Fundamentals of Business Systems Development
BSA/375
3/14/2012

The success of an organization is mostly dependent on the workforce employed and there is a need for an effective HR system. The use of information technology in HR provides automation of the services. Management can easily obtain data on their employees. The development of HR system requires the collaboration of all the stakeholders to ensure that it will be to the best interest to the management and the employees. This paper expounds on the process of identifying requirements, design methodology, scope and feasibility for the development of HR system.
Human resource management comprises the activities that govern the organization’s workforce to ensure maximum productivity and success. The HR system should be structured into three components: strategic planning, operational management, and administrative management. In developing a system for human resources, the components and their respective functions are considered. The overall functions that are to be included in a human resources information system are: recruitment of new staff, training of new and existing staff, performance management, labor relations, employee relations, job analysis, job design, payment structure, benefits allocation, employee development, and incentives (NMA, 2008).
The role of HR administrative and operational structures is to improve efficiency in handling information for the employees and their activities. Information system can automate HR activities by providing a system to store and compile data in an automated way. The flow of HR information processes is very important to an organization. The system for automating the retrieval and tracking of HR data provides efficiency in the HR operations. Developing an efficient information system makes the process of decision making easier through the generation of reports in an accurate and faster way (NMA, 2008).
Information Gathering Techniques
Analyze the organizational charts. This gives a clear view of how the departments are organized and their functions. Formal reporting relationships can be easily obtained from the charts. Knowing the departmental structure helps in identifying individuals who can be approached for interviewing. It also ensures that no department is left out or overlooked during the information gathering process. Interviews are conducted on one-on-one basis or group based. Interviews provide basic information about the stakeholders’ knowledge, experiences with previous systems and the type of working environment. Workshops with stakeholders to discuss the requirements will be conducted. The stakeholders can be obtained from different departments in an organization so as to cover all the system users. The results of this workshops offer a more realistic view on the systems wide requirements. Brainstorming also can be conducted on individuals or groups bases. The ideas obtained are analyzed to determine if they will be included in the system requirements. Brainstorming provides wide range of ideas from users experience and observations from other systems or previous work environment. A feasibility study on the current system can be used to determine the organizational requirements not currently addressed by the system. Studies can be conducted in many similar systems to have a comprehensive report on the requirements. The analysis of use cases in the system can be conducted. The requirements are obtained by going through all the processes to determine how users interact with them (AXIA, 2012).
Documentations from the current system can be a baseline for the system requirements. User manuals, software details, type of interfaces and other details in the current system’s documentation can be integrated to the new system’s requirements. Questionnaires can be used to collect information from the stakeholders who could be in remote places or those stakeholders who have a minor interaction with the system. Shadowing users as they conduct their duties using the current system can help to provide requirements, especially for those users not able to explain clearly how they interact with the system. Through observation, existing processes of input and output can be clearly analyzed. Prototyping the suggested requirements for the new system give the stakeholders a feel of what the system will comprise. The stakeholders can analyze the prototype and add more requirements that they feel are necessary. The prototype will be modified to include the user’s views and taken back to the stakeholders for analysis. This process repeats until the users are satisfied with the prototype model (AXIA, 2012).
The design methods would depend on various aspects in the system that include: the available information and the required information from the stakeholders, the purpose of the information in the development process, how the system’s output will fit with the organizational records, the components to be included in the system, time allocated for the development, availability of resources, and the organizational culture. Rapid application development would be a suitable design model for this system considering the short-time period provided for its development. Rapid application development involves iterative development in which various structured techniques are used in developing the system. Prototypes will be developed for analysis using RAD methodology. The system may undergo changes in the future or in the process of development making RAD the suitable methodology because its use of automated tools makes it easy to implement changes (Mazen & Kayaly, n.d).
Scope and feasibility study
The factors to be considered in the feasibility study include: the cost, ease of system use, training requirements, security, and privacy of organization’s resources. The budget constraints define the scope of the project as it will determine whether the system will include all or just some of the elements in the requirements. Some of the costs are hard to determine like the costs that may be incurred during deployment and future maintenance on the system. The initial budget should give account for changes that may occur during the development process. Most of HR processes are characterized by changes that may arise from change in employees and their activities. The system should be able to cater to these changes with minimal costs. The ease of use for the system is essential to its acceptance by the users. The system should have familiar features that will make it easy for the users to understand and integrate with the system. Training requirement for the system users should also be considered during the feasibility study. The training takes place at various organizational levels. The system should incorporate features that will not require much training for the users. User support provided by the developers should also be considered in offering cheap training. The use of the system should not compromise on the security and privacy of the organization’s data. The system’s data handling mechanism should be in compliance to the organization’s standards. The choice of the security mechanism to use may influence the development process and the cost of development. The security mechanism should be checked to make sure it does not interfere with the ease of system use (NMA, 2008).
Conclusion
The HR information system should be able to include all the operations in the HR department, automate the data, and the process handling mechanisms. It should have a central point of operation that will integrate various locations. Information gathering provides adequate information about the new system to make it acceptable to all stakeholders. Feasibility study for the new system will provide a forecast of the project costs in accordance to the requirements and the standards to be observed.

References:
AXIA. Requirements Gathering Techniques. http://www.axia-consulting.co.uk/html/requirements_gathering.html Mazen S. and Kayaly D. (n.d). Conceptual Design for a Strategic Human Resources Quality Management System. http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/arado/unpan006257.pdf
NMA. What is HR System? http://www.nmatec.com/hrwise/what Valacich J S, George J F, and Hoffer J A. Essentials of Systems Analysis and Design,
Fourth Edition,