Creating an Efficient IT Infrastructure

Project Deliverable 2: Business Requirements

Richard Lecator

Professor Roy Creasy Jr.

Information Systems Capstone

January 29, 2017

Business Requirements

The organization is in the business of data collection and analysis and has been in the business for the last two years. This paper documents a business requirement document for a project plan that aims at creating a repository for the collected data beyond standard relational databases.

The company’s data warehouse capacity is currently ten terabyte, and the capacity is expected to grow by a margin of 20% every year. There comes the need for the Company to plan for its information technology infrastructure which should be well implemented for the Company to be able to cope with this large growth of data. This report, therefore, aims at defining information technology infrastructure that is cost manageable, efficient, and effective for the organization.

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Change Record

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Table of Contents

Document Control…………………………………..1

1      Business Requirements………………………………..2

1.1        Project Overview…………………………………..5

1.2        Background including current process……………………….5

1.3        Scope                                                                                                                       5

1.3.1     Scope of Project                                                                                                5,6,7

1.3.2     Constraints and Assumptions……………………………7

1.3.3     Risk                                                                                                                       7,8

1.3.4     Scope Control………………………………….. 8

1.3.5     Definition of Terms (if applicable)………………………..8,9

1    Business Requirements

1.1    Project Overview

Since the firm works on web analytics and effective qualitative reportage. The project assist of software used by the firm that enables it to have high quality, data collection that is very effective that starts in minutes without any necessity of additional programming.

1.2Background including current process

The company is known for its dominant role in the collection and analysis of data. The firm has been operational for a duration almost equaling two years and has a total of approximate 20 employees, where four have been delegated to the IT department.

The firm is further able to collect native and email data from almost all the electronic sources, with the inclusion of the individual computers, storage devices for mobile media, backup tapes, networks belonging to the companies, and the mobile devices for personal use.  This shows that the company is well equipped to manage almost all of the devices.

1.3   Scope

1.3.1   Scope of Project

The scope of this project should be controlled through the following tips:

• Through making sure that the project team, the stakeholders, the business leaders, as well as everybody else involved understanding the scope of the project. This can be achieved through keeping on reinforcing what it is throughout the project life cycle.
• The second tip involves making sure that the project team understands how to identify a scope change when they see it and to be able to answer appropriately and correctly back to the business users. This means they should be able to answer all queries relating to every single instant of the project. They should not answer questions with NO but try to find solutions for different issues regarding the project and bring back the best results to the project manager.
• The third tip is communication, which involves managing the communications of the project through managing the expectations of what the project is going to deliver regarding scope; this is an important part of the project plan. This also involves making sure that there is continuous communication and there is effective communications plan to manage scope changes.

 Data warehousing involves the process of designing how data is stored for the goal of improving reporting and analysis (Sinha, 2011). Data warehouse specialists ensure that various stores of data are related and connected to each other both physically as well as conceptually. An organization’s data is usually stored in some databases.

To be able to analyze the broadest range of data, each of the databases needs to be connected in some way. This implies that the data within them need a way of being related to other relevant data and that the physical databases themselves have a connection so their data can be viewed at together for reporting and analysis purposes.

Data analytics can be utilized to examine whether a database is working as projected. With the information acquired from the analytics, the database administrators can establish which areas of the warehousing are accepted and which areas of their site are not accepted by the users. Analytics, therefore, enables the database designer to improve the user experience; analytics is a core aspect of this project implementation and adoption (Ohlhorst, 2013).

Interfaces and cloud computing are key to the company growth due to the rapid involving technological world. The virtualization of databases through cloud computing is a key concept since it enhances security by avoiding system failure and improved disaster recovery techniques.

Outsourcing and off-shoring needs potentially offer greater and wider benefits. Complex strategies in this project can be outsourced. Virtualization technologies such as cloud computing and security issues which are core in the project can be outsourced. Security is a major part of this project since failure to implement good security measures would mean that the company will not grow as speculated and therefore lowering its competitive edge. Therefore the project plan should lay down the security measures to be implemented so that the Wiggly Corporation can implement a secure database system.

The necessary resources for this project include analytics software for collecting the relevant data, database management system for managing the databases, and knowledgeable staff to manage key dockets of the project management.

The staff members may include Chief Technology Officer (CTO) who is responsible for ensuring the throughput, speed, accuracy, availability, and reliability of the relational databases and Chief Security Officer (CSO) who is responsible for ensuring the security of the database.

1.3.2   Constraints and Assumptions

The project should have well-defined constraints regarding who has access to what resources; for example, the database administrator should have different login credentials from other users. Assumptions have been made in defining the scope, objectives and approach in this case, are that the data collected is of both of qualitative and quantitative measures.

1.3.3   Risks

There are various risks that exist within the implementation and deployment of this project which may include the following:

• The lack of awareness for security policy in the user domain; this risk emerges from intentional malicious activities within the workstation domain through unauthorized user access.
• Weakness in installed software and malicious software introduces vulnerabilities.
• Unauthorized network access, transmitting private data which is unencrypted, or spreading malicious software.
• Exposure and unauthorized access of internal resources to the public, which may lead to loss of productivity due to internet access, denial of service attacks, or brute-force attacks on the organizational network infrastructure.

1.3.4   Scope Control

Scope control is apprehensive of the factors that contribute to scope changes and therefore aims at ensuring that the scope changes are positive. Scope control determines whether the scope change has taken place and managed the changes in the case that they occur.

For scope control to succeed, it must be systematically incorporated with other control processes which include time control, risk control, and quality control (Martin, 2008). The aspect of scope control is made up of measuring the extent into which development towards goals and objectives is being accomplished, the evaluation of the possible reactions to any deviations, as well as the correcting any hostile trends.

1.3.5   Definition of Terms (if applicable)

Project Goal – This is the objective of the Project.

Project scope – This involves defining the activities that are involved so as to achieve the project goal.

The risk assessment – Defined regarding the probability of project occurrence and the negative cost impact of project outcomes.

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) – This involves breaking down the project activities so as to plan for time and other resources.

Functional Point Analysis (FPA) – This would be extremely useful in managing the change of scope of the project, communicating functional requirements, as well as measuring productivity.

References

Sinha, A. K. (2011). Data warehousing. Indianapolis, IN Prompt Publications.

Martin, P. K., & Tate, K. (2008). Getting started in project management. New York: Wiley.

Ohlhorst, F. (2013). Big data analytics: Turning big data into big money. Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley & Sons.