SR-RM-022
Riodan Manufacturing would like to take advantage of a more sophisticated, state of the art, information systems technology for their Human resources database. We shall follow the five phases of the system development life cycle to upgrade the existing system with a new web application that employees can use to access and make changes to their employee records. The five phases are: Investigation, Analysis, Design, Testing, and Maintenance.
Riordan Manufacturing Human resources Information System (HRIS) was installed in 1992. HR is currently responsible for: employee information( personal information, pay rate, personal tax exemptions, hire date, seniority date, department information, and Vacation hours), Training and development records, Resume files, workers compensation records, Employee file’s(currently with employee’s individual manager), Compensation files, and employee relations files. Currently the 7 HR records are scattered amongst the HR department and employee managers, these files need to be consolidated. It is time to upgrade and modernize the system. An integrated system will increase productivity, reduce the need for specialized highly paid positions and improve employee understanding of the HR benefit process. During the Analysis phase of the System development life cycle it is important to meet with the stakeholders, people and groups of people that have interest or concern in the project (“Business Dictionary”, 2013). I will need to meet with people in the following departments: Accounting, Marketing, Legal, HR, operations and IT. Even though it is an HR system, departments like accounting rely on the information gathered from the HR database to write everyone’s paycheck. Departments like Legal will have a better understanding of what each state’s legal restrictions are. The IT Department is broken up as shown: (“Riodan Manufacturing” 2013).

It is important that we get a Joint application development (JAD) meeting with the entire department heads to define the scope of the project. I propose that we start a document on Microsoft share point and have the department heads contribute to the design through the document. I believe a traditional sit down meeting with 6 departments and executives would be too large of a meeting and too many schedules to work around. Through the share point document we can include video, or voice conversations to help improve the understanding of the document. I feel it is important to have the department heads onboard with the project before we contact any supporting staff members about their inputs. Through this meeting we can discuss who will be using the system, what the system will improve, why we need a new system, where the system will be, and how the system can improve our business. It is important that we get every department onboard and understand the system changes and through Microsoft Share point we can view who opened the document and how long so we can see if everyone was able to review the project design.

With this project we will follow the System development life cycle (SDLC) to ensure every point of the system upgrade is met and executed as efficiently as possible. The SDLC is a 5 phase process we are in phase 1 analyzing. In this stage we gather information on what the upgrade entails, who’s going to benefit, why there’s a need for change, where the system will be, how our operations will change, and when the project will be complete. Phase 2 is design once we have gathered all of our information we can begin ordering hardware, developing applications, web applications, building new databases, converting old databases, and expand the network. The next phase is implementation, here we begin rolling out the hardware and software for the departments to use, there may still be some issues that need to be resolved. This begins the 4th phase testing, we begin fixing any issues users and IT members come across. The final phase is the maintenance phase; Just like how Microsoft releases updates, there will need to be changes or patches to databases, programs and applications, so the maintenance phase can be a long process that only ends when a new project to replace the current is started.

Based on the Service Request form SR-RM-022 the HR needs to integrate existing HR tools into a single integrated application. So let’s define what, why, where, who, when, and How. What: we will be combining all of the information in the HRIS system into a single application so the HR staff does not have to search 7 different systems to find the form they need for their day to day duties. Why: we will improve department and companywide productivity. By reducing the number of application retrieving files on the network we will free up bandwidth for other departments, by condensing HR’s current 7 applications to a single application this will reduce navigation time of finding a single form. Where: the application will be rolled out and installed from the server to the HR roaming user account. By having user accounts roaming allows users to pull-up their systems from anywhere in the company. Computers running any OS older than XP will be replaced with brand new windows 7 systems with office 2010, Printers will be assessed and additional hardware will be assessed as the IT department’s collects feedback from each department. Who: every department will be affected by the new system. By consolidating all of the HR Databases we can create a secure web based access to employee’s personal benefits. Employees will be able to log into a website to view information such as: sick time, vacation, pay rate, proof of employment, pay rate past and current pay stubs. When: we have begun the 1st phase in the SDLC, and over the course of the next 2 months we will begin rolling out the new model. How: with every departments input we will design, implement, test and maintain this system.

The current HRIS was installed back in 1992 files are located in various excel spread sheets as well as PDF’s and word documents. So we will need to convert all databases into Microsoft Access Database file (MDB) and establish effective permissions to define which employees have access to what files. The current model HR is responsible for 7 different types of files some of which are located with the employee’s direct manager. We will create an application that will search employee records by employee number, SSN, or Name, the application will have 7 radio buttons to represent each of the categories the files are currently under. Once we have collected and converted it to more appropriate file types such as excel files to Access database files (.MDB) we can use the radio buttons in the application to pull up which database, and the search fields (Name, SSN, employee number) can search fields within those databases for the correct information. On the server we can place permissions on the databases to restrict who has access to the files to reduce a chance of personal information being stolen, or employee’s looking into other’s personal information.