Options For MCSC: Outsourcing Vs Training Vs Off-the-shelf Solution; Modelling And Diagramming

Memo 1: Outsourcing the project

Memo 1:

To: Manager

From:  IT Department.

Date: 29th November 2017

Subject: Outsourcing the project.

Dear Manager,

The purpose of this memo is to give the detailed explanation of outsourcing the information system project, with advantages and disadvantages. Providing valid reasons whether it will benefit the business to meet the business executive or it will lead to the loss.

Outsourcing is one of the most effective methods in the current business society since most organisations and corporations try to practice all inventions methods, sciences, and technologies to give a competitive and qualified product or service that will fulfil their clients’ needs.  This condition is very suitable for both parties since each of them can focus on its facilities and resources on the development of the central perspective and competencies guidelines for the activity. This tips or points to the decrease of the cost and expenses on the production of the end product since each party focus on that it can only do best without adding any additional efforts and also without capitalising for learning of new activity types. (Tayauova, 2012).

It is also a strategy is the business that causes some of corporations or companies functions, activities, decisions responsibility and processes to move from within organisations to outside service providers. The primary critical points of outsourcing are that: it allows the team to aim at the central business activities and form a competitive benefit by decreasing the operational expenses and costs. Second, Outsourcing can be outsourcing the all the core functions or some portions. Outsourcing allows an organisation to deliver a right balance on the site support for its workers. It is also a strategy for improving customer service quality.

Outsourcing focus on the principal works, access to experience, cost savings, improve performance and allows flexibility. By handing over activities to other companies, it helps the company to concentrate on the main events hence improving the value proposition and increasing the competitive setting. (Gul & Zaib, 2010).  Outsourcing helps to achieve improved performance that the outsourcer organisation might present due to economies of scale. Also, flexibility is the main reason for outsourcing in many agencies the outsourcer’s contracts, and the jobs of their workers rely on the range of flexibility to mirror changing business society.

The main problems are a threat to security and confidentiality, loss of managerial power over the outsourced operations projects, hidden costs, quality challenges and reallocation of the already existing teams. Another disadvantage is the legal compliance. The projects that are outsourced need to manage to make sure that there is diligence by the state or county’s rules and regulations.

Regards

IT Department.

Memo 2:

To: Manager

From:  IT Department.

Date: 29th November 2017

Subject: Training the current IT support person who looks after their systems to build the system

Dear Manager,

As the company struggles to compete in the international economy, diversity on the foundation of the knowledge, skills, and motivation of their employees takes on increasing significance. Training is the systematic way of learning and development to boost team, individual and organisation effectiveness. (Aguinis & Kraiger, 2009).Worker training not only gives benefit to the individuals but also to the agencies, facilitating the organisations to continue running efficiently and effectively. Since once you train employee, there is no further need for investment in training.  An organisation business should probably not stand still and so nor should the development of the employees, who are always the critical asset in moving the organisation business forward. (Kuvaas & Dysvik, 2010).

Advantages of Outsourcing

There is sufficient indication that training activities have a positive effect on the presentation of the teams and individuals. Training events can be beneficial to other outcomes at both the team and individual levels like motivations, attitudes and empowerment. Training results in improved performance of the job which leads to other positives impacts.  It helps the organisation to keep up with dynamic industry. Industries are continually changing, and so it is essential for a group to develop well and avoid lagging behind. This is only possible if the staff knowledge and skills are up to date. It also helps an organisation to maintain the knowledge and expertise. By training the support employee to build the software the ability will get maintained so that in future if there is the problem or the system needs further preservation, the trained support staff will handle it. This support helps on saving on other extra costs. Training of the employees to build the software will help to increase the job satisfaction level. Through the continual investment from the organisation business, employees can have the higher feeling of job satisfaction, which can boost their incentive towards their work. This will, in turn, reduces the staff turnover and improve the levels of productivity which will directly lead to profitability. Training of the staff to develop the system will help in keeping the organisational confidentiality when compared to outsourcing. The employees will be only trained inside the company to create system hence avoiding the threat of privacy.  The disadvantage of training the employees is that there will be quality challenges since the employees trained are not experts they may not develop the expected quality end product. (Aguinis & Kraiger, 2009).

Memo 3:

To: Manager

From:  IT Department.

Date: 29th November 2017

Subject: Buying an off the shelf solution.

Dear Manager,

The off-the-shelf solution is software which focuses on addressing the specific problem, but they get directed towards the market. For this case of the shelf, a solution would be an information system to facilitate both memberships and lodge bookings. Off-the-shelf solutions are usually sold at affordable cost because their development costs get distributed across broader targets. Due to that, software characteristics and functions have higher generic or massively more difficult, which can be feature-rich but eventually includes lots of things that organisation does not usually require. (Daneshgar, Low & Worasinchai, 2013).

