Tài liệu Instructor Notes Module 4: Gathering Information pptx

Instructor Notes Module 4: Gathering Information Introduction This module provides students with an overview of six techniques that they can use to gather information. It also provides them with a general process that they can modify to gather information. In the activities, the students summarize information in the Ferguson and Bardell, Inc. case study that is relevant to the business challenge that they developed in Module 2 and Activity 2.3. After completing this module, you will be able to: ! Describe six techniques for gathering information. ! Identify the information-gathering techniques that are most appropriate for a given situation. ! Summarize the major steps involved in gathering information. ! Develop a strategy for gathering information. Materials and Preparation This section provides you with the materials and preparation needed to teach this module. Materials To teach this module, you need the following materials: ! Microsoft ® PowerPoint ® file P04_1585.ppt ! Module 4, "Gathering Information" ! Activity 4.1, "Choosing Techniques" ! Activity 4.2, "Gathering Information" Preparation To prepare for this module, you should: ! Read all the materials for this module. ! Complete the activities. Presentation: 40 Minutes Activities: 75 Minutes 2 Instructor Notes Module 4: Gathering Information Activities This section provides procedures for implementing interactive activities to present or review information, such as games, simulations, or role playing exercises. Activity 4.1: Choosing Techniques ! To prepare for the activity 1. Review the case study and the techniques. 2. Complete the activity. The goal of the activity is to encourage students to start thinking about which techniques are appropriate for different people in the business. For example, given the role that the administrative assistant plays in the process, shadowing and interviews would be effective techniques. On the other hand, interviews would be more appropriate for the consulting managers, and e-mail surveys may be more appropriate for the consultants. Review the type of questions students plan to ask each source. Their focus should be on the business processes identified in the business challenge and vision statement. Questions for Class Discussion The following questions can help start a discussion of the activity: ! Which techniques seem easiest to use? Which techniques seem the most difficult to use? Why? ! Think about the characteristics of information in Module 3. Is there a particular characteristic that the techniques do not address? ! What additional information-gathering techniques have you used previously? ! Is there a technique you could not use in your organization? Why? Activity 4.2: Gathering Information ! To prepare for the activity 1. Review the content and activities for Modules 2-4. 2. Complete the activity. Use this activity to have students summarize pertinent information that they need to consider before they move on to analyzing information. Students should develop a gathering process that takes into account the characteristics of Ferguson and Bardell, Inc. For example, they will need to take into account the satellite offices and the dispersed consultants. One strategy would be to conduct focus groups with consultants when they attend the monthly meetings at satellite offices. Use the interview section of the activity to assess students’ ability to determine what information is missing from the case study and to develop questions to obtain needed information. Use the information provided in this delivery guide to assist you during the interview process. You can add your own information as well, based on your experiences. Instructor Notes Module 4: Gathering Information 3 If you do add new information, it may change the results of this activity in such a way that students create a solution that differs from the one provided in the solution files on the Instructor and Student CD-ROM. If students have problems in any activity after this module, you will need to create your solution answers to get them back on track. Questions for Class Discussion The following questions can help start a discussion of the activity: ! What problems did you encounter? How could you solve them? ! What questions do you have regarding the process of gathering information? Additional User and Customer Interviews The following sections are the results of mock interviews with different employees in Ferguson and Bardell, Inc. Use the interviews as a foundation for portraying a long-time employee at Ferguson and Bardell, Inc. that has experience with or knowledge of many of the roles in the company. Corporate Information Officer "Ferguson and Bardell, Inc.’s dedication to becoming the premier architectural and project management firm in the Midwest has put us in a number of interesting positions from a technology perspective. "The company has always focused on communication throughout the organization as a way to stay ahead of the curve in dealing with clients. In line with this philosophy, each employee that works for Ferguson and Bardell, Inc. has access to our intranet and our e-mail system. If they work from home or in the field, they are provided with notebook computer systems and are expected to maintain at least daily contact with the company. Our emphasis on communication has been a strong factor in maintaining a high level of repeat business from our clients. "Ferguson and Bardell, Inc.’s goal of staying ahead of the curve in our clients’ minds mandates that we vigorously pursue new technologies and research how they may benefit our processes. Over the past several years, we have hired a number of driven, intelligent developers who are responsible for solving business problems that we encounter and for streamlining the organization. "As we are faced with expansion at an unprecedented rate in our core businesses and expansion into new business arenas, our Information Technology (IT) team is challenged with migrating the internal systems to distributed technologies and creating new systems to facilitate our expansion. "We are very focused on continuing our relationship with Microsoft and using Microsoft technologies to streamline our business, increase our visibility, and as always, promote our relationships with our clientele. Microsoft’s distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) allows our development staff to make distributed computing a reality. The Web world has allowed us to offer more services to our fleet of consultants without requiring them to install new software. Workflow and collaboration tools have improved our communication between satellite offices and the home office." 