During your time as a Pine Valley Furniture intern, you have learned much about the systems analysis and design process. You have been able to observe Jim Woo as he serves as the lead analyst on the WebStore project, and you have also received hands-on experience with the Customer Tracking System project. The requirements determination and requirements structuring activities for the Customer Tracking System are now complete, and it is time to begin generating alternative design strategies.

On Monday afternoon, Jim Woo stops by your desk and requests that you attend a meeting scheduled for tomorrow morning. He mentions that during tomorrow’s meeting, the Customer Tracking System’s requirements and constraints, weighting criteria, and alternative design strategy ratings will be discussed. He also mentions that during the previously conducted systems planning and selection phase, Jackie Judson and he prepared a baseline project plan. At the time the initial baseline project plan was prepared, the in-house development option was the preferred design strategy. The marketing group’s unique information needs seemed to indicate that inhouse development was the best option. However, other alternative design strategies have since been investigated.

During Tuesday’s meeting, several end users, managers, and systems development team members meet, discuss, and rank the requirements and constraints for the new Customer Tracking System. Also, weights and rankings are assigned to the three alternative design strategies. At the end of the meeting, Jim Woo assigns you the task of arranging this information into a table and calculating the overall scores for each alternative. He would like to review this information later in the afternoon. Tables 7-5 and 7-6 summarize the information obtained from Tuesday’s meeting.

a. Generally speaking, what alternative design strategies were available to Pine Valley Furniture?

b. Of the alternative design strategies available to Pine Valley Furniture, which were the most viable? Why?

c. Using the information provided in Table 7-6, calculate the scores for each alternative.

d. Based on the information provided in Tables 7-5 and 7-6, which alternative do you recommend?

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TABLE 7-5: Pine Valley Furniture Requirements and Constraints Criteria New Requirements Ease of use Easy real-time updating of customer profiles Tracks customer purchasing activity Supports sales forecasting Ad hoc report generation Constraints Must interface with existing systems Costs to develop Cost of hardware Time to operation Must interface with existing systems Ease of training Legal restrictions Alternative A Acceptable Yes No Some forecasting models are supported No Requires significant modifications $150,000 $80,000 6 months Requires significant modifications 3 weeks of training Cannot be modified Alternative B Fair Yes Yes Some forecasting models are supported Yes Minor modifications $200,000 $80,000 7 months Minor modifications 3 weeks of training Allows for customization Alternative C Good Yes Yes Provides support for all necessary forecasting models Yes Minor modifications $350,000 $100,000 9 months Minor modifications 2 weeks of training None