Reference no: EM133447071
Case: Hawkins University is a small public university located in the midwestern United States. As a public university it provides many recreational activities in addition to all its academic programming. One of the rapidly growing areas is the Fitness and Athletics Center, affectionately called "Hawkins U-Fit". It opened early in the University's life with a pool and intramural programming. Soon after, it gained club sports programming. Hawkins University now has many facilities and programs underneath the Hawkins U-Fit umbrella. The high interest by the students in being physically fit and staying active has created a demand for a large number of programs and fitness activities over the years.
Obviously as each program run by Hawkins U-Fit increases in size, the number of employees needed to work in each program has likewise grown. There are student assistants and managers for each program, all working for program coordinators who report back to the Hawkins U-Fit directors. The difficulty is in the hiring and communication between programs. There is no centralized hiring process, but Hawkins U-Fit receives hundreds of applications each year. Program coordinators are hesitant to post their openings because they would receive an endless number of applications, but they have difficulty finding quality applicants, including those applicants that may have applied to other programs that did not have openings at that time. There is interest in having a centralized system that could allow all program coordinators to access a pool of interested candidates when there was a need for an entry-level employee. Also, when any of the directors want to do something like order staff t-shirts or send department wide emails, they cannot contact the staff directly. They must email the program coordinators who then email their staff, creating unnecessary time lag and slowing down many processes.
To help the Hawkins U-Fit department address their information and data tracking concerns, Mr. Clarke, head of the Hawkins U-Fit Department, has invited several system development consulting firms, including yours, to visit to discuss business needs and to propose an automated solution. Mr. Clarke and his staff will review the proposed solutions from the competing consulting firms and will ultimately select one firm to develop and implement their final system.
A systems analyst with your consulting firm has already conducted an initial interview with Mr. Clarke and has provided the information contained below regarding Hawkins U-Fit. You and the other members of your consulting group will take this information and go forward with your plan for presenting Mr. Clarke and his staff with a system solution that you hope will win their approval.
The main goal of the database system will be to store information relevant to the core elements of the Hawkins U-Fit department's operations, consisting of hiring of employees and managing students who participate in their programs and the fitness center. They want to be able to capture this data to track applicants and to automate the generation of reports and forms that are essential to running the business.
Applicants. They need primary applicant data that is received through an online application. This application includes the date of application, semester applying for (either Fall, Spring or Summer) and an option to select a first and second choice position from the following list: Water Safety Instructor/Lifeguard, Sport Clubs Manager, Grounds/Maintenance Assistance, Computer Tech, Outdoor Recreation, Receptionist, Intramural Assistant, Intramural Official, Building Manager, Hawkins U-Fit Assistant, Marketing/Graphic Design, Fitness Area Floor Trainer, Fitness Area Floor Supervisor, Group Fitness, Personal Trainer. The application also includes contact information such as first and last name, middle initial, street address, city, state, zip code, primary and alternative phone, and email. They also capture permanent contact information which includes permanent street address, city, state, zip, home phone, cell phone, and email. In case of emergency, they also capture emergency contact information that includes first and last name, middle initial, street address, city, state, zip, home phone, cell phone, and email.
The application also captures current education information including major and expected graduation date. It is important for the Hawkins U-Fit department to capture if any applicants are currently employed by Hawkins University or have ever been employed by Hawkins University. If an applicant has ever been employed by the university, then the university needs to know which type of position, place of employment, supervisor's name, phone number, start date, and end date.
The final information captured on the application is preferential data. This data includes hours desired per week (maximum of 20 in fall and spring), early morning availability (i.e., 6am), night availability (i.e., 11pm), First Aid Certification, CPR certification Lifeguard certification, and any other certifications. The applicant must also list expiration date for each certification they have. Applicants must also provide their class schedules for Monday-Friday along with any other times they are not available to work. There is an optional essay where applicants have the opportunity to express why they are interested in working for the Hawkins U-Fit department and another optional essay to include any other information applicable to evaluating the applicant better. The application also provides space to list two other previous jobs held outside of Hawkins University. This space includes data to show type of position, place of employment, supervisor's name, phone number, start date, and end date.
