Stakeholder identification and information gathering for Riordan Manufacturing HR system integration

Manufacturing

The HR Integration Product Manager has solicited and received approval for the project from Hugh McCauley, COO (Riordan Manufacturing, 2004). Key stakeholders will be identified including the scope and feasibility of this project. Additionally, Section 1 will describe the information-gathering techniques and design methods for Riordan Manufacturing service request SR-rm-002. Analysis of the HR system will be discussed, followed by identifying key factors, which will help ensure that the information required for the project is gathered successfully, and give an explanation of the scope and feasibility of the project.

Stakeholders

The role of stakeholder is very important in success of any organization. Any company should collaborate with stakeholders for the growth of organization. "Stakeholders are influential people who are vitally interested in the actions of business" (Pearce II & Robinson, 2009). Key processes should be involved to utilize key stake holders. First of all, a company should identify a stake holder to boost its progress; then, company should analyze the stakeholders by recognizing stakeholders' needs and requirements and to maintain good relations with the stake holders. The last and most important thing is to have good communication with the key stakeholders. Riordan manufacturing has a lot of stakeholders and several of them are key stakeholders which play a vital role in achieving the company's strategic goal. The President, CEO, senior vice presidents, vice presidents, Chief operating officer, chief finance officer, customers, and the workers of the Riordan manufacturing are the key players that are responsible for the financial progress.

SCOPE

As stated above, Riordan Manufacturing has submitted a service (SR-rm-022) request for the analysis of the current HR system with the goal of the integration of the currently existing variety of tools into a single integrated application for corporate wide use. COO Hugh McCauley is looking for a single integrated application of the existing tools in use today in the HR system. The project is scheduled for completion in approximately six months from initiation with system utilization beginning in the second quarter for the flowing year.

Information-Gathering Techniques

The first order of business it to capture those specifics requirements that Riordan Manufacturing deems necessary to fulfill the HR department's needs. Defining those needs requires a certain level of understanding of how Riordan HR systems work and the associated strengths and weaknesses of that system (Salah, 2005). The second order of business is to identify how the current system(s) operates and who have to the current system(s). In order to accomplish this, fact-finding techniques will be used to gather the necessary information.

To ensure that the analysis process has as much pertinent and relevant data as possible, the information gathering process will be addressed in six stages (Disque, 2011).

1. Identify the areas for which information is required

2. Create the necessary research questions

3. Determine the sources of data

4. Research to gather the raw data

5. Confirm that the data is correct

6. Process the data to derive meaningful information and translate into goals and requirements

Because the HR department at Riordan Manufacturing has identified that there is a need to consolidate all of the various tools currently in use into a single application; the first stage of the information gather process is almost complete. The obvious task is to identify the tools in use and those who use them. Once done the questions will present themselves to the project team as the statement "the current systems consist of X with Y users using the system for Z. purpose." The project team must then identify what questions must be answered by either the customer (Riordan Manufacturing) or the team itself. The project team must craft the questions in such a manner as to provide the opportunity to deliver the underlying answer. Poorly worded questions will produce poor responses. Studies have shown that an error in requirements determination, possible because of a poorly worded question, which is not found until the later phases of development can cost 10 to 100 times as much to fix; as it would cost had it been found during the specification phase (Maraks & Elam, 1998).

The project team must determine where to gather the information to develop the business requirements. There are many important areas to consider in developing a well-defined picture of a system. One area is to observe the current business processes in the system and identify the tasks in those processes.