V-Line, the company controlling the Victorian Government's rail network, is in the process of implementing a new computer system. The system will be placed at all the major railway stations in country Victoria and will be used by management and clerical workers at each station.

The systems designer associated with the project sent a memo to each Stationmaster suggesting that those users who felt they should be trained in the system should book into a training course for the system to be held in Melbourne.

Three out of a possible forty-two users signed up.

Why has the systems designer avoided her responsibilities in one of the most important parts of system implementation?

As a V-Line manager what steps would you would have expected the systems designer to take to insure that the right people received adequate training?

What issues does the designer need to consider when designing the training program?

Design an appropriate training program.

1. loans and returns
2. catalogue inquiries
3. acquisition, purchasing and cataloguing

a. The users in an organisation where a new system is to be implemented are old and slow to change their ways. The new system is modularised.

b. An accounts receivable system is to be converted from manual to computer-based operation. Management are not convinced that the systems analyst tested the system properly.

c. A lottery system is to be introduced in a State where no lottery system currently exists.

d. A new bank deposit system which will eventually serve 60 branches.

e. A new Decision Support System which has been thoroughly tested is to replace an old DSS which was practically useless.

Noel’s CarMart, a used car business, decides to implement an information system to keep track of the cars it has for sale, the salespeople employed by the firm and prospects. Prospects are people who enter the car yard and are interested in purchasing a vehicle. Each prospect is assigned to one salesperson who keeps in regular contact with the prospect by phoning them up every two weeks. The yard has 4 salespeople in addition to Noel. Noel currently has the only computer in the yard which runs a basic accounting package that allows the recording of sales and payroll.

After a number of interviews with Noel and the salespeople you come up with the following brief descriptions of the requirements.

Data Storage

The following data needs to be stored:

Prospects

The prospect’s name, phone number and last contact date.

Codes relating to the sort of cars the prospect is interested in (a prospect may be interested in more than one sort of vehicle). The code for a particular vehicle is made up of the first two characters of the vehicle’s make plus the first two characters of the model plus two numbers representing the year of manufacture plus two characters representing the type of vehicle, (eg. a 1976 Valiant Charger has a code VACH76SE, a 1977 Valiant Charger - VACH77SE, a 1986 Subaru 4WD Wagon - SU4W86WA). Assume these codes are unique, that is there will never be two cars of the same make, model, year and type in the car yard at once.

Cars

The vehicles code (see details in Prospects), date of purchase, cost price and sale price.

Salespeople

The salesperson’s code (two characters representing first name and surname eg. John Smith = JS), name and phone extension.

Data maintenance

All data needs to be kept up-to-date

Output

• A printed list of the cars in the car yard in order by date of purchase. For each year there is to be a subtotal of the total cost price of cars manufactured in that year and a total of the cost price of all vehicles in stock.

• A printed list of the cars in the car yard in order by vehicle code and including the name and phone number of prospects interested in each vehicle and the salesperson dealing with each prospect.

• A printed list of prospects’ names and phone numbers and the cars they are interested in

• A screen listing of the prospects interested in the particular type of vehicle entered at the keyboard.

Backup

All stored data must be able to be backed-up and restored.

User expertise

There are a variety of levels of computer literacy among Noel and the salespeople, from basic to competent with a graphical user interface.