The benefits of buying an off-shelf solution; one is primarily the cost. The initial purchase cost is cheap because at that time of purchase it contains a variety of features of which some are using other not, and at this point, there is no any upgrade. Another benefit is that off-the-shelf solution can be customised. So the organisation can buy any software related which further customisation can be performed to make lodge bookings and facilitate membership activities. The off-the-shelf solution is available immediately. This answer is an advantage that organisation can consider when compared to other option which requires time to do development of the system. Also, it contains lots of choices which the group can use which can help to boost the production. Off-the-shelf solutions require less training and training can take less time when compared to training the employees to build the software. This kind of a solution is an advantage that the organisation can also consider.

Disadvantages of outsourcing

Despite the benefits and advantages off-the-shelf solution also has disadvantages: First, an off-the-shelf solution may have some extra cost like annual and monthly licensing fees, installation licenses. Over time these costs will eventually exceed the initial purchase costs. Another one is that there is no access to original people who develop so in case of errors organisation will suffer lots of loss. Off-the-shelf solutions may not meet all the requirements that clients’ needs, i.e., may not perform membership facilitation as required. This strategy will cause the company to incur extra cost in development of necessary needs. Also, it has lots of unused of features or features which are not required which will affect the performance of the system (Ayala, Hauge, Conradi, Franch & Li, 2011).

Regards.

IT Department.

As an expert, I would recommend MCSC to outsource the project. I would recommend this kind of a strategy because outsourcing the project will have more significant rewards when compared to the other two options.

Outsourcing the project will enable MCSC to access to the highest and latest technology. Software and hardware are rapidly changing in the industry, so it needs the organisation to adapt to the dynamic industry. It is difficult for one trained employee to keep up to date everything hence outsourcing gives the advantage of having more IT professionals who will be able to keep up to date the technologies used.

Outsourcing the project is cost saving; it gives financial benefits like bulk purchasing, learner overhead and hiring choices for software and hardware, and licenses of the software as well as legal compliance with the state rules and regulations.

Outsourcing of the project will enhance high-quality end product since it will get developed by high-quality staff with specific qualifications and high level of experience.

Outsourcing is more flexible as compared to other options. The reason is that the vendors have various resources and facilities available to them when compared to the internal staff who may have inadequate capabilities and resources.

Outsourcing will enhance job security and tension reduction for internal team. IT outsourced corporation or companies ease the burden on the domestic staff. Reducing the weight will further lead improved relationship between MCSC and its staff. (Betz, Oberweis & Stephan, 2010).

Modelling and Diagramming

Event table of MCSC

Event table shows the occurrence of an activity at a location in time and space. It is used to indicate everything that happens in a system and modelled as an event in a UML diagram. The event table helps to come up with use case diagram which is critical to efficient requirements or user specification management. The fact is the action that is to take place at a particular time. The event type shows which group does the event belong. Trigger shows the use case that has the information that is required to run the activity. The source is the entity that is affected by the action. The eve is the action that is called out by the event. The response is what the system output change the successful execution of the event, and the destination is the entity that is affected by the event. All these aspects are essential since they help to analyse how the system is working and individual the way each component executes its functionality.

Memo 2: Training the current IT support person who looks after their systems to build the system

The table below shows an example the various actions that take place in the scenario given whereby the customer and manager have different roles. The member can register, book and pay fees while the manager approves and publishes the customer’s financial details on a website. (Kim, Kang, Baik, & Ko, 2007).

Event	Event Type		Trigger	Source	Activity/Use Case	System Response/ Output	Destination
Check  member wants to join	Check member		Member Inquiry	member	Look if member exist	Member availability details	Member
New member to join	Add member		Membership details	Member	Add member to the system	Member added successfully	member
New Member booking	Booking		Member booking	Booking	Fill nomination form	Approve by management	Booking
Publishing booking in website	Booking		Member booking	Booking	Publish on website	Publish successful	Website
Send mail	Mailing		Send Mail	Meeting	Meeting by management	Send email to all member	member
Annual payment	Payment		Check membership type	Member	Look if the member is not junior	Payment made	Payment
Approve member	Member approval		Check if conditions get met	Booking office	Check if the member has paid annual and joining fee	Successful approve	Member

A domain model class diagram is a diagram that represents the way the database will look like or the design of the database. The different entities in the scenario become the tables in the database, and the attributes are the columns in the database table. It is a fundamental diagram since it makes the database simple to create since the design gets prepared. From the scenario above, entities person, caterer, manager, payment, member, booking, and email get identified.

The relationship that exists between the entities is also very important such; one to one, many to one, one to many and many to many. These relationships help in avoiding anomalies in the database and hence keep the database atomic, consistent, isolated and durable. These concepts are fundamental to consider in any database design. The constraints and cardinality get represented. Inheritance hence reduces repetition and since entity like a person gets introduced. This entity captures attributes and functionalities that are similar to more than one entity and accordingly make it easier to put them in one entity and then different entities to inherit. For example, Caterer, Member and Manager all have similar attributes, and hence they can be extracted and put in one entity person, and all of them all inherit from the person.(Larman, 2012). 

