TASK MANAGEMENT

Task Management

Task Management

Task 1

This case study is based on the possible business system requirements of Xtra. It is a small company specialising in the Hollywood memorabilia. Their products include: Movie Posters, Signed Celebrity Photos, Action Figures and Movies Scripts. The business was established in the late 1960s by the four movie enthusiasts studying a Media course at local university. In the 1980s and 1990s the company sales and profits increased significantly. However, due to global recessions, the company has been seen a significant drop in sales. When the company was set up it was appreciated by the founder that most of the business would be conducted via the post from the central offices based in the city centre. There are administrative, personnel and marketing departments within the current structure. A total of 8 full time and 2 part time staff are employed at Xtra. The company has local networked PCs available for all the full time and part time staff.

While considering the major facts of this company, the design phase of Xtra's business system consists of many steps, tools, and compromises. Each step of this phase is enhanced by many established tools or processes that carry over from previous phases. The initial step, in the design process determines the present function of the system. The following step determines what the system requires for optimal function. The final step determines the user end and hardware elements. The most common method of business process mapping is through the use of models and diagrams. These tools are used in both the previous phase of analyzing the current business process and in the design phase to provide a visual model of what the projected business process.

Business process tools are used to create business process models. These tools create a visual map of the system in each phase. The phases leading up to the design aspect of an Enterprise Business System have included useful mapping tools for the design phase. The previous phase of analysis calls for three business-model mapping tools - Activity-flow, Dataflow, and Role activity. The purpose of these tools is to analyze problems in the current business process so that an optimal design can be created.

Those previous steps are truly necessary in the business-system design process. Without the information from these models, an automated streamlined application could not be designed. (Kenneth & Kendall 1994, 14-27) The completed process provides a layout of the current workflow with each department and between departments. This is an important tool for the initial design phase, thus I recommend all three.

As far as documenting the design, I recommend Data Flow Diagrams and System Diagrams of the existing structure and the plan of new structure. Not only do the diagrams help layout the designs, but also it helps communicate the designs. An additional tool in this phase is prototyping. Prototyping is an aspect of human interface designing that shows the designer what the users want and shows the user what the designer has ...