CASE STUDY 1: WAL- MART - THE WORLDS LARGEST RETAILER

Please read the case study carefully and answer all questions under questions 1 - 5. Wal-Mart is the worlds largest retailer, with more than 7000 stores and annual sales exceeding $400 billion. Founded in 1962 by retailing legend Sam Walton, the company has won numerous awards for business innovation. However, Wal-Marts move into online retailing was troubled, to say the least. Wal-Mart launched its first Web site in July 1996. Like most company sites of that time, it contained some information about the company, but did not offer any products for sale. Wal-Mart did little to develop the Web site over the next three years, but it did add a Web store just in time to participate in the disastrous 1999 holiday shopping season. Wal-Mart was not the only Web retailer to have trouble in 1999. Many companies found that they were ill-prepared for the large number of customers who decided to try electronic commerce in that years holiday season. Lost orders, unfilled orders, and shipments that failed to arrive until January 2000 were common for many Web retailers that year, Wal-mart included. Wal-Mart was noted as an industry leader in shipping and logistics management; however, the announcement on its Web site that it could not promise Christmas delivery for items ordered after December 14 was particularly embarrassing. To make matters worse, Wal-Mart was in the middle of developing a new Web site that it had hoped to launch before the holiday season. The project, which industry analysts estimate cost more than $100 million, ran months late and did not operate until January 2000. After eight months of operating the new Web site, Wal-Mart found itself with low levels of customer traffic (well below those of its major rivals J.C. Penney, Sears, Kmart, and Target) and high levels of criticism from Web site design experts who found the site slow, difficult to use, and lacking customer service features. In October 2000, Wal-Mart closed the site completely for four weeks. Earlier in the year, it had created Walmart.com, a joint venture with Accel Partners to develop a new Web site. A team was created that consisted of people with various job roles. Roles such as a website developer, business analysts and project managers are good examples. The project manager asked the business analyst of the team (i), to conduct surveys with some stakeholders and go through the lesson learned documentation of the failed projects as a base for the quality requirements of the new system, (ii) create all the relevant documentation that is needed, and (iii) conduct a complete stakeholder analysis for the project. The business analyst is also tasked with determining the different requirements of the project. The project manager also insists that the business analyst keeps validating the project progress and milestones with stakeholders as this will ensure the suitable system is development. The BA must also keep the PM up to date with his tasks as the PM feels that if the business analyst does not do their job correctly, the whole project can fail and will be another embarrassment to Wal-Mart.

QUESTION 3 (14 MARKS): The roles of Business analyst (BA) and Project manager (PM) are equally vital for the success of the project, and there are various, common skills and competencies between these two roles. With reference to Wal-Mart case above, discuss SEVEN common skills between a BA and PM roles, and how they would facilitate the success of the new project particularly looking at the failure rate they have experienced over the past years.

QUESTION 4 (10 MARKS): What is a stakeholder analysis? Advice the team on how this process would be beneficial for wal-mat project and discuss the seven steps required to conduct stakeholder analysis in the organisation. You need to provide a thorough discussion on each of the steps, not just naming them. Only naming will need to no allocation of marks.