“Maple Ridge Engineering.Getting startedIn this exercise you will be playing the role of a Business Analyst who has beenselected to work within the Maple Ridge Engineering Group.Your Assignment will require you to understand and document the processes withinMaple Ridge, identify and describe various problems and opportunities within thecompany and finally propose ways to progress these. The work you will be doing will have elements focussing on strategic, tactical and operational aspects of the company.So of course the first job you need to do is to find out as much as you can aboutMaple Ridge, their processes, strengths and weaknesses. To begin with your supervisor has asked you to produce an overview of the present situation at MapleRidge. Initially focussing on the operational aspects of the company. You will be looking at some strategic and tactical elements later but for the moment the focus ison present operations.Maple RidgeMaple Ridge is the subject of the “Hypercase” from Kendall & Kendall. There is agood deal of information about Maple Ridge on-line. And it is referred to often withinthe text. Your initial starting point for information gathering should be the p48 of thetext. This page refers to a web-site for Maple Ridge, you can go there and clickthrough or type in the direct url …http://www.pearsonhighered.com/hyper case/You will find the site has instructions and suggestions – have a browse around, notingwhat you find (and cannot find).

From time to time the site may not functionperfectly, if you believe something is not working note this in the discussion board format 1 (as well as anything else interesting you find.After you feel comfortable with the general layout of the Hypercase site you shouldstart on your DFD’s in earnest. I’d suggest moving to p246 of the text for help here.And of course what do you (as a good analyst/problem Solver/communicator) dowhen, even after investigating all of these sources you still have questions/concerns?You seek further clarification and advice from the users.Your instructors will be playing the user roles for this exercise so if you have anyquestions ask what you would like to know. You may ask any questions about MapleRidge or if you have any technical questions about fact finding, drawing DFD’s andso on ask these as well. You are also encouraged to discuss your findings with theinstructors and other students. Those who share their thoughts and findings withothers will receive recognition for this in their marks for this component.Supplementary Interviews – Maple Ridge Engineering.After your initial round of interviews you have spent some time working on yourDFD’s and thinking about the GEMS system. You have concluded that the majorcontribution you can make to the eventual success of GEMS is by considering itsobjectives, and issues relating to its implementation at an organisational level ratherthan by carrying on with a detailed user interface design, process analysis and so on.Of course this is somewhat different to what you were initially asked to do. Thereforeyou decided to seek advice/permission from your direct supervisor, Snowden Evans,before proceeding. After you explained your views, you were relieved to find heseemed very receptive! Indeed he even seemed somewhat relieved that you weresuggesting a high level review and embraced the suggestion wholeheartedly.He immediately arranges for brief meetings between you and he and then (as hedescribed them) the “decision makers” in MRE. Your notes from these meetings areshown below.Snowden EvansSnowden:I really enjoyed our last discussion. I was really concerned that we hadn’t done ourhomework properly on GEMS. I accept some of the blame for that, I have just beentoo focussed on my immediate needs for reporting from the Training Group.But in my defence it is not all my fault, like you I found it difficult to get the variousline managers interested in the system at all. They always had something morepressing to do whenever I ask them for input so eventually I decided to just build thesystem the way I thought it should be built and then just make them all use it. I nowunderstand that would never have worked. So you now have officially been reassigned to carry out a strategic analysis and to identify possible implementationissues re GEMS across the whole of MRE. I have cleared this right to the top, i.e.with Dan, Warren and even Jimmy. They each want to see you but before that letme describe what we want you to produce….An online resource is available for information gathering. This is the Hypercase at: http://www.pearsonhighered.com/hypercase/If you click start above, then click on the red book on the table in the middle of the room, you will be taken here:http://www.pearsonhighered.com/hypercase/offices/receptio/tele/tele1.htmIf you click open directory you will see a list of all employees names. If you click on a name you will see questions for them and answers from them (I have included a separate word document with cut and pasted Q&As from this).http://www.pearsonhighered.com/hypercase/offices/receptio/tele/tele2.htmAfter clicking on each name, there will be a link at the bottom of the page of some of the names to go to their office.Data Flow Diagrams (DFDs are available in Roger Rabins office). Here is the link for them:http://www.pearsonhighered.com/hypercase/diagrams/docover.htmand