- Nontrivial: The selected project should be large enough to allow reasonable exercise of the system analysis and design process.
- Domain Knowledge: You should be familiar enough with the organization or system category to allow focus on the planning tasks without significant time required for domain education.
- Accessibility: You should have good access to the people and other information related to the organization or system because this will be an important part of the process.
Select an enterprise system project that fits these requirements and submit your proposal to your instructor before proceeding further with the assignments in the course. Approval should be sought within the first several days of the course. Your instructor will tell you how to submit this proposal and what notification will be given for project approval.
Assignment:
For the assignments in this course you will be developing a comprehensive document entitled Consultant’s Analysis Report on Enterprise Systems. Your first task in this process will be to select a project to use as the basis of your plan. You will also create the shell document for the final project deliverable that you will be working on during each unit. As you proceed through each project week, you will add content to each section of the final document to gradually complete the final project delivery. Appropriate research should be conducted to support the analysis in your plan, and assumptions may be made when necessary.
The project deliverables are:
- Submit project proposal to instructor for approval
- Consultant’s Analysis Report on Enterprise Systems Shell
- Use MS Word
- Title page
- Course number and name
- Project name
- Student name
- Date
- Table of contents
- Use autogenerated TOC.
- Separate page
- Maximum of 3 levels deep
- Be sure to update fields of TOC so it is up-to-date before submitting project
- Section headings (create each heading on a new page with TBD as content except for sections listed under “New content” below)
- Project Outline
- System Requirements
- Architecture Selection
- Resources and Timeline
- Security
- Final Analysis and Recommendations
- New content
- Project Outline
- Give a brief description of the project.
- Information from the assignment description may be used, but additional details should be provided based on assumptions about the company and project that you feel are appropriate.
- Give a brief description of the project.
- System Requirements
- This section should list the requirements of the system in sufficient detail to allow a design team to create the design document.
- Describe the functions the system should perform.
- Identify the method of delivery (Web, client software, etc.).
- List the types of target users.
- Provide any additional information you feel will affect the design of the system, such as projected load on the system, globalization, or regulatory issues regarding the information that will be handled in the system.
- Project Outline
- Name the document yourname_IT401_IP1.doc
Part # 2
One of the first tasks in distributed systems development is the selection of the architecture. The architecture determines how the various parts of the distributed system will operate and communicate.
For this assignment, you will identify the architecture that will be used in your distributed system project and you will modify your consultant’s analysis report to address any new issues you discover.
The following are the project deliverables:
- Update the Consultant’s Analysis Report document title page with a new date and project name.
- Update the previously completed sections based on your instructor’s feedback.
- Include the following new content:
- Architecture Selection
- Compare and contrast at least 3 potential architectures for your system, and then select the one that applies the best to your project.
- Describe the architecture that is appropriate for your distributed system based on the results of your analysis.
- Justify your architecture selection with a summary of your analysis results and conclusions.
- Architecture Selection
- Be sure to update your table of contents before submission.
- Name the document yourname_IT401_IP2.doc.
Part # 3
*Note Timeline must be in a chart
Developing a distributed system can be complex. There are usually many components that must be acquired or developed, and each area of the system must communicate with other parts of the system. It is important to understand the major tasks involved and create a plan for the development of the system.
For this assignment, you will identify the resources required for the development of the system and the timeline for the project. For this part of the project, it will be helpful to look at the development processes of industry standard distributed systems, such as the CORBA distributed object environment and the Java 2 Enterprise Architecture (J2EE). You will also modify your consultant’s analysis report to address any new issues you discover.
The following are the project deliverables:
- Update the Consultant’s Analysis Report document title page with a new date and project name.
- Update the previously completed sections based on your instructor’s feedback.
- Include the following new content:
- Resources
- List the resources required for the project including personnel, hardware, software, and any other resources necessary to complete the development of the project.
- The personnel resources should be categorized by job function.
- Costs should be assigned to all resources.
- Timeline
- Identify the major milestones for the project.
- Determine the time required to complete the tasks necessary for each milestone.
- Create a timeline for the project showing the milestone durations and completion dates.
- Resources
- Be sure to update your table of contents before submission.
- Name the document yourname_IT401_IP3.doc
- Submit the document for grading.
Part # 4
Distributed systems are particularly vulnerable to security threats because they are exposed in many areas over networks. Also, distributed systems are often business-critical applications that must not be compromised.
For this assignment, you will identify the security risks that may be present for your distributed system project. You will also modify the consultant’s analysis report to address any new issues you discover.
The following are the project deliverables:
- Update the Consultant’s Analysis Report document title page with new date and project name.
- Update the previously completed sections based on your instructor’s feedback.
- Include the following new content:
- Security
- Identify the primary security risks your distributed system might face.
- Determine the threat level in terms of likelihood and impact on the business.
- Based on the likelihood and impact of the security threats, determine the order in which threats should be addressed, and prepare an action plan to reduce the threat from each risk listed in priority order.
- Security
- Be sure to update your table of contents before submission.
- Name the document yourname_IT401_IP4.doc.
Part # 5
Individual Portion
The final step in developing the Consultant’s Analysis Report on Enterprise Systems is to provide an analysis of the costs and benefits of the system and offer your final conclusions and recommendations to the client. Sufficient information should be available in the report sections prepared in previous weeks to allow final review of the required resources and assign costs to the project. The benefits to the client can then be compared to the costs and your conclusions given. You will also further refine the plan to produce the final draft version for the project. Updates may be based on peer and instructor feedback.
The following are the project deliverables:
- Update the Consultant’s Analysis Report on Enterprise Systems title page with a new date and project name.
- Update the previously completed sections based on your instructor’s feedback.
- Include the following new content:
- Final Analysis
- Summarize the resource requirements for the system required for implementation. These resources should include development costs if the system is internally developed or acquisition costs if it is an externally developed system.
- Assign costs to all resources.
- Identify short- and long-term benefits to the organization in financial terms.
- Compare and contrast the costs and benefits.
- Provide conclusions and recommendations to the client.
- Final Analysis
- Consultant’s Analysis Report on Enterprise Systems final draft:
- Review the entire document for any changes and improvements that you would like to make.
- Ensure this final version of the document is sufficiently detailed to meet the requirements of the assignment.
- Any previous instructor feedback should be addressed with the appropriate changes.
- Be sure to update your table of contents before submission.
- Name the document yourname_IT401_IP5.doc.