(Mt) – Strayer University Larson Property Management Case System Development Life Cycle

Figure 5.1 Symbols of the Data Flow Diagram (DFD) Physical Design As was discussed in earlier chapters of this book, the acquisition of a system is the culmination of a series of important steps. By this point, the organization should have a strong understanding of its current operations, a set of requirements for the new system, and a new logical model for how it wishes the system to operate. Once the new system has been designed and logical models of the new system have been tested against the business requirements, the organization will move to the physical design phase. The major goal of this phase of the SDLC is to translate the logical model and requirements into a physical system, including all hardware, software, and networking. Figure 5.3 Level 0 DFD The logical design of a system focuses on the translation of business requirements into improved business processes, irrespective of any technological implementation. For example, a business requirement for organizations such as Larson Property Management is the acquisition of new employees. HR business processes typically include (1) identifying jobs requiring new employees and approving those jobs; (2) analyzing the requirements of those jobs; (3) posting those positions and recruiting applicants from the labor market; (4) tracking applicants through the recruiting process; (5) selecting from the recruiting pool, through the use of selection tools such as interviews, applicants that best fit the job requirements; and (6) bringing new hires on board and placing them in their jobs. The HR programs associated with these processes are (1) HR planning, (2) job analysis, (3) recruiting, (4) applicant tracking, (5) selection, (6) placement, and (7) record keeping. Logical Design As discussed in Chapter 4, once an organization has completed the analysis phase of the SDLC, which results in a comprehensive process analysis for the new HRIS, one of the key tasks facing the HR staff and development teams is to model the needs for the new system. There are two ways in which the system can be modeled: the physical model and the logical model. The physical model focuses on the computer technology for the HRIS, that is, on the hardware, software, networking plans, and technical manuals. The strength of this type of model is that it focuses on how the system will actually operate. In turn, this strength also becomes its weakness because, by focusing on the actual way the system will be implemented in terms of technology, analysts and HR staff may be constrained by the current, operational physical model. That is, HR staff members are familiar with the functioning of the current (i.e., legacy) HRIS they are using but, typically, not with the technological aspects of new systems or with the current technology available. Therefore, system developers like to focus on the essence of the business processes independent of any technological implementation. To do this, logical models of the system are created. Logical models are HRIS models that could be operationalized in multiple ways in terms of the technology. For example, in the logical model, an organization might focus on receiving and processing applicant files. There are several physical ways in which an organization could implement this process. It could use a Web portal in an HRIS, a kiosk at a retail outlet, direct email, or physical mail. The strength of using logical models is that the HR staff and developers can focus specifically on the business processes, policies, and procedures instead of on technology. Marakas (2006) refers to this as “separating the ‘what’ from the ‘how’” (p. 116). By focusing on what the system does or needs to be able to do, the analyst and HR staff will be less likely to be distracted by or to focus on a single technology platform. In turn, they will be more likely to design a stronger solution. Essentially, a logical model is similar to the blueprints for a home or an airplane. It provides the organization with an outline of the key business processes and goals for the system. Then, as the physical system is designed, these are translated into the hardware and software platforms that best fit the business’s needs. For an HRIS, there are two types of models created for the system: those focused on the system processes and those focused on the data the system captures. Two Ways to View an HRIS: Data Versus Process For any HRIS, the organization must look at the total HR system from two different perspectives: the data perspective and the process perspective. The data perspective focuses on an analysis of what data the organization captures and uses, and on the definitions and relationships of the data, while ignoring how or where the data are used by the organization. For example, a system whose aim is employee recruiting would need data about the applicants and their knowledge, skills, and abilities (e.g., name, address, degrees received, work experience). The data perspective would focus on the important data to be captured, but would not be concerned with how the data are to be used within the organization. In addition, the data perspective focuses on the most efficient and effective way to capture the data to ensure accuracy. The process perspective, conversely, focuses on the business processes and activities in which the organization engages and on how data flow through the HRIS. For example, a recruiting module from this perspective would consider business activities, such as receiving applications, sorting and scanning resumes to determine the interview pool, scheduling interviews, reporting candidate information for legal purposes, and so on, but not the data definitions and relationships. The designer would focus on the specific business processes, including the input of the data into the system, the flow of data through the system, and the storage of the data, but not on precisely what data are captured and how they are best organized or stored. Essentially, process modeling uses tools to describe the processes that are carried out by a system. A key question that the reader might be asking is, “Why should I care about these distinctions?” The reason the distinction between the process and data perspectives is important is that each represents a portion of the total HRIS, but neither provides the complete picture. By modeling each separately, the organization is better able to understand and communicate its needs to the technical staff (e.g., the project management team responsible for designing and implementing the HRIS and any external consultants, vendors, or software developers). In addition, while processes may change in the future, data generally represent the most permanent and stable part of a system. For example, employee data from prior systems are often converted into the new HRIS data format and transferred into the new system. This data conversion and migration process is a critical step in the implementation phase, and it provides a bridge and continuity between the legacy system and the new HRIS. This permanency of data and the more dynamic aspect of processes suggest the importance of dealing with each separately. Over the past three decades, a well-established procedure for modeling information systems has been developed. The procedure is based on a process perspective that uses process mapping, also called data flow diagramming. A common aspect of all design methodologies is the use of diagrammatic modeling techniques. While the style of the charting symbols varies, the fundamentals are well established. Our focus in this chapter is on the creation and use of process models. Logical Process Modeling With Data Flow Diagrams A process model describes and represents the key business processes or activities conducted by the organization, such as applicant tracking. The specific type of process model typically used by organizations is a data flow diagram (DFD). A DFD is a graphical representation of the key business activities and processes in the HR system, the boundaries of this system, the data that flow through the system, and any external individuals or departments that interact with the system. The focus of a DFD is on the movement of data between external entities (such as a job applicant) and processes (the applicant-tracking process) and between processes and data stores. Kendall and Kendall (2008) argue that DFDs have four distinct advantages over narrative (e.g., written) descriptions: 1. There is freedom from committing to the technical implementation of the system too early. 2. They provide a deeper understanding of the interrelatedness of systems and subsystems. 3. They allow for stronger communication of system knowledge to the employees, since the diagrams are in pictorial form. 4. They ensure a deeper analysis of the proposed system to determine if all business processes have been identified. A DFD consists of four symbols (see Figure 5.1): the entity, the data flow, the process, and the data store. The entity represents any external agent (e.g., an individual, department, business, system) that either receives or supplies data to the HR system. For example, in an applicanttracking system (ATS), a manager could request that a job opening be posted, or an applicant could submit her resume online. In this scenario, both the manager and applicant are entities. Other examples of an entity are a manager inputting merit pay raise information on an employee into the payroll system or the production/manufacturing system inputting piece-rate production data about the number of products produced by an employee into the payroll system. Similarly, the time-and-labor module, which provides time-card information on employees and their start and end times on workdays, represents an entity for payroll systems. Because entities represent a specific person, place, system, or department, they are labeled with a noun in the DFD. The data flow represents the movement of a single piece of data from point to point through the system (e.g., from process to process, entity to process, or process to data store). As a data flow represents data about a person, place, or thing, it should also be labeled with a noun. The label of a data flow should describe exactly what data are contained in the flow. For example, a data flow labeled “Time Sheet” would represent an employee’s time sheet, and the exact data contained in the flow would be precisely defined as part of the diagramming process. Because DFDs describe the key business processes and the flow of data between them, an important rule to remember is that all data flows must begin or end at a process. The third symbol in the DFD represents the process. A process represents a business activity or process. The goal of each process is to change or transform inputted data into a useful output (e.g., creating an applicant record, updating an employee record, creating a recruiting yield ratio report, reporting Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data on applicants). Since data are transformed as part of these processes, they should be labeled with action verbs, for example, calculate, send, print, or verify. The final symbol represents the data store, in other words, the data at rest in the system or a repository of data. This repository could be a filing cabinet, a file on a desk, a computer file, or a database table. A data store contains data about a person, place, or department and should be labeled with a noun. Examples of data stores include employee files, applicant files, employee records, and customer or current benefits records. Data stores are typically identified with a “Dn,” where D identifies that what is labeled is a data store and n is a number reflecting the data store’s unique identifier (D1, D2, etc.). The symbols and their use are illustrated in Figure 5.1. The DFD can also be used as a tool for analyzing the current system versus the desired system. In addition, DFDs are often used for business process reengineering, in an effort to improve the system. For example, through the DFD, the analysts designing the ATS for Larson Property Management might discover that data (e.g., rating scores) from a lower-level manager’s interview of job candidates currently flow back to the HR department for approval prior to allowing the applicant file to proceed to the next-level manager. Through this analysis, they could find that this step is unnecessary in the new HRIS because the system would use a decision rule, based on the minimum score needed to proceed, to forward the applicant data to the next manager automatically upon an applicant receiving a passing score. Physical Design As was discussed in earlier chapters of this book, the acquisition of a system is the culmination of a series of important steps. By this point, the organization should have a strong understanding of its current operations, a set of requirements for the new system, and a new logical model for how it wishes the system to operate. Once the new system has been designed and logical models of the new system have been tested against the business requirements, the organization will move to the physical design phase. The major goal of this phase of the SDLC is to translate the logical model and requirements into a physical system, including all hardware, software, and networking. Major activities in this phase include (1) determining whether or not there is value in continuing the system design and actual implementation processes, (2) determining hardware and software options and requirements, (3) determining where to obtain the hardware and software (e.g., by in-house development or commercial software purchase), (4) developing an implementation schedule, and (5) working with potential vendors to assess and select software if system software is to be obtained externally. For most organizations, these activities will typically mean that the HR staff specialists (e.g., the recruiting manager) will work closely with HRIS specialists and the internal information technology (IT) staff, as well as with software vendors and any external consultants brought in to help with the physical design of the system. The extent of involvement of these various stakeholders depends on the size, scope, and type of HRIS developed. During the physical design phase, the HRIS and IT staff will focus heavily on how any new software and hardware will fit within the current IT architecture. In addition, IT and HRIS staff will provide technical recommendations on the relative value and cost of building the system internally or purchasing an off-the-shelf package from a commercial vendor. The HR staff will also work with the external vendors to ensure that the focus of the system is on the business requirements and not the technology itself. It is also important at this point to remind the HR staff to be very careful of scope creep, or the growth in project requirements and scope. Three Choices in Physical Design The first step in this design phase is to determine how to proceed with physical design. First, the organization has the option of doing nothing. Although this may seem to be counterintuitive because much time and money typically have been spent on the analysis and design process to date, there may be important organizational or environmental reasons for not proceeding. For example, on completion of a thorough analysis and logical redesign of the HR processes, a small organization in the southern United States was f with a public lawsuit, and it was forced to delay the final design and implementation of the project until this was settled. In other instances, companies have postponed proceeding after learning that a target software vendor was in the process of a major revision of the software product. The second option is to make changes to only the HR business processes without implementing new or upgraded technology. Before any time or money is spent on new technology, it is important that the organization address all proposed business process changes and determine if these processes can be handled using the current HRIS technology. In the book Good to Great, Collins (2001) suggests that one important difference between good companies and great companies is that good companies view technology as a solution, whereas great companies see technology as a tool to be used to support great business processes. Furthermore, Brynjolfsson and Hitt (1998) found that organizations were much more likely to increase productivity and performance when they coupled any technology changes with business process changes. At this point in the process, it can be easy to forget that the goal for the development of the new system should be to use technology to support HR practices, making them more efficient and adding value to the organization; an organization should not get so caught up in the promise of a new technology with industry “best practices” that it ignores actual needs. In HR or IT, although using best practices is desirable, if these practices are not compatible with the specific needs of your organization as identified in the needs analysis, any business process and technical changes are likely to be less effective. The final option that an organization can choose is to implement the business process changes along with new or upgraded technology. There are three basic ways that this can be done: build it, buy it, or outsource the development. Organizations that choose the first approach—to build the technology internally—will take responsibility for the development of the software and hardware. The advantage of this approach is that the organization will control all aspects of the development, including the look and feel and functionality. Using this approach, the organization will be able to write software to meet 100% of the business’s requirements. Finally, internally building the software can also provide increased flexibility and creative solutions for the issues within the HR business processes. There are several shortcomings in building the HR system internally from scratch. First, it can be much more expensive to implement than an off-the-shelf solution. In addition, since it is a unique application, the amount of software testing and the developmental risk are much higher with this approach than for an off-the-shelf system. Further, for this approach to work, the organization must already have or readily be able to obtain the technical, functional, and project management skills necessary to build the system effectively. For most organizations, obtaining what is needed to build the system is a daunting task because software development is generally not part of their core competency, and they likely do not have the staff and resources available to complete such an undertaking. Finally, since an HRIS is typically one of at least several core modules that are part of the overall enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, building the module in-house often leads to issues and challenges associated with integrating the HRIS with the other core modules, including the data warehouse component used to integrate data as a basis for business intelligence features. For most organizations, the second approach of buying prepackaged, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software fits many needs. These systems can range from small, single-function applications costing a few thousand dollars to large-scale, ERP software packages costing millions of dollars. The advantage of using this approach to acquiring software is that the systems are well tested and proven and can be purchased and implemented in a short period. For this reason, most of the HR software adopted and used today is COTS. The good news for organizations considering the adoption of a COTS solution is that most business operations are fairly generic, so there are applications available that should meet the majority of the needs of most organizations. The bad news is that even the best system will rarely meet all the specific needs of the organization, with most meeting about 70% of the organization’s needs. Thus, organizations choosing to purchase a COTS solution should be prepared either to work with the vendor to customize the system to meet their unique needs or to change their processes to fit with the software (and thereby opt for what is referred to as the “vanilla” approach). As mentioned briefly before, the risk of adapting your business processes to the software is that the business processes supported by the software may be incompatible with the way your organization operates, which can result in increased costs or reduced competitive advantage. In addition, when an organization implements a vendor’s upgrade in the future, it will likely be necessary to redo whatever customization was done during the initial implementation. The final approach to developing the software is to outsource the development to an external company or to obtain access to existing software through an application service provider (ASP). The greatest advantage of outsourcing is that an external software development can bring vast resources, experiences, and technical skills to design a much more effective solution than would otherwise be possible. However, outsourcing the development can be risky. For example, by outsourcing, the firm may expose confidential internal information and business processes to an external organization. Second, outsourcing may not lead to reduced time and expense for the organization because many of the tasks that would need to be completed if the software were developed in-house would still need to be completed with the external software developer. As can be seen from the previous discussion, there are advantages and disadvantages to each approach for software development. Thus, the decision as to which approach to use will be based on multiple factors and may differ from organization to organization and project to project. In addition, an organization need not rely on a single approach. For most organizations, the solution chosen is often a combination of in-house and external development. The decision regarding which approach to choose is based on a series of factors, including the nature of the business process; the size, technical skills, and project management skills of the software staff; and the development time frame. Table 5.1 contains a matrix of how these different factors may influence the approach chosen. If the decision is made to purchase and customize COTS or to outsource development, the organization will need to work closely with external software vendors. Thus, vendor selection becomes a very important decision. Working With Vendors Although building a new HRIS from scratch with internal resources may be a viable option for some organizations, by far the most common decision is to work with an external vendor to develop or acquire the system. To do this, the HR staff will need to work closely with both the internal IT department and external vendors to ensure that the business process requirements and all technical requirements are presented to the vendor. The first step in this process is to develop a request for proposal (RFP). HRIS In Action Larson Property Management Company is one of the largest property-management companies in California, with more than 1,000 employees. The company provides a full array of commercial management and development services. These activities include complete management services for commercial office and retail buildings and apartment complexes; the construction, repair, and maintenance of commercial properties; and financial management and billing services for commercial real estate clients. The company has experienced significant expansion over the past five years in response to the growth in apartment and commercial construction in southern California, and this expansion has resulted in the need to hire a large number of employees on an ongoing basis to staff its operations. Larson Property Management has depended on a legacy HRIS to manage its applicant and employee databases. The system runs on a client-server computer system. The system was implemented approximately 10 years ago, prior to the rapid growth of the company and when the organization had fewer than 100 employees. The system’s functionality is limited to the storage and retrieval of employee and applicant data. For recruiting purposes, the system requires a clerk to manually enter basic applicant data, the results of the application test, and whether or not an offer of employment has been made. Prior to this, applicants’ files were passed around to those who reviewed the materials and were sometimes mispl, so trying to locate a particular applicant’s file was often a problem. The current HRIS has limited file storage capability for applicant and employee records and currently has reached its storage capacity. Larson Property Management has decided to replace its legacy HRIS. One application module in the new HRIS that the company wants is a sophisticated applicant-tracking system (ATS). The primary objective of the ATS will be to provide a paperless hiring process. The basic functions of the new system will be managing the requisition and approval of job openings, storing resumes and job applications and retrieving through query functions the names of applicants who match job requirements, tracking a candidate’s progress through the recruiting and selection process, and providing automated reporting functions. The company’s managers also want an eHR functionality that includes the Internet posting of job openings through the company’s website and external job-posting services, application and resume submission through the Web and through kiosks at various office locations, staff ability to access and use the system remotely through a Web browser, and online resume- and application-scanning capabilities. Part of the design phase is modeling the processes that will be used in the system for applicant tracking. For Larson Property Management, this modeling will allow the system analysts to design an efficient paperless hiring process. CASE STUDY Larson Property Management Company is one of the largest property management companies in California, with more than 1,000 employees. The company provides a full array of commercial management and development services. These activities include complete management services for commercial office and retail buildings and apartment complexes; construction, repair, and maintenance of commercial properties; and financial management and billing services for commercial real estate clients. The company has experienced significant expansion over the past five years in response to the growth in apartment and commercial construction in southern California, and this expansion has resulted in the need to hire a large number of employees on an ongoing basis to staff its operations. Larson Property Management has depended on a legacy HRIS to manage its applicant and employee databases. The system runs on a client-server computer system. The system was implemented approximately 10 years ago, prior to the company’s rapid growth and when it employed fewer than 100 employees. The system’s functionality is limited to the storage and retrieval of employee and applicant data. For recruiting purposes, the system requires a clerk to manually enter basic applicant data, the results of the application test, and whether or not an offer of employment has been made. Prior to this, applicants’ files were passed around to those who reviewed the materials and were sometimes mispl, so trying to locate a particular applicant’s file was often a problem. The current HRIS has limited file storage capability for applicant and employee records and currently has reached its storage capacity. Larson Property Management has decided to replace its legacy HRIS. One application module in the new HRIS that the company wants is a sophisticated applicant-tracking system (ATS). The primary objective of the ATS will be to provide a paperless hiring process. The basic functions of the new system will be managing the requisition and approval of job openings, storing resumes and job applications and retrieving through query functions the names of applicants who match job requirements, tracking a candidate’s progress through the recruiting and selection process, and providing automated reporting functions. The company’s managers also want an eHR functionality that includes the Internet posting of job openings through the company’s website and external job-posting services, application and resume submission through the Web and through kiosks at various office locations, staff ability to access and use the system remotely through a Web browser, and online resume- and application-scanning capabilities. Part of the design phase is modeling the processes that will be used in the system for applicant tracking. For Larson Property Management, this modeling will allow the system analysts to design an efficient paperless hiring process. Larson Property Management is well aware that the design stage of the SDLC is critical for the successful implementation of the new ATS. However, there is considerable confusion about how to proceed with this phase. The HR and IT professionals assigned to the ATS committee have been meeting to plan the new system. From their planning and needs analysis, it is clear that a new HRIS application is needed, can save considerable time, and can result in more accurate storage and retrieval of applicant data for cost-benefit and other management reports. The company has had several vendors provide presentations, with each vendor outlining its particular approach to the design of an ATS. But these presentations were primarily focused on the physical design of the new ATS. The HR and IT committees must now begin the design process, which must be completed in three months.

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