In addition to the standard program application data, the department would like to be able to review comments on their application and track if/when they are interviewed, screened out of the process, or hired and to which program they were hired to. Also, their summer availability is helpful to capture even if they are applying to being working in a fall or spring semester because it helps for assigning staff to large summer programs. If an applicant is not hired within a semester, the department would like to keep their information in case they would like to reapply in the future but needs a way to update their GPA and other information for reapplication each semester.
Employees. If the applicant is hired the department would like to be able to keep track of current pay rates in addition to starting pay rates and pay raise amounts and dates. Also, they would like to keep track of shirt size and keep notes during evaluations (ex: reasons why they were or weren't given a raise). The department is also interested in other on-campus involvements that their employees participate in, and their grades at the end of each semester. Employees are hired and associated with their job role.
Alumni. After an employee is no longer employed by a certain program, they would like to track data on them like reason for leaving, graduation date, and exit interview comments. This information could be very valuable when former employees need references for future employment.
Fitness Club Members. Students can choose to become members of the Hawkins U-Fit Fitness Center. When joining the center, members have a unique sequential six--digit Member ID number assigned to them. Also recorded for each member is their name, address, phone number, gender, birth date, and date of joining the center. While there is no annual fee that members pay to be a member in the center, members can pay extra for hourly slots to work with a personal trainer. Personal trainers are available for a standard rate, in hourly slots. They would like to keep a schedule of these visits to track the payments made by members for personal trainer services and to be able to provide an appointment schedule to the various personal trainers.
Programs. Hawkins U-Fit has multiple programs, and each has multiple job roles associated with them. Each program has a unique sequential six-digit Program ID, a name, and a description. Hawkins U-Fit would like to track which employees are hired into each program and their progression through each job role. They would also like to keep track of information on potential hiring leads for the programs. They are interested in being able to quickly access the breakdown of all staff into each program and their average hours per week by program and job role. The various job roles are standardized across all the different programs and every job role is present in each program. The roles have standard rates of pay, job descriptions, and hourly expectations, to maintain consistency across programs.
Program Activities. Each program manages several activities each year from sports leagues to sports tournaments relevant to its program. Each program is expected to manage their activities. Hawkins U-Fit would like to better track these activities by knowing what they are, the dates of the activity (start and end), any additional costs for participants to enroll themselves in the activity (while some activities are team-based and others are individual, all are managed at the individual level), and the employees assigned as contacts for each activity. Hawkins U-Fit does not want to manage tournament and league schedules.
Program Participants. Students can also choose to enroll in the various programs put on and managed by the Hawkins U-Fit Department. The Hawkins U-Fit Department would like to know which students have signed up for which events. Students can, of course, sign up for multiple events, but not for the same event twice. The information captured by Hawkins U-Fit consists of the student's name, address, phone number, gender, birth date, and date and time of enrollment to the program's event.
System users. Primary users include Program Coordinators who need full access and rights, program assistants who need read-only access, and the applicants/employees who need read-only access to only their unique personal file. Hawkins U-Fit would like to identify these employees to manage their access to the system. Other employees may not need access but will need to be provided with printouts of information relevant to their jobs (fitness instructors and personal trainers who need to see appointment or event schedules).
Other Considerations. Mr. Clarke is very excited about the possibilities that the new system holds and is looking forward to better data management and reporting capabilities. He is interested in being able to analyze and view the data in a variety of different formats, without having to create multiple spreadsheets. Other reporting requirements will likely come up, so the system should be flexible to allow various types of new queries and reports to be created.
One Warning! Mr. Clarke and his staff are "typical" system users. Unfortunately, this means that they may not know all that they want of the system you are designing for them, but they can identify what they do not want. Also, they are learning more about the needs of the system as your development process continues. This means that stakeholder expectations (maybe scope) will change, and that the stakeholder is open to ideas and suggestions, even though project quality and timelines are NOT expected to change. Keep this in mind in your designs. Your system needs to be functional, and you must think creatively about the system and be aware of additional beneficial features that could be incorporated. Not that these should be built into the system, but you do not want to limit your ability to meet a potential change in system requirements!
NEED - Executive Overview :
Two pages, single-spaced description of your group's initial analysis of the business scenario as it pertains to the design of the database application. Write as though you are writing to the client executive for whom you are performing the analysis.
The overview must contain:
o Your group's vision for what the system is to accomplish
o What business activities the system will be capable of supporting
o A listing and description of the other sections in this phase's deliverable package
o A brief description (approximately one paragraph) of what will be done for Phase II of the project.