specificallyhttp://www.pearsonhighered.com/hypercase/diagrams/context.htmIf you click on the diagrams you can drill down to more detailed DFDs.UML diagrams are available here:http://www.pearsonhighered.com/hypercase/uml/umldocs.htmHere is information on the business itself Maple Ridge Engineering (MRE):http://www.pearsonhighered.com/hypercase/offices/receptio/webpage/mre.htmOrg charts are here:http://www.pearsonhighered.com/hypercase/offices/receptio/webpage/o1.htmhttp://www.pearsonhighered.com/hypercase/offices/receptio/webpage/o2.htmhttp://www.pearsonhighered.com/hypercase/offices/receptio/webpage/o3.htmhttp://www.pearsonhighered.com/hypercase/offices/receptio/webpage/o4.htmAssignment QuestionsYou have concluded that the major contribution you can make to the eventual success of GEMS is by considering its objectives, and issues relating to its implementation at an organisational level.As such, you have officially been assigned to carry out a strategic analysis and to identify possible implementation issues re GEMS across the whole of MRE. I want you to produce….1. A set of DFD’s illustrating generically how the reworked GEMS will be structured. We now want to see that structure clearly reflecting the stages of our projects, “tendering for the work”, “detailed planning”, “managing the build” and “closing the project”. We want a common system across all units within MRE.2. A brief report explaining how the system will work across the organisation. In this report you must attempt to describe the issues we will face and suggest some options for solving them. If we can use GEMS after modification that would be great BUT if necessary we would consider buying or building something else instead.3. Also a set of ERD’s showing the fundamental business rules relating to projects would be useful. Above all I want you to provide (through the documentation you produce) a compelling set of arguments to convince Dan, Warren and Jimmy that we need project tracking and that GEMS won’t (in its present form) do that successfully.More informationInterview with Daniel HillDaniel:Snowden tells me that you have done a remarkable job on the analysis of the GEMS system so far and so he has asked you to change the focus of your work to become more strategic. I am really busy (as always) but I just wanted you to know that all of us in the senior management team are really interested in this project now. Initially I thought the job was too big for you, or for Snowden for that matter, but now I am hopeful! Good luck.Question:What are the main objectives you have for the system?Daniel:I need to be able to see what is happening across the whole of my group in a consistent format. At the moment it is always trying to compare apples and oranges. The reports I get on work planned and completed are grouped differently, often wildly inaccurate and usually too late for me to do anything about.The problem we have of course is that each group has developed their own recording and reporting systems and they don’t want to change. I can see their point, for example the Medical Group use Microsoft Project extensively for planning and believe it is central to everything they do. On the other Webster Design believe planning anything just stifles their creativity, they are good at what they do but they need to be become more accountable.It would be great if we could incorporate the parts of our present systems that work into GEMS but I realise that this is mission impossible.Question:So you see the focus for the GEMS system is to get work done accurately recorded and consistently reported?Daniel:Yes that is one of the focuses, but not the only one. MRE’s performance in both work tracking (checking progress against estimates) is (like most of our industry) pretty poor. In the past we have been able to get away with this by simply charging sufficiently high prices to cover our mistakes and mis-calculations but as the economy becomes more competitive we just don’t get the jobs if we include this buffer in our prices. We simply have to get better at estimating prior to the project and at tracking progress against timelines. We are pretty good at machines raw materials and equipment use, it’s just the people we have trouble with.Question:Are there any other issues you see?Daniel:Lots of issues, but one in particular comes to mind, manpower planning. One week we need 20 electrical design engineers working on a project and we only have ten available, then the next week we need only 3 but we have 10. That itself is not the problem – it is just that the week before they need 20 they tell us they will only need 8! I’m not hopeful that GEMS can fix this – but if it can it would be fantastic.Question:Anything else?Daniel:Well just one thing, a word of warning. Don’t make your report too technical, I find much of the stuff that comes from the Systems group incomprehensible. All of the psycho-babble about Agile, Use Cases, meta data and so on leaves me cold! Just explain to us in simple business terms what you think we should be doing – and give us options we want to make the decision, it has to be ours.Question:So what do you think about DFD’s?Daniel:Interesting, do you mean those diagrams with circles and arrows? I like the concept, so long as they are not too complex and they show clearly what the business process will be. The ones we generally get from Systems are usually rubbish.”