The University of Melbourne

Department of Computing and Information Systems

Group Assignment Cover Sheet

Subject Code and Name: ISYS90081 Organizational Processes

Assignment Title: Group Assignment A01

Tutor/Instructor Name: Dr. Wally Smith

Due Date/Time: Friday 7​th​ April 2017

Submitted Date/Time: Friday 7​th​ April 2017

GROUP 4

Ai Xu ​773467

German Lopez 855434

Student Number and Name:
Jinsha Chen 791496

Melisa Perkins 242965

Qi Song ​849766

Before submitting my assignment, I have:

1. Made a copy of the assignment and of any material submitted with the assignment
2. Ensured that my assignment and any material submitted are clearly identified.
3. Completed the individual academic-honesty declaration
4. Submitted an electronic version of the report to LMS

Ai Xu

German Manuel
Signed: Melisa Perkins Date: 07/04/2017

Jinsha Chen

Qi Song
Background
Open Windows is a professional IT software and consulting group based in Melbourne. They are a
leader in procurement and contract management software, delivering solutions to clients for over 20
years. Open Windows have clients across a range of industry verticals including state and local
government, building and construction, mining and utilities companies. There are approximately 150
employees working for Open windows in a range of departments such as Development, Sales,
Consulting and Finance. (Open Wind 2017)

Open Windows offers a number of modular procurement products which clients can pick and choose
depending on their requirements, many clients choose to also invest in some form of product
enhancement, for example an integration or development of a new feature. Open Windows’
business strategy is based around providing modular procurement approach which means customers
pick and choose "Only what they need”. (Open Wind 2017)

Process Description
The process described in this assignment relates to the scenario where an existing client requests
the development of a new feature. In order to process this request, information needs to flow
through a series of departments to produce value to the customers.

This is an intensely customer facing process. In summary the process begins when the customer
makes a formal request for the development of a new feature in the software solution offered by
the company. The request goes through the Sales department and from there it’s passed to the
Consultant team, they develop a specification document with all the technical detail needed by the
Development team to start the estimation of costs and time. This estimation is send to the customer
through the Sales department in order to get the approval to start, once this approval is received the
Development team starts with the construction of the new feature. Once it’s finished and ready for
the release, and invoice must be made and delivered to the customer. The new featured is released
and the invoice is sent to the customer and with this the process ends.
Models
Context diagram

Figure 1. Context Diagram

Physical Level 0 Data Flow Diagram

Figure 2. Physical Level 0

Logical level 0 Data Flow Diagram

Figure 3. Logical Level 0

Logical level 1 Data Flow Diagrams

Validate new feature request.

Figure 4. Logical Level 1 a

Develop functional and technical requirement.

Figure 5. Logical level 1 b

Evaluate time and cost to develop.

Figure 6. Logical Level 1 c

Develop and release new feature.

Figure 7. Logical Level 1 d

BPMN workflow diagram

Figure 8. BPMN Workflow

Analysis of Process performance. The Devil’s Quadrangle

Quality

Quality includes both internal quality and external quality, in our report, internal quality is measured
from two perspectives: Average education level of staff and the level of intimacy between
stakeholders (Jansen-Vullers et al. 2007). Firstly, the average education level of workers in this
organization is bachelor degree. In addition, as we can see on the physical diagram, each type of
stakeholders communicate with no more than two other stakeholders, with the exception of the
Sales department that is connected to all the stakeholders involved. Therefore, there is a strong
intimacy among stakeholders which is beneficial for quality as it enhances the alignment of the
stakeholders involved. On the other hand the final release of the new feature is tested before
delivering to the customer to meet customer expectations and needs.

Flexibility

Flexibility is measured from three different dimensions in this report: task variety, the ability to
analyse complex requests and scalability (Jansen-Vullers et al. 2007). The development manager
divides large tasks into small parts according to her experience and then assigns the different parts
of tasks to the development team. Open Windows has a Functional Structure and there is little
duplication of work activities. This also means the process is standardised across the company so
regardless of the request complexity the process remains the same in its basic structure and steps.
This functional structure also allows the business to be flexible with regards to client demands as the
process is easily scalable allowing it to respond very effectively to the changing requirements of
customers.

Cost

Usually the cost dimension is closely related to the other dimensions. In this process, we focus on
the labour and administrative costs ((Jansen-Vullers et al. 2007). The cost of labour, how much the
sales team, developers and business analyst charge for their work is a significant part of the overall
cost of the process. If the new feature requested has a high complexity this can negatively impact
these costs, for example when the technical documentation is not enough for the development team
to estimate development time, the consultant team must develop a more detail document which
increases the time and costs to develop the quote and hence move through to the next stage of the
process. At this point, there is still a risk of the customer rejecting the final quote, if this occurs then
all the costs of quoting will be a loss for the company. Finally administrative costs are also relevant,
which are the ones needed to keep the entire workflow running for example utility bills, taxes, office
supplies, etc.

Time

Considering the time dimension for our process, we focus on service, setup and wait times
(Jansen-Vullers et al. 2007). The service time is the time taken to actually handling the case, so it’s
the time taken during the reception of the request, creation of the specification documents, actually
developing the new feature, quoting and invoicing. There’s an inefficiency with regards to the
quoting and invoicing process which produces a duplication of work and may slow down the process.
The sales team must save the quote in a database and also send it to the Accounts Payable team
who do not have access to get this information themselves from the database. On the other hand,
the setup time which also have a significant part in the time of the process is the time spent in
understanding the task, in the case of our process it will be mainly the time that takes to develop the
estimation of the cost and time the development is going to take. Finally the wait time also takes an
important part of the overall time of the process and is mainly the time the development team waits
for the customer approval in order to proceed with the developing.

Figure 9. Devil's Quadrangle

References
Devils Q 2007. Jansen-Vullers, MH, Loosschilder, MWNC, Kleingeld, PAM, Reijers, HA 2007,
‘Performance measures to evaluate the impact of best practices’, Proceedings of the 19th
International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE'07). - Trondheim:
Tapir Academic Press, pp.1-9. [Accessed 03 Apr. 2017].

Open Wind 2017. Open Windows Official Site. Available at:

https://www.openwindows.com.au/modular-procurement-software/ [Accessed 01 Apr. 2017].