Project Definition and Management

A well$-$established software development company, with years of experience in developing logistics systems and software applications for the wholesale and retail markets, has won a contract with a large national grocery chain to develop a scalable, user$-$friendly Intelligent Shopping Assistant $($ISA$)$ an online order and delivery management system.

Currently the stores are using $3$rd party delivery providers, but the Chain would like to create new customer experiences, add an intelligent chatbot to assist the online shoppers, add a personal touch to the deliveries, extend the functionality, and as result, increase the satisfaction and customer loyalty.

The future ISA is expected to manage grocery lists and brand preferences, monitor health objectives and dietary constraints, track customers$$ shopping patterns, generate notifications and autogenerate draft$-$shopping lists. It also offers recipes and can add the required ingredients to the shopping lists if configured to do so$.$ It offers voice and text interface and supports a number of spoken languages. It further allows ordering personalized cooked meals based on select, but continuously changing set of recipes.

ISA will present a dynamic, customizable user interface, enriched with videos and an interactive chatbot for answering questions and even assisting with home cooking. It will allow users to search for specific items, check and compare suggested options, get warnings, notifications or guidance based on their profiles, shopping pattern or public health announcements, review the details of available items and place orders. Customers will also be able to update or delete orders. All payments will be made with a credit card. Customers should be able to provide delivery instructions, rate the deliveries and the products they purchased, and finally write comments.

Users will be required to create accounts and build user profiles the first time they visit the system. They can also set extended profiles, including preferences, nutritional goals, and lists of items for quick regular ordering. The system should be able to track the purchases of individual customers, derive shopping patterns and make recommendations after some shopping data is collected. Customers can enable or disable advanced ISA functions such as shopping habits analytics.

The system will also support store employees $($in many different roles$),$ but this functionality is out of scope for the initial releases.

The new system shall be integrated with the overall IMS of the grocery chain, obtaining information on available grocery items, including detailed descriptions, geographic distribution, and related chain$-$based promotions, as well as information about new arrivals and special events.

Developers should pay special attention to the customer experience aspects. Usability, security, response time, availability, and reliability are key requirements as they are critical for maintaining customer loyalty and thus meeting the client$$s objectives.

The grocery chain management $($the Client$)$ requires that they remain involved throughout the definition and development of the system and reserve their rights to provide new requirements or change some of them as the development progresses. The system will be deployed on AWS using automated $($CICD$)$ pipelines and operated by the Grocery Chain$$s IT team. The first Minimal Viable Product $($MVP$)$ should be delivered in $3$ months and the first full release should be in production and operational in $6$ months.

The development team working on this project has $15$ experienced members, who have worked together on multiple projects. Many of them, however, don$$t have working experience with AWS.

Based on the above information answer the following $5$ questions: