IFSM 636 Fall 2001 Final Exam Dr Seaman Ground rules 1 2 3 4 5 This is a take home open book exam You may complete the exam anywhere you want and consult any written sources you choose You may NOT receive help of any kind on this exam from ANY person other than myself I am available to answer clarification questions via email cseaman umbc edu or by telephone 410 455 3937 You are not to work together in any way or discuss this exam with each other Please download and save this document as a Word document and type your answers directly into this document The spaces provided for answers are not meant to indicate how long your answer should be Use as much or as little space as you like The completed exam is due by 4 00 pm on Thursday Dec 13 to me via email Below is a description of a business organization the Craft Superstore The Craft Superstore is a retail store that sells all kinds of craft supplies such as fabric yarn buttons needles scissors etc Read the description below carefully and then answer the questions that follow based on the information in the description Craft Superstore The Craft Superstore is a retail business that sells a large variety of materials and supplies that its customers use for various craft hobbies The store has yearly revenues of 500 000 making about 75 000 profit and employing about 20 people The store s success has been in spite of its rather poor location The owner attributes this success to their ability to provide a very large selection of merchandise at discount prices The store also has a website that is used for advertising special promotions and sales All of the employees of the store must be very knowledgeable about the different crafts and hobbies that their merchandise supports including what materials and tools are appropriate for different tasks This allows employees to be helpful to customers with questions It also provides opportunities to suggest additional purchases to customers who appear to be selecting the materials they need for a particular project For example if a customer is purchasing several skeins of yarn and a sweater pattern the employee waiting on that customer might guess that he was preparing to make a sweater and might ask the customer if he also needed any knitting needles or buttons The store owner suspects that this strategy does increase sales but she believes that it could be exploited more In fact the owner believes that the store is losing sales to such customers when they forget some item while at the Craft Superstore but then go to some other more conveniently located store when they remember the forgotten item The store already has an effective computerized inventory system that is tied directly to the cash registers so inventory is automatically updated with every sale There is also a simple employee database that keeps track of payroll information as well as basic information such as hire date position expertise etc Part I Below is a problem statement written to describe the problem opportunity that this project is motivated by Problem Statement The Craft Superstore has an opportunity to increase sales by recognizing when a customer is buying materials and supplies for an identifiable project but has not yet selected all the materials and supplies needed for that project If the Craft Superstore employees can recognize this situation then the customer can be reminded of the missing items before they complete their purchase and leave the store This would cut down on the number of lost sales that occur when a customer forgets to purchase an item while at the Superstore and then does not find it convenient to travel back to the store when they remember the item Taking advantage of this opportunity would increase revenue The next step is to gather information for requirements Suppose that your systems analysis team has decided to gather information via interviews with the store manager two store employees and a customer You have been charged with creating the interview guides for all these interviews Write out these interview guides below using as much space as you need There should be three for the manager the employees and the customer These interviews should be designed to get all the information you need to complete the baseline project plan the analysis and the systems proposal This means that you need to ask not only about processes e g how a customer is handled by employees in the store but also about various feasibility issues e g financial information political information etc Make your interview guides as complete and detailed as you can Interview guide 1 for the store manager Interview guide 2 for the store employees Interview guide 3 for the customer Part II Now it is time to conduct the interviews Go back to the interview guides you wrote above and make up answers to all the questions Type in these answers after each question type the answers in italics so that I can distinguish between the questions and the answers Since you are making up these answers there are no correct answers but they should make sense and not contradict each other Part III Now let s say that your analysis team has set to work on this information and structured it into a set of requirements diagrams etc Then the team made the following recommendation for solving the problem Recommended Solution The recommended solution is an automated system for identifying regular customers tracking their buying habits collecting information on their craft interests and giving guidance to the checkout clerk on additional items to recommend when they check out The system will work as follows The system will contain customer profiles and project profiles Customer profiles will be based on information from questionnaires that customers fill out on the store website or in the store The questionnaire asks customers about what crafts they are interested in and what kinds of craft projects they do Customers will be offered a special savings card in exchange for filling out this questionnaire The customer would then present this card whenever they visit the store when they check out in order to earn points towards future discounts The card will be scanned and the customer will be identified by the system and associated with their stored profile The card will also enable tracking the customer s purchase history The system will also contain project profiles which are generated in two ways First crafts experts i e store employees will be asked to