Case 1

Description

Background information

You work for a new upcoming IT Consulting company. The firm specializes in the development of enterprise applications and is hungry for new business.

Your company along with several other companies has just received a Request for Proposal to develop a new online banking system for Home Town bank. Your company is one of several that is planning to bid on the development of this new information system for Home Town bank. Landing a large contract such as this isjust the thing that is needed for your company to gain credibility and recognition in the marketplace. More importantly it will give your company a much needed boost in cash flow.

The company is small and has limited resources. Management has decided to use only proven technologies and methodologies. To cut cost,management has strongly recommended that open source tools be used where reasonable since they are free.

Your company may need to outsource some of the development to  companies in India or other parts of the world where labor is much cheaper to be competitive in their bid. To mitigate the risk of working with diverse groups in different locations, time zones and cultural differences management has dictated that the team develop and follow a well documented software development process. Techniques such as Team Programming, highly dynamic work assignments, and a requirement by development management to dramatically increase the quality of the software as compared to previous applications released have been mandated by management. This quality is to be easily maintainable throughout the life cycle of the product. To accomplish this without
dramatically increasing development time and hopefully to decrease it there is to be unit, module, and integration testing in some automated fashion.

The better the development process and the testing, the more profitable the company both now and in the future. A good development process will ensure that the code relates to the design and that the design satisfies the requirements. The development process and tools set chosen can greatly effect  productivity and quality of code developed.

The design and implementation of the software must be easy to debug, fix and maintain not only for the first iteration of the product, but all subsequent iterations, versions, and releases in the future. Management has dictated that anything that has worked in previous versions not be broken by later fixes or enhancements. This must be done in a provable, reproducible, and in an easy to use and implement fashion. Additionally, as users report defects and they are fixed, it is required that each of these fixes be retested to prove that subsequent versions of the software are not adversely affected.

Multiple developers will be working on the application at the same time, and in the future there will be several version of the application that will need to be maintained. In the past this has been a problem because two developers would be working on the same code at the same time and would end up wiping out changes that the other had made. In addition, as enhancements are made to the application in new versions or releases, fixes need to be made to multiple versions of code. Often changes were made to the wrong version or did not get updated and tested in the newer versions. Management has told the team that they must adopt tools or a methodology so to solve this problem.

The company has the following resources currently at their disposal: a single small Linux or Windows based server (your choice). All members of the team will have their own desktop or laptop  machine. These machines may have several different Linux distributions, WinXP, and OSX for the primary system. Any development tools must work on all of these operating systems or there must be a set of like tools for each operating system.

The Problem

The president of the company has just ask your team to put together the bid and respond to the Request for Proposal. The bids must be submitted by next Tuesday at 9:00 AM. This gives you only one week to have everything ready.

You begin by making copies of the Request for Proposal for each member of your team. After spending the part of the morning reading the document, it seems somewhat incomplete and poorly written. The team only has one week to prepare a response. How and what are you going to do?

Request for Proposal Summary Home Town Bank is accepting proposals for the design, development and maintenance of an interactive web site to provide online banking services. The purpose of the proposal is to provide the information and evaluation criteria for candidates wanting to submit proposals. Background of Organization The Home Town bank has been an active player in the state for 30 years. The bank has 50 branches around the state and offers traditional banking services to its customers including checking, savings, credit cards, and securities (Certificates of Deposit, etc.). The bank has been very successful in the state because of its ability to live up to its core value of offering “home town” personalized service to all of its customers at very competitive rates. Proposal Guidelines and Requirements The evaluation of proposals by candidates is an open and competitive process. All proposals are due by January 10, 2007 by 9:00 AM. The quoted price and schedule will be inclusive for the initial design, development and implementation cost of the project. Maintenance cost will be distributed over a five year period. Timeline A detailed of outline of the proposal is due on January 8, 2007 by 9:00 AM. Final drafts of the proposals are due on January 10, 2007 by 9:00 AM. Proposals will be evaluated and vendor selected by January 15, 2007. All other vendors will be notified at that same time. Budget and schedule The submitted budget will include all fees, and cost associated with the design, development, related software, installation and training cost. A separate budget for all maintenance fees and cost for a five year period is to be included. The budget will be broken down into the following line items: Discovery, requirements, and high level design Low level design, and implementationis Installation and training Maintenance cost per year for a five year period The schedule will be broken down into ten deliverables (cases). Checkpoints for the design and the implementation of the ten cases will be scheduled. Purpose, descriptions and objectives Home Town bank now wants to grow its business beyond the traditional state boundaries. A key part of its business strategy is to grow the business by bringing online banking services to its customers. A primary focus of this application is to maintain its core value of quality personalized service. The company plans to double the number of customers within the next five years by capitalizing on the ubiquitous nature of the Internet, offering new services while maintaining the same quality, personalized services that customers are accustom to. Above all, this system must support the goals of the enterprise. This application must: Be available to customers via the Internet Be built upon standard tools and architectures Support the traditional banking services provided by Home Town bank Provide additional value added services to customers Have a pleasant, simple and easy to use interface Be available 99.99% of the time Be fully documented such that the Home Town Bank can easily make changes or enhancements to the system. Format for proposal The proposal will be single spaced and use a 10 point Times Roman font. The title page will be included with the following information: 1) Home Town Bank Online Web Project, 2) Your company’s name, and 4) the date. A cover letter signed by the project leader The proposal itself should include a description of your proposed solution include: List the features of the system Benefits, and the advantages/uniqueness of your solution. A section describing the development methodology and tools to be used Include a budget and schedule as defined in the previous Budget and Schedule section A description of each member of your staff, their assigned roles in the project, and a their relevant training and work experience. Include any other relevant attachments

Case Deliverables

Think – Return and Report

Read the case description above, the Request for Proposal and study the appropriate suggested resources below. Spend some time thinking and talking with your team members about the following items and be prepared to ask questions and share your solutions with the rest of the class.

1. Explain what a Request for Proposal is, tell what is missing and what changes you would make to the Request for Proposal to make it more meaningful and complete.
2. Tell how your company will formally respond to the Request for Proposal and what needs to be included in the response? Be prepared to share some of your thoughts on the
   details of the content of the response.

Design

Draft a detailed outline of the content and format of the response to the Request for the Proposal. There should be enough detail to allow other team members to write up and complete their assigned portions of the document.

Implementation

A formal written response to the Request for Proposal and a presentation to management highlighting the key elements of the proposal. Be prepared to back up all of your decisions with
appropriate rational in the presentation.

Resources that may be useful

• Wikipedia- Request for Proposal
• How to write a request for proposal
• Sample Request for Proposal
• What is online banking?
• Bank of America home page
• US Bank home page
• Open Source Web Testing Tools in Java
• Open Source Version Control
• Free Java IDEs and editors
• Comparison of relational database management systems
• Choosing the best DBMS?
• What is an Application server?
• Choosing an Application Server
• Software Development Processes Overview
• Rational Unified Process
• Agile Software Development Process
• Extreme Programming Process