Essay: Optimal Work Breakdown Structure For Defense Acquisition: System Development Approach And Requirements.

Discuss about the Optimal Work Breakdown Structure For The Defense Acquisition.

The paper mainly focuses on the information system that is needed to be developed for UNICEF childcare organization that mainly assists in giving appropriate caring as well as supervision to the children who are below 13. The organization follows a specific scheme and as per the scheme, the parents need to pay for all the necessities of the children including foods, toys and other materials. It is found that the organization uses manual system for managing the organizational operation however the utilization of manual system create number of challenges which is required to be resolved. In order to resolve the problem that the organization faces due to the use of manual system, the executive level authority of the organization proposed implementation of information system.

      The objectives of UNICEF Childcare organization are as follows:

• To develop information system for resolving the issues associated with manual system within UNICEF childcare organization
• To automate the entire process of ordering
• To incorporate facility of online payment

According to the system requirement, one of the most important requirements is to select proper system development methodology. Therefore, in order to determine proper methodology of system development it is very much necessary to analyze the various features of the system. For the information system the development, the proposed features include:

 Auto-generated invoice system: One of the most significant issues that the organizations are facing is in addressing publication of invoices during the payment procedure for providing confirmation to the users (Matharu et al., 2015). Therefore, the organization wants to develop this facility.

User portal: the facility of user portal is needed so that the users can be able to register as well as they can also make the payment online. By utilizing the technique, the user can also upload the details as well as other additional information about the children.

Auto order: The auto order option is quite advantageous as with the help of this option, the organization will be able to order for the requirements of the users whenever a new user enters or registers within the organization portal (Kerzner and Kerzner, 2017). It is found that this feature is very advantageous in minimizing the wastage as well as shortage of both materials as well as resources.

It is identified that for this project, Prototyping development method is considered as one of the most suitable system develop methodology as it helps in providing the opportunity to the developer to develop the prototype of the system at once for performing number of tests on the system (Fleming and Koppelman ,2016).  As a system contain number of features and therefore it can follow number of conventional method then it will consume more time as well as money.

Justification

 Functional requirement

The functional requirements of the system are elaborated below:

 Online payment: Online payment facility is for the parents so that they can pay the fees of the childcare organization online and be able to get automated details of payment at the end of the year (Mijumbi et al., 2016).

Auto order functionality: The auto order functionality is generally present so that the organization can be able orders the requirements of the children automatically whenever a new user registers.

Login/register: It is found that proper register facility must be present for the new users and for the existing users login facility is required for accessing the details that are present on the portal whenever necessary (Bahill and Madni, 2017).

The non-functional requirements of the system are elaborated below:

Device support: The system must be developed in a way so that it can be supported by most of the devices including PC, iOS as well as android.

System security: It is identified that the information system mainly deals with sensitive as well as confidential information and thus proper security is required to be provided so that the data as well as information cannot be misused (Dennis, Wixom and Tegarden, 2015).

Database servers: It is found that both data as well as information are stored within the database server of the organization so that the information that is stored can be accessed at any time whenever needed.

4. 4. Project Cost Benefit Analysis

 Project cost benefit is one of the techniques that is utilized for comparing the total cost and the total benefit for the information system that is mainly proposed for the UNICEF childcare organization (Sanders et al., 2016).  Cost benefit analysis is used so that the company can be able to estimate the net benefit that is associated with the project. In addition to this, it act as one of the useful tool for making proper decisions within the project. The cost benefit analysis for this project is provided below:

Table 1: Cost benefit analysis

Relation between WBS and Gantt chart

Gantt chart is defined as of the graphical representation of the project schedule that helps in reflecting the start as well as finish dates of various project elements including tasks, milestones, resources as well as dependencies of the project (Fitzpatrick, 2016).  However, Work breakdown structure is one of the key project deliverable that helps in organizing the work of the team into number of manageable sections. It is identified that with the help of work breakdown structure the Gantt chart or schedule is created that is helpful in estimating the project time for completing the project.

Systems Requirements

It is found that the estimated schedule of the project is reasonable, as the entire project will be completed successfully within the time that is estimated during the initial phase of the project (Gupta et al., 2016).   

Stakeholders involved in the project

The stakeholders who are involved with the project are as follows:

• Project manager
• Finance manager
• IT manager
• Developer
• System tester

The three most useful investigation techniques that is used are as follows:

• Direct Monitoring
• Questionnaire Survey/Interview
• Documentation Analysis

Justification of three investigation techniques

Direct Monitoring: Direct monitoring technique is used in the project for analyzing the activities as well as tasks that are needed to be completed for executing the project successfully ad for estimating the time as well as budget of the project.

Questionnaire Survey/Interview: This investigation technique is used for gathering information about the project. The survey is mainly conducted in order to get appropriate feedback from the users about the working of the system so that the organization can be able to work on the issues (Macdonald et al., 2014).

Documentation Analysis: This method is used for determining the project documents in order to collect bot information as well as data that is needed within the project. Proper analysis of documentation is quite helpful in gathering appropriate data and information (Brinkmann, 2014).

Reflections and Conclusions

After undertaking this project, I have gained proper knowledge in project management that I can be able to utilize in the future. Furthermore, I have also gained knowledge as well as information on various system development methodologies.

It can be concluded that system development for UNICEF childcare organization would be helpful as they can be able to handle the operation of the organization properly. T is identified that prototyping system development methodology is used so that the entire project will be developed successfully within 116 days.

References 

Bahill, A.T. & Madni, A.M. (2017). Discovering system requirements. In Tradeoff Decisions in System Design (pp. 373-457). Springer, Cham.

Brinkmann, S. (2014). Interview. In Encyclopedia of critical psychology (pp. 1008-1010). Springer New York.

Dennis, A., Wixom, B.H. & Tegarden, D. (2015). Systems analysis and design: An object-oriented approach with UML. John wiley & sons.

Fitzpatrick, B.J. (2016). Determining the Optimal Work Breakdown Structure for Defense Acquisition Contracts. Air Force Institute of Technology WPAFB United States.

Fleming, Q.W. & Koppelman, J.M. (2016). December. Earned value project management. Project Management Institute.

Gupta, S., Dumas, M., McGuffin, M.J. & Kapler, T. (2016) April. MovementSlicer: Better Gantt charts for visualizing behaviors and meetings in movement data. In Pacific Visualization Symposium (PacificVis), 2016 IEEE (pp. 168-175). IEEE.

Kerzner, H. & Kerzner, H.R., (2017). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

Macdonald, E., Salas, R., Espalin, D., Perez, M., Aguilera, E., Muse, D. & Wicker, R.B. (2014). 3D printing for the rapid prototyping of structural electronics. IEEE Access, 2, pp.234-242.

Matharu, G.S., Mishra, A., Singh, H. & Upadhyay, P. (2015). Empirical study of agile software development methodologies: A comparative analysis. ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, 40(1), pp.1-6.

Mijumbi, R., Serrat, J., Gorricho, J.L., Bouten, N., De Turck, F. & Boutaba, R. (2016). Network function virtualization: State-of-the-art and research challenges. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 18(1), pp.236-262.

Sanders, G.D., Neumann, P.J., Basu, A., Brock, D.W., Feeny, D., Krahn, M., Kuntz, K.M., Meltzer, D.O., Owens, D.K., Prosser, L.A. & Salomon, J.A. (2016). Recommendations for conduct, methodological practices, and reporting of cost-effectiveness analyses: second panel on cost-effectiveness in health and medicine. Jama, 316(10), pp.1093-1103.