Business Requirements Document Miller Inc. Looks Forward Essay

Business Requirements Document

Miller Inc. looks forward to creating a data repository for all data collected that is beyond the current relational database it currently uses. The company has currently outgrown the relational database in Oracle that it currently uses. Though it enables data to be stored in different tables that can be linked together using record keys, the amount of keys and records makes it difficult to operate a standard relational database. The company thus needs to adapt database modeling in designing their data warehouse. This is the project. Data modeling extends the online transaction processing models that are common in relational database into data warehousing. The project goal is to develop an appropriate database schema to be designed alongside other components such as identifying metadata. The IT role is to model the data warehouse, implement and test it.

Scope

Scope of the project

The scope of the project is to identify and gather database requirements, design the dimensional model, develop the system architecture, design the relational database and online transactional processing model, develop the data maintenance application, develop analysis applications to test and deploy the system Hughes, 2008()

Applications

In order to meet the target production date, only these applications will be implemented: loading, indexing and summarizing tables, scanning, joining, sorting, aggregating and fetching data. These are deemed to be most relevant to the system needed by Miller Inc. In handling all its data-intensive tasks.

Sites

These sites are considered part of the implementation: testing, live testing, production and backup sites. The testing site will be used for testing applications that are still in the development phase. After testing in the testing site, the live testing site will be used to test the application on a few records in real time to check how it handles live data. The production site will be most important since it will be the one that is used by consumers. The last site is the backup site that will be used to store data backups.

Process re-engineering

The ETL (extract, transform and load) functions will be used to re-engineer the processes used in the relational database. This involves extracting data from all the disparate sources such as the relational database and XML files, transforming it to conform to the schema of the developed data warehouse through removing duplicates, deriving calculated values, generating keys, validating and cleaning the data and then lastly loading it to the data warehouse Humphries, Hawkins, & Dy, 1999()

Customization

Customizations will be limited to calculated data values. This will be done so to minimize the amount of metadata that the system will have as well as ensuring that the system is scalable to include other forms of data that the organization may want to collect and analyze in the future.

Interfaces

The interfaces included are customer, analysts and administrator interfaces. These will all be accessible through web-based applications and will be built entirely in a custom fashion to ensure the organization's data is secure. The customer interface will allow them to view trend data for their websites while the analysts interface will allow them to access all customer data in an anonymous fashion in order to conduct further analyses. The administrator interface will be used to administer the warehouse and the system in general.

Architecture

Before the data warehouse is implemented in full scale, application and technical architecture will be three-layer architecture that is the source, reconciled and data warehouse layer. These will be repopulated through the ETL process earlier described and ensures that the data warehouse works in the best way possible. However, with time, the single-layer architecture will be used to ensure there is minimal redundancy in the system and thus reduce size of data being stored.

Conversion

All data in the relational database will be considered for conversion to the data warehouse schema through the ETL process.

Testing

Four testing engagements will be incorporated. First is new data warehouse testing where the data warehouse will be testing as it is being build using ETL tools. Second, as the data is being migrated, the data warehouse will be tested. Third is change request testing whereby the data warehouse will be tested to meet the needs of the organization and last is report testing where the end result of the data warehouse is tested to validate its layout, the data and, calculations.

Funding

The project is 100% funded by Miller Inc. And funding supports all aspects of development, implementation and testing of the data warehouse.Training

All members of staff will be trained on the new data warehouse despite their status in the organization. However, different levels of testing will be implemented for different categories of staff. This will ensure that they are aware that the company is using a new data management system and that they understand what the change involves.

Constraints and assumptions

The following constraints have been identified: unique constraints where data in a particular column are not unique and foreign-key constraints where two keys share a primary key-foreign key relationship. The following assumptions have been made in defining the scope, objectives and approach. First is that the data models that underline the services will not support efficient queries that are required to join many concepts together. The second is that the organization will be able to reuse some of the solutions it has such as interfaces. Third is that the data warehouse can be adapted without redesigning or developing new services for consumers.

Risks

One of them major risks that is identified is that the data from the relational database may be too big to be cleaned with ease. Second is that the new technology will not be well understood by all members of staff. A third risk is that the company may have set unrealistic schedules that lead to the project being poorly architected.

Scope control

The scope of the project will be controlled by identifying a representative of the management to manage change control. This individual will also be responsible for any changes that affect the timeline or costs of the project.

Relationship to other systems

The project management team will be responsible for informing the IT department and the organization in general of any other initiative of the business that may have an impact of the project. The only known business initiative is consumer product offering.

Resource

The data warehouse may need to be offshored or outsourced in order to keep running costs low and to reduce or mitigate risk associated with data warehouse management. The organization may also need to increase its staff base in order to have more knowledgeable personnel to manage the data warehouse.

Task

Person in-charge

Time

Planning

Prepare project goals and objectives

Project manager, IT staff

1-week

Review project goals and objectives

Project manager, IT staff

2 days

Review and recap proposals and contracts

Project manager

3 days

Assess opportunities and risks

Project manager

2 days

Identify constraints and other obstacles

Project manager, IT staff

3 days

Identify required nonhuman resources

Project manager

2 days

Review scope of project

Project manager

2 days

Identify the procedure for monitoring and evaluation of the project

Project manager

1 day

Project high-level scope of the project

Project manager

2 days

Assemble core project team

Identify required skills from organization

Project manager

2 days

Identify required skills from other project stakeholders e.g. IBM who are the owners of Oracle

Project manager

3 days

Analyze availability of staff

Project manager, administrator

2 days

Nominate project team members

Project manager

1 day

Review team member's availability

Project manager

1 day

Team members accept responsibility

Project manager, all team members

1 day

Analysis

Analyze and design the project organizational units

Project manager, administrator

2 days

Analyze organizational roles

Project manager

2 days

Analyze stakeholder relationships and roles

Project manager

3 days

Analyze and design network identify policies

Project manager, all team members

2 days

Analyze and design policies and workflows for provisioning

Project manager, administrator

3 days

Analyze and design high level methods for importing data

Project manager

2 days

Analyze software and hardware architecture

Project manager

2 days

Design

Review project goals and objectives with team members

Project manager, all team members

2 days

Develop project plan

Project manager, all team members

Identify resources required

Project manager, all team members

2 days

Review project plan with identified resources

Project manager, all team members

3 days

Design test strategy

Project manager, all team members

1 day

Project communication

Develop communication plan

Project manager, all team members

1 day

Identify and publish project updates

Project manager, all team members

1 day

Publish problems for issue tracking

Project manager, all team members

1 day

Publish scope control instruction

Project manager, all team members

1 day

Publish schedules of the team and team members

Project manager, all team members

1 day

Develop team status reporting rules

Project manager, all team members

1 day

Identify and publish.....