4 Instructor Notes Module 4: Gathering Information Consulting Manager (From an interview with a consulting manager about the timesheet and billing process.) "These timesheets are a real problem. There is no easy way to select dates worked, the job numbers and tasks aren’t there, and my consultants have to total hours for the day to know what to bill. The consultants have to add a description of the work and the length of the description that they write depends on the amount of time they have at the end of the day. Sometimes the administrative assistant will come to me and ask me to add more if a consultant was unclear. Project and category fields should go away, no one remembers them, and a list of descriptions would be easier. "Clients have complained about our billing process. Sometimes they receive the wrong bill. I do not know how billing works. Sometimes I look at invoices and see that the description is wrong or has been mistyped. Sometimes the clients cannot see the amount of time we are billing them for on the invoice, because the hours are missing. Customers notice the discrepancies, especially if we are charging them for more hours than are listed on the bill. Sometimes we over bill by accident and it makes my job very difficult. I don’t care about billing; I just want to do my job working with the consultants. "Right now, all the information from the timesheet ends up in a SQL Server ™ 6.5 relational table with information on projects and project categories; but for some reason the table does not include all of the job categories that we use. The table includes information about the consultants and who they have done work for in the past. The table lists what consultants do, but it is not linked with the other information in the relational table. The only way to change data is to add additional journal entries. The accounting table stores all the information about the data for invoices. "For reports, I just want to know that people are billing and that they’re onsite and working with customers. I want to know the hours that they are working and the hours that they are billing. I need consultants to have 60 percent billable time each week for the company to make money, but I do not have that information at my fingertips. When we need to hire another consultant, I must take time from my schedule to calculate whether the company can afford a new employee. I have to key information into Microsoft Excel from the consultants’ timesheets that they send to me each week through Microsoft Outlook ® . I would really like to reach 80 to 90 percent billable time from consultants based on a 50-hour work week." Administrative Assistant "My typical day during the invoicing period is a nightmare. Customers and consultants call and complain about wrong bills. It seems like I e-mail and call 60 consultants a week to turn in their timesheets. I am always on the phone. I receive a timesheet and print it up; we have 600 consultants and we use a lot of paper on Monday afternoon. Sometimes it takes until Tuesday to complete all the work. Then we enter the information into the accounting system. Sometimes consultants do not write in categories or descriptions and I have to go in and fill the forms out accordingly. Many times I will not know what category or description pertains to the client and I must invent the information. Then I print out pro forma invoices. I put the forms in the managers’ box and they sit there until I call all 50 managers to look at them and approve them. Managers sometimes scribble on them and often I cannot read the comments. They tell me the information on the forms is incorrect. Because I do not know what is wrong, Instructor Notes Module 4: Gathering Information 5 I have to call the consultants for clarification. Sometimes they tell me I have missed one of the consultants. I have to re-key all the changes then print the final forms and give them to the regional managers. Managers don’t really make any changes until a customer calls and complains about the inaccurate bills." Support "My biggest concern with any new application that we might develop is Web server stabilization. Our Web server and e-mail system are integral to the business environment, and we don’t have much experience working with Active Server Pages (ASP) code and custom components. "The only other area of concern that I have is the fact that Ferguson and Bardell, Inc. is expanding at an enormous rate. We have plans for foreign offices, and I do not want a new application to become a staple of the company and then have to take the application and servers down while international support is added. ‘Robust’ and ‘flexible’ are my needs. We need any new application to give real error messages. I hate code numbers." 6 Instructor Notes Module 4: Gathering Information Module Strategy Use the following strategy to present this module: ! Information Collection Techniques The purpose of this section is to introduce students to different methods of collecting information. Students should not be concerned with whether they have the skills to actually do the different techniques. It is more important that students realize that there are many techniques and that they should combine techniques to meet the needs of the business challenge and the characteristics of the business. Help students to see that a large business will contain many individuals with different sets of technical skills. They should be able to find a resource that can assist with different techniques. Students may tend to focus only on the techniques in which they have experience, primarily interviewing. Try to provide personal experiences that you may have with each technique that show how some techniques will capture critical information that cannot be gathered by using other techniques. Also, reinforce throughout this module that they use the techniques to gather information representative of the categories, sources, and perspectives introduced in Module 3. In particular, discuss how the different perspectives may produce different sets of information when performing each technique. ! Activity 4.1, "Choosing Techniques" Remind students of the characteristics of information described in Module 3 as they complete this activity. Students may rely heavily on interviews as a common technique because it is well known. During group discussion, determine if there are any techniques that students have avoided altogether. Provide examples of how each technique can be used to gather different categories of information from different sources and perspectives. ! Process of Gathering Information The goal of this slide is to encourage students to start thinking about the need to have a strategy in place for gathering information. A plan will help a project team to gather all the information that they need to determine requirements. This is an important topic that you can add value to by describing the different ways you have seen project teams gather information to solve business challenges. Point out that randomized processes simply provide random data points of information. A systematic approach to gathering information will give the student a method to proceed, a method to measure progress, and a method of capturing all relevant information. Instructor Notes Module 4: Gathering Information 7 Reinforce that students will need to collect information on the four categories by targeting multiple sources and asking questions from both perspectives. For example: • Have I identified all relevant users including hidden users? • How can I gather quality expectations from the business and user perspective? • Where can I get information on current IT standards that will be changed or cannot be changed and that will ultimately impact the final solution? • What do users and the business need and expect in terms of performance, ease of use, accessibility? • What are the training needs? ! Activity 4.2, "Gathering Information" Use the activity as an opportunity to conduct a full review of the case study so that students can participate in class discussions and activities without continual review. Students should be able to summarize the pertinent information related to the business challenge. Assess the types of questions students ask you during the interview phase. Use your work experience to help them analyze the problem in the business challenge and determine additional information that they would need to determine requirements and wants. As you become more comfortable teaching the course, you can modify the information provided for the activity and include illustrations from your own experience. THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK . numbers." 6 Instructor Notes Module 4: Gathering Information Module Strategy Use the following strategy to present this module: ! Information. add your own information as well, based on your experiences. Instructor Notes Module 4: Gathering Information 3 If you do add new information,