Willowbrook School

Willowbrook School is a small private school that has retained your services as a systems

analyst to assist in the development of a new information system for the schools

administrative needs.

Background

Based on your earlier recommendations, Willowbrook decided to continue the systems

development process for a new information system that would improve operations,

decrease costs, and reduce some of the administrative workload.

Now, at the end of the systems analysis phase, you are ready to prepare a system

requirements document and give a presentation to the Willowbrook Schools

management and board of directors. Many of the proposed systems advantages were

described during the fact-finding process. Those include smoother operation, better

efficiency, and more user-friendly procedures for staff and parents.

You must examine tangible costs and benefits to determine the economic feasibility of

multiple alternatives. The finance and fund-raising committees will need to examine the

costs and benefits to determine if the development process will go ahead. If Willowbrook

School decides to go ahead with development, the system can either be developed inhouse or purchased as a vertical package and configured to meet the needs of the school.

Currently, Michelle Madrid is logging 10 hours of overtime a week due to the increased

workload associated with increased enrollment and school expansion. She is being

compensated for overtime at a cost of $22.50 per hour including overhead expenses.

Based on current enrollment projections, the overtime will need to be expanded to 15

hours a week in the next school year. The overtime requirement would be eliminated if

Willowbrook implements the new system. The current system now causes an average of

six errors per week, and each error takes about 20 minutes to correct. The new system

should eliminate those errors.

Based on your research, you originally estimated by working 35 hours per week you

could complete an in-house development project in about 8 weeks. Your consulting rate,

which Willowbrook agreed to, is $35 per hour. If you design the new system as a

database application, you can expect to spend about $1,500 for a networked commercial

package. One of the parents at Willowbrook has extensive experience with this package

as a Database Administrator at a local company, and has committed to providing 10

hours per week working with you to develop the project. After the system is operational

and the staff is trained, you hope that Willowbrook staff and volunteers can handle

routine maintenance tasks without your assistance. If they continue to require your

assistance, a contract rate can be negotiated later depending on the nature of the problem.

As an alternative to in-house development, a vertical software package is available for

about $8,500. The vendor offers a lease-purchase package of $2,000 down, followed by

two annual installments of $3,250 each. If Willowbrook buys the package, it would take

you about three weeks to install, configure, and test it, working full-time. The vendor

provides free support during the first year of operation, but then Willowbrook must sign a

technical-support agreement at an annual cost of $750 for the duration of years. Although

the package contains many of the features that Willowbrook wants, most of the reports

are pre-designed and it would be difficult to modify their layouts.

You have agreed to provide five hours per week of training and support for the first two

months of operation. After the new system is operational, it will need routine

maintenance, file backups, and updating. These tasks will require about four hours per

week and will be performed by school staff or parent volunteers at an average hourly rate

of $12.50.

For both the in-house development and the vertical software package, the necessary

hardware will cost about $3,500. Hardware and network installation will be partially

provided by three parent volunteers.

In your view, the useful life of the system will be about five years, including the year in

which the system becomes operational.

The development of the new system will occur in Year 0, but the system will not be used

until Year 1. The school will use the manual system during development, and will switch

over to the new system during the month of June, to start the new school year on the new

system. Use $15.00 per hour for any rate not previously stated in the case.

Tasks:

You will be presenting the system requirements document to Willowbrook. Prepare both

the written documentation and the presentation. (Note: To give a successful presentation,

you will need to learn the skills described in Part A of the Systems Analysts Toolkit.)

Your oral and written presentation must include the following tasks:

1. Provide an overview of the proposed system, including costs and benefits, with an

explanation of the various cost-and-benefit types and categories.

2. Develop a cost-benefit analysis, using payback analysis, ROI, and present value

(assume a discount rate of 6 percent). Part C of the Systems Analysts Toolkit

describes popular financial analysis tools.

3. Provide a brief explanation of the various alternatives that should be investigated

if development continues, including in-house development and any other possible

strategies.

4. Develop a series of slides, using PowerPoint or some other presentation software,

for inclusion in your presentation that describe prototyping and provide your

reasoning for whether or not you will be using it at this point in the project