Week 6_Petrie’s Electronics Cases Closeout_ESSAY

1.Include an introduction

2. Describe Final System Acceptance Criteria

3. Resources: Were the right personnel assigned to the project?

4. What are some maintenance challenges you see for the CRM system? How can we reduce the cost for the six types of maintenance mentioned in Chapter 10?

5. What preventive maintenance tasks need to be scheduled? What other types of maintenance will be needed? How can we measure the effectiveness of maintenance?

6. Describe the process you recommend for controlling maintenance requests and configuration management.

7. Describe the most important lessons learned. https://penstrokeswriters.com/order/order

Chapter 2:

CASE: PETRIE’S ELECTