Reference no: EM132274228 , Length: word count:3500

Section 1: Assessment Plan

To demonstrate competence in this unit, the student must be assessed as satisfactory in each of the following assessment tasks.

Written Questions

Purpose of the assessment

This assessment task is designed to evaluate your following skills and abilities to:

• identify, analyse, evaluate and apply complex online and hard copy documentation containing specific terminology, diagrams and numerical information to identify business requirements.
• use plain English and appropriate questioning strategies, avoiding loaded or leading questions, when developing information gathering documentation.
• use vocabulary, grammatical structures, terminology, diagrams, numerical information, formatting and structure relevant to the job role and organisation to document the analysis.
• articulate research and resource requirements clearly and direct discussions to elicit the views and opinions of others by using effective listening and open questioning techniques.
• use a range of verbal responses and makes comparisons that show an understanding of topics and concepts.
• interpret numerical information and apply mathematical calculations and financial functions to analyse financial information.
• recognise and respond to both explicit and implicit protocols within familiar work contexts and appreciates the importance of identifying and responding to protocols in new situations.
• use a mix of intuitive and formal processes to identify key information and issues, evaluate alternative strategies, anticipate consequences and consider implementation issues.

Assessment task description:

• This is the first unit of assessment task student has to successfully complete to be deemed competent in this unit of competency.
• The Unit Knowledge Test is comprised of five (5) written questions.
• Student must respond to all the question and submit them to the Trainer/Assessor.
• Student must answer all questions to the required level, e.g. provide the number of points, to be deemed satisfactory in this task.
• Trainer/Assessor is required to provide the feedback within two weeks and notify students when results are available.

Instructions for answering written questions:

Question 1: Provide a summary of common information repositories across a business and how you might identify them when trying to determine the requirements for a project. Write your response in 100- 150 words.

Question 2: Provide an overview of the different question types that can be used to try and illicit information from stakeholders and an example of each. Write your response in 150-200 words.

Question 3: Provide an overview of the different information gathering techniques which can be used to gather information for a project. Write your response in 150-200 words.

Question 4: Explain what a project's critical factor requirements are, and a system that can be used to categorise these critical requirements in a project. Write your response in 100-150 words.

Question 5: Provide an overview of the features and capabilities of Windows Server 2016, and the minimum hardware requirements to support this when looking at determining whether it should be used in a new network or network upgrade project or not. Write your response in 100-150 words.

Purpose of the assessment task:

This assessment task is designed to evaluate your following skills and abilities to:
• identify, analyse, evaluate and apply complex online and hard copy documentation containing specific terminology, diagrams and numerical information to identify business requirements.
• use plain English and appropriate questioning strategies, avoiding loaded or leading questions, when developing information gathering documentation.
• use vocabulary, grammatical structures, terminology, diagrams, numerical information, formatting and structure relevant to the job role and organisation to document the analysis.
• articulate research and resource requirements clearly and direct discussions to elicit the views and opinions of others by using effective listening and open questioning techniques.
• use a range of verbal responses and makes comparisons that show an understanding of topics and concepts.
• interpret numerical information and apply mathematical calculations and financial functions to analyse financial information.
• recognise and respond to both explicit and implicit protocols within familiar work contexts and appreciates the importance of identifying and responding to protocols in new situations.
• use a mix of intuitive and formal processes to identify key information and issues, evaluate alternative strategies, anticipate consequences and consider implementation issues.

Scenario:

Design Excellence is a small interior design business provides consultancy and installation services specialising in kitchen and bathroom designs within the greater Sydney region. They provide these services to both individual clients and a number of architectural firms who sub-contract projects for their clients. They have been in operation for 12 years and have worked extensively on a wide range of contracts.
They currently promote their services via their website and social media channels included Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. They also advertise in selected design magazines and on selected radio stations.

Design Excellence works with a large number of other businesses and trade sub-contractors when undertaking installation work. This includes ordering bathroom and kitchen products, as well as installation and fitting of kitchens and bathrooms.

The organisational chart of Design Excellence is attached below

Recently Design Excellence work premises were extensively damaged in a large fire that started in a neighbouring business. As a result of this, the entire contents of the building including its entire network was destroyed, and insurance costs are currently being assessed. While some business data was lost, most of it can be recovered as the business houses backup facilities offsite.

Because of the recent disaster, and the delays in rebuilding the old premises, Design Excellence has found a newly refurbished premise in the surrounding area, and will be moving to these premises in the near future. The premises have already been pre-cabled with Category 6 Ethernet cable. As this is the case, the hardware components just need to be determined and purchased, along with any software requirements to configure and manage the network, and to allow employees to complete their normal work tasks.

You work as the IT Manager for Design Excellence, and have been tasked by Terry Jackson who is the Managing Director, to implement a network in the new premises, so that the business can become operational as soon as possible.

You have pulled some of the organisations data out of the backed up business files. This includes the following list of the old network components that were used prior to the fire:

• A domain server running Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard
• Client desktop computers running Windows 7 Professional
• A router which acted as the gateway/firewall for the network
• Two 24 port switches to direct network communications
• A Network Attached Storage (NAS) that stored the business files
• Two network printers
• A Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS)

The employees previously used the following software applications on the network:
• Microsoft Office 2013 suite
• Microsoft Project 2013 for management of projects
• Reckon One for payroll and financial requirements
• Salesforce CRM software for client management
• Adobe Reader
• Adobe suite for graphic designer requirements
• NetBeans IDE for web developer
• Autodesk AutoCad for interior designers
• Samanage for IT asset management and IT helpdesk support

While the website, the social media accounts, Intranet files, and most of the business internal work files were backed up and can be restored, most of the applications used by the employees and their associated files have been lost. As such, identification of whether this software is still appropriate or whether it can be changed should be an important priority for the project.
A summary of the main business processes includes:
• Designing kitchens and bathrooms for clients
• Purchasing supplies which are used in the kitchen and bathroom designs
• Organising installation of kitchen and bathrooms including sub-contractors
• Normal business operations in relation to sales, marketing, HR, finance, and administration. A portion of the organisations Business Plan is provided below:
Mission: to provide design and installation of quality kitchens and bathrooms that exceed customer expectations.
Vision: to become Australia's best kitchen and bathroom designers.
Objectives: the current objectives are listed as follows:
• To deliver first-class kitchens and bathrooms
• To provide customer service excellence beyond expectations
• To be a sustainable business

Your task for this assessment is to determine the requirements for the new network, so that business operations can be implemented to meet the needs of the business. This should include not only the hardware requirements, but also the software requirements.

Design Excellence has Project Management policies and procedures that outline the organisational standards expected for gathering requirements, planning the project through to implementation and to completion. A portion of the project management work procedure for gathering and analysing requirements is provided below:

Undertaking an interview and analysing the responses

When undertaking a stakeholder interview the facilitator should develop an Interview Agenda using the organisational template. This should be distributed to the invitees prior to the interview time and be used by the facilitator to conduct the interview.

During the interview, the facilitator should take notes of the responses and then analysis these using the Interview Question Analysis Document organisational template.

Undertaking a survey and analysing the responses

When developing a survey, the facilitator should develop it using the Requirements Survey organisational template and then distribute the survey to these stakeholders who will be completing it. Once the survey takers have completed the survey they are to return it to the facilitator who should use the Survey Analysis Document to analyse the survey responses.

Activity 1: (Information sources)

In this activity you need to review the scenario, and then provide answers to the following in a word processor:

1. Provide an overview of the business including its business domain. (100-200 words expected)
2. Provide a summary of the old network including the hardware and software used. (100 - 200 words expected)
3. Identify five key stakeholders (apart from yourself) that should have involvement in this project, and what you believe their degree of involvement in this project will be.
4. Identify five different potential document-based information sources that might be applicable for this project.
5. Identify what quality assurance practice you will use to determine the validity of the information gathered.
6. Describe current industry accepted hardware and software that is applicable to this project including its features and capabilities. (150 -200 words expected)

Activity 2: (Conduct Interview)

Note: This activity is in continuation of the previous activity

In this activity you need to review the scenario, and then develop an interview agenda to determine possible requirements for the project. You need to select two stakeholders that you have identified in the previous activity for the purpose of the interview, one will be the assessor, and the other will be a fellow student.

As per the scenario the purpose of the interview to try and identify the network for the new premises, so that the business can become operational as soon as possible. This can include any requirements for what hardware and software is needed, the budget, and the time scale for the implementation. Based on the two stakeholders identified you will need to identify 6 questions to ask them. For example, if you have identified Terry Jackson is one of the stakeholders you might ask him questions relating to the budget for the project, what human resources you can utilise for the project, and when he would want it implemented by? Or if you identify one of the managers you might ask them questions related to their software needs for their department or individual employees, their backup requirements, or their security requirements for files that need to be protected.

Once the interview agenda has been created you need to present the interview orally, and undertake analysis of the stakeholder responses.

For the purpose of this activity the assessor will play the role of the stakeholders.

1. Develop an interview agenda using a the organisational template below that includes:

• The location, date, and time of the interview
• The stakeholders who need to attend
• An introduction of what the interview is about, and what it will cover
• Six questions that can be used to during the interview to confirm with stakeholders business critical factors relating to current and future directions of the organisations network. You should use a mixture of open and closed questions.
• A closing statement

Note: you need to provide this agenda to the assessor so they can organise an interview time and prepare appropriate answers for the questions.

2. Undertake the interview as per the developed interview agenda orally. You need to:
• Conduct the interview as per the agenda
• Use listening and verbal skills to respond to feedback from the stakeholders.
• Use note taking skills to document the responses for the interview questions.

3. Document and analysis data gathered during the interview using a word processor. You need to:
• Document the response into the organisational template provided below.
• Analysis the responses and provide analysis notes on the response. This analysis should detail whether the response is pertinent to the project or not, and its importance if it is.

Activity 3: (Conduct survey)

Note: This activity is in continuation of the previous activities

For this task you need to develop a survey to identify the network requirements and then analysis the responses to the survey. As with the interview in the previous activity the purpose of the survey is to gather requirements for the network, except in this case you will be using an alternative method to do this. The questions you need to develop need to be designed to gather their feedback so requirements can be determined. Think of questions that relate to their hardware, software, backup, and sustainability needs.

Using a survey allows you to collect different types of information than an interview and to a lot more people. As an example you can use a rating type question where users can rate on the question using a scale from 1 to 5, or 1 to 10. Feedback type questions or even closed questions can also be asked.

1. Develop a survey using the organisational template given below to gather data from the survey takers. You need to:
• Include an area for the stakeholder to put their name and the date
• Include ten questions that contains a mixture of open and closed questions that can be used to confirm with stakeholders business critical factors relating to current and future directions of the organisation network.

2. Once the survey has been created you should submit this to the assessor. The assessor will be collecting surveys from your fellow classmates and organise to distribute your survey to these class mates. You should complete the surveys the assessor distributes to you using the scenario as a guide, and answer with appropriate information answers. It is not important that the answers are 100% accurate, they just need to be used as a sample that analysis can be conducted upon.

3. Once your survey has been completed by your fellow classmates, the assessor will distribute the completed surveys so that you can then analysis the responses and provide analysis notes and calculations on the responses using the organisational template provided below.

• For feedback type questions this analysis should detail whether the response is pertinent to the project or not, and its importance if it is.
• For rating type questions, you should undertake a calculation to determine the result of the responders' responses. This could be to calculate the average of the responders' responses or another calculation based on the question asked.

Attachment:- Assessment.rar