A class diagram is a diagram that is used to relationships and dependency among the different classes in a system represents using a UML diagram. A class defines the variable and the methods or actions specific to the object or entity in the system. Class diagrams are useful in that they help form the bases of object-oriented programming in a system. A class diagram is similar to a flowchart in that it shows all the activities of a system. The name of the class gets displayed in the box with the attributes or variables below. The class diagram also represents a significant part called the methods. The methods that affect the given class are represented or captured inside the same box.

The diagram below shows the class diagram with two classes, that is, Customer and Manager. The customer has different functionality which represents different from those of the manager. The manager also has various features which get captured inside the manager’s box. Class diagrams resemble the actual classes that will be generated or developed during the development stage with the variables of each class. The accessibility of the variables and methods can also get represented. + is for the public, – for private and # for protected access. The type of the variables is also shown, such as string, integer, Boolean among others. 

Use case diagram is a diagram used to show set of activities that system can do or perform in collaboration with other external users that are the actors. Use case diagram provides valuable and observable outcomes to the actors of the system. The use case is used to specify the requirements and functionality offered by the actors in the order. Its core drive is to capture the changing features of the system.

Memo 3: Buying an off-the-shelf solution

The diagram above shows uses case diagrams with three actor’s customer, manager and booking officer.

The customer can do activities which include: register to be a member, make bookings for the lodge, pay a fee which can membership fee or lodge booking fee and can also check if he/she is a member. The real action of registration, checking the member and booking the lodge is done by the booking officer. That is why the customer and booking officer are pointing to the same use cases.  The manager can do activities like: approve the customer registration, send emails to members and publish the website. (Kulak & Guiney, 2012).

Question 6: Use Case Description (intermediate)

Prepare a Use Case intermediate description for the ‘Creates Customer’ use case,

Use intermediate case description is a diagram that shows an explanation of what a particular action is all about. The diagram shows the flow of activities till the success of the operation. It also contains a place for exceptions that might arise during the process. The limitations indicate where the process can terminate and the state in which specific process cannot continue executing. (Gomaa, 2011).

The diagram below shows the description when creating a customer or registering a customer. There are different steps that get taken to record as shown below. It also explains the exceptions that might arise during execution and the checks that have to be made to ensure the only valid member is registered. The issue of age, approval status and nomination are all essential checks that have to be put in place before any member is allowed to join the lodge and the system should capture hence violation of the same. The use case intermediate description diagram, therefore, is similar to a flowchart in that it shows the steps that are followed to achieve an individual action and the exception that might arise (Rosenberg & Stephens, 2007).

References

Tayauova, G. (2012). Advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing: analysis of outsourcing practices of Kazakhstan banks. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 41, 188-195.

Gul, A., & Zaib, A. (2010). Inter-cultural problems of IT-services outsourcing from Sweden to India.

Aguinis, H., & Kraiger, K. (2009). Benefits of training and development for individuals and teams, organizations, and society. Annual review of psychology, 60, 451-474.

Kuvaas, B., & Dysvik, A. (2010). Exploring alternative relationships between perceived investment in employee development, perceived supervisor support and employee outcomes. Human Resource Management Journal, 20(2), 138-156.

Ayala, C., Hauge, Ø., Conradi, R., Franch, X., & Li, J. (2011). Selection of third party software in Off-The-Shelf-based software development—An interview study with industrial practitioners. Journal of Systems and Software, 84(4), 620-637.

Betz, S., Oberweis, A., & Stephan, R. (2010, August). Knowledge transfer in IT offshore outsourcing projects: an analysis of the current state and best practices. In Global Software Engineering (ICGSE), 2010 5th IEEE International Conference on (pp. 330-335). IEEE.

Kim, H., Kang, S., Baik, J., & Ko, I. (2007, July). Test cases generation from UML activity diagrams. In Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking, and Parallel/Distributed Computing, 2007. SNPD 2007. Eighth ACIS International Conference on (Vol. 3, pp. 556-561). IEEE.

Gomaa, H. (2011). Software modeling and design: UML, use cases, patterns, and software architectures. Cambridge University Press. 

Larman, C. (2012). Applying UML and Patterns: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and Interactive Development. Pearson Education India.

Rosenberg, D., & Stephens, M. (2007). Use case drove object modelling with UML. APress, Berkeley, USA.

Daneshgar, F., Low, G. C., & Worasinchai, L. (2013). An investigation of ‘build vs. buy’decision for software acquisition by small to medium enterprises. Information and Software Technology, 55(10), 1741-1750.

Kulak, D., & Guiney, E. (2012). Use cases: requirements in context. Addison-Wesley.