System Concepts Company Overview

Complete Solutions plc (CS) is a successful organization specializing in IT consultancy business with annual turnover of £40 millions. The company is located at North of England with branches in the U.S. And France. Established in 1980, the company was taken over by a larger company, and the take-over bid led to the rapid expansion of the company. Complete Solution has several sections with approximately 400 users in the UK divisions. The company internal services are based in Manchester with the Training Solutions (TS) consultancy section, Sales, and Marketing section. The overall services of Complete Solution consists of the IT consultancy service as well as selling of hardware and software, training and recruitment, software development and, outsourced services. The other services provided by the Complete Solution are consultancy services. With rapid expansion that the company is enjoying, the Complete Solution is planning to go public by floating on the stock market in the next 18 months to enhance the company competitive market advantages.

Despite the expansion enjoyed by the company, the management anticipates that CS does not have necessary infrastructure to support growth in the next three years. The present communication and information system within the company cannot keep pace with the rapid growth. To address the problem, Board of Director agrees that IT Development Department (ITDD), Roger Clarkson, should be responsible for the three years strategic IT project to support the computing network and coordinate in-house IT development projects. (CO3601 System Concepts, nd).

Major challenges facing organizations in the contemporary business environment is the method to implement system analysis model to solve organizational problem. As organizational information system become complex, various hard models have been proposed to address organizational problems. Waterfall approach, JAD, CASE tools prototype and RAD have been proposed. While there may be difference in most of these methodologies, most of them share the same primary technical perspectives. They all assume that it is essential to find optimal solution to a problem through analysis process. (Wynekoop & Russo 1993). Despite their common argument in achieving optimal solution to a problem, there are arguments that these technological-oriented methodologies are insufficient to address real-life situation where human, social, cultural and political factors are prevalent within an organization. Soft System Methodology (SSM) is proposed to address the inadequacies of the tradition information system methodologies. SSM provides a mechanism where human, social, cultural, and political factors serve as explicit entities to be considered in the system analysis process. (Gasson, 1995).

The objective of this proposal is to provide development of information and communication system to support business aspiration of Complete Solution Plc.

2. High level Rich Picture of Complete Solution Plc

3. Primary task and one issue-based Task and Justification

Based on the illustration from the rich picture, the primary task is the IT development project assigned to the IT Development Department by the Board of Director. The project is to support computing network and coordinate in-house for the development of information and communication system to facilitate business aspiration of Complete Solution. The issue-based task is that there are associated problems within the organization that could hinder the successful implementation of the IT project. The related problems are caused by human, political, economic and social factors, and the ITDD manager could only address these problems by allowing "relevant human, social, political, and cultural factors to form structure and act as explicit entities in the system analysis process." (Zhou, 2005 P. 8). Some of the issue-based tasks are as follows:

1. Lack of support from other Departments.

2. People are unwilling to make suggestion.

3. No staff to manage the latest technology.

4. No money for consultancy fee.

5. Lack of latest technology to support the growth of CS.

From the case study, it is revealed that the management rates sales and consultancy section higher than the ITDD. Typically, employee in the sales and consultancy section are earning more salary than ITDD employee. While there is a general believe that the communication and information system within the company is very poor, many people do not have confidence in the ITDD because people from the other section believe that ITDD employee do not have necessary skills to implement new project to enhance company information and communication system. The issue makes Roger to face challenges in getting support from the rest of the organization because people are unwilling to make constructive suggestion with regard to the IT requirements. While Roger has set up an intranet 2 years ago which he called "His baby," however, Roger was unable to win the support from the organization towards the project. Roger has been...

Define a relevant system for each of your tasks
Defining a relevant system for each of the tasks is essential. The root definitions are as follows:

A system to support the computing network and coordinate in-house IT development projects.

A system to develop information and communications support for the business aspirations of Complete Solution.

A system to coordinate relevant group within the company for the development of information and communication support for the CS business aspirations.

A system to coordinate human, social, cultural, and political factors to enhance company business aspiration.

5. Choosing one relevant system, and formulate a CATWOE and a root definition for it

A relevant system chosen is as follows:

A system to develop information and communications support for the business aspirations of Complete Solution

The paper formulates a CATWOE to formulate a root definition of the system.

Customer: Beneficiary of the system is Complete Solution, employee and the customer. The main objective of the system is to enhance business aspiration of the company.

Actors: ITDD manager and IT Development Department conduct the activities of the system.

Transformation: ITDD manager needs to bring in the available resources such as financial and human resources to develop information and communication support for the CS business aspirations.

Worldview: Stakeholders have different views about the system. Board of director views the system as an opportunity to enhance the company information and communication systems to support company growth for the next three years. However, the ITDD manager views the system as problems that ought to be solved. The problems could not be solved unless he could have access to adequate financial and human resources. He also needs the support of other employee from other departments. On the other hand, the customer views the system as a way to improve the service provided by the company.

Owner: Complete Solution plc is the owner.

Environmental: Several environmental constraints affect the system. The major constraint facing the system is human problem. For example, the internal consultancy has the habit of headhunting the best employee in the ITDD and there is no support from director over this issue. Moreover, the board is not ready to disburse funds on the project unless Roger produces a concrete proposal. People are not ready to share information to assist the ITDD since people insist on keeping information to themselves. Employee in the sales department is also not ready to share their contact because of "knowledge is power" attitude. Typically, other employee in other departments generally believes that Roger Clarkson, ITDD manager is incapable of implementing the project because the former intranet developed by Roger is a failure. The contents in the intranet are just out-of-date and nobody within the organization is using it because of the difficulties in accessing the data making people to stop updating their pages. With failure of the last intranet, it is difficult to gain support and enthusiasm for another intranet project.

6. Construct a conceptual model of your root definition

The report provides conceptual model based on the stakeholder viewpoints. The primary task of the system focuses on the official tasks of the proposal to coordinate in-house IT development project and support the computing network for development information and communication. However, the issue-based tasks of the root definitions focus on the problem issues. The conceptual model reveals the set of logical model that describes the system through set of logical actions. Thus, the report provides the conceptual model that represents the real-world version of Complete Solution Plc with sequence of diagram.

Conceptual Model of Complete Solution Plc

7. Comparison between the two Models

The rich picture and conceptual model are the diagrammatical illustrations revealing the tasks of the system. While there are similarities between the two diagrams, there is also difference between the two. The major similarities between the two diagrams are that they reveal the primary tasks of the system and issue-based tasks of the system. Typically, the identification of the primary tasks and the problem associated with the system is very critical to address the problem. Despite the similarities between the two diagrams, there are differences associated with the two diagrams. First, there rich picture reveals all the department of the Complete Solution, however, the conceptual model does not reveal the illustration of all the company departments. Another difference is that the rich picture reveals diagrammatical relationship between the board of director and the proposal assigned to the ITDD manager. However, there is no such relationship in the conceptual model.

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