STRICTLY FOLLOW THE GUIDELINES AND DETAILS PROVIDED BELOW:
Assessment Details / Tasks
Written Report
You are required to identify an opportunity for a change to an organisation or sector, where that change will involve an Information Technology solution. You are then to perform a range of business analysis activities, in order to prepare a document proposing at least 2 solution designs, as outlined in more detail below.
The focus of your “opportunity” must be related to some current issue as reported in reputable Australian news media. “Current” means anything that has come to the world’s attention since November 2019 until August 2020. “Reputable media” means organisations listed in the appendix at the end.
Some examples of “opportunity” include:
- How could the process of contract-tracing of active Coronavirus cases be made quicker/easier?
- How could permits for essential workers be digitized whilst also preventing fraudulent attempts to make permits?
- How could the mechanism of home-schooling of primary and secondary school students be made effective and also be easier for staff to handle the system and monitor their student’s progress?
- How might the child-care sector be able to coordinate between different independent child-care centres for matching children who need to be cared-for, with centres that would then have sufficient quantity of students to enable that centre to run profitably rather than at a loss, whilst others go into hibernation due to insufficient number of attendees?
- How can health and other data be communicated securely between cruise-ships, airlines, and government departments using digital technologies, rather than relying on paper-based systems prone to human error?
- How can fire-fighters and other emergency services improve the coordination of their efforts across large-scale bushfire incidents?
- How can the evacuation and related processes of accounting for affected citizens in Bushfire events, be made easier through supporting IT solutions?
You are allowed to choose another opportunity, as long as it has been reported in reputable media since November 2019.
An example from last year (which is not “current” anymore) was: how could the problem of casual workers having to report their fortnightly earnings to Centrelink so that various support payments could be paid and no “Robo-debt” arise, be made less prone to error so that people would not unexpectedly receive a “Robo-debt” notice.
In clarifying what the opportunity you end up focusing on is: it could be inspired by identifying an area for potential growth through observation of a current issue being experienced (as the examples listed above), or from perceiving (from your own observations) an opportunity to improve an organisation’s current systems.
You cannot simply describe an already existent IT-based process; you must be proposing some change (e.g. you cannot just discuss the CovidSafe App – you must describe something that is going to operate differently to that app, if “quicker contract-tracing” was the topic you chose).
Once you have identified an opportunity, you are assigned the role of Business Analyst to work on this project. Important Note: You must not contact the actual organisation. Instead, you may conduct research using online and library resources and ask your tutor or other students / friends to provide different perspectives – any such assistance from other people must be fully acknowledged in your assignment.
Your role entails performing and reporting on the following aspects of the following BABOK Knowledge Areas:
Strategy Analysis knowledge area:
- Gain an understanding of the current aims and strategy of the organization/sector and the business objectives of the change, and describing these in your report.
Elicitation and Collaboration knowledge area:
- Identifying the relevant stakeholders who would be impacted by and who may need to be involved in informing this change.
- Create a RASCI stakeholder prioritization matrix for the identified stakeholders
- Developing a list of requirements for what is needing to be addressed by the change, considering the perspectives of the relevant stakeholders.
Requirements Analysis and Design Definition knowledge area:
- Requirements are specified and modelled using appropriate techniques e.g. user stories or use cases, use case diagrams, data flow diagrams, sequence diagrams, process models, etc.
- Identification of measurement and evaluation criteria, to enable evaluation of the success (or otherwise) of the change to be determined (in the future).
- Developing two different, high-level designs that address the identified requirements and that would be valid solutions to the opportunity. Note that these should also be compatible with the organisation’s overall strategy. Note also that you are not expected to provide details of the technical implementation of these designs (e.g. no class designs)
- Recommending one of the designs as the optimal approach for the organisation to consider, along with justifications for this recommendation that address the earlier-identified needs. Requirements
Lifecycle Management knowledge area:
- Organising and managing the requirements using a suitable tool (e.g. requirements analysis template.)
- Constructing a requirements traceability matrix that links the requirements to each of the proposed designs.
As the business analyst working on this project, you are also required to document your work in a report in a format suitable for review by the organisation’s management (or sector’s leaders or government ministers if it is a multi-organisation or sector-wide matter that you have chosen).
Your report must:
- Include an Executive Summary of the report contents, providing a brief overview of the analysis and also the recommended design solution.
- Document the findings of your analysis (most of the earlier dot-point items) in detail, so that the process you have undertaken is clearly explained and identifiable. This should enable another person to follow the work you have completed and understand the outcomes you have identified. Some of the information may be difficult to represent professionally in a report – in such cases you may use screenshots where appropriate to show the relevant information, and submit the complete files separately from the report.
- Be presented in a professional manner suitable for issuing to an executive team at the organisation.
Please follow the below details:
Appendix – Some Possible Reputable News Media for finding topics:
Your chosen topic/organisation/issue must have been discussed by reputable news media.
“Reputable news media” includes reputable news sources published in English in Australia. Below is a list of news organisations which are considered “reputable”. If you wish to find a topic from another news organisation that is not listed below, you should check with your lecturer or tutor to confirm the suitability of the news media if you are uncertain.
You should not be doing your assignment about the news organisation itself. You use the news to find the issues about a topic.
Guardian Australia:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/all
Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s news website:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/
SBS News:
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/
The Age (Melbourne):
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/all
The Sydney Morning Herald:
https://www.smh.com.au/
The Australian Financial Review:
http://www.afr.com/
The Advertiser (Adelaide):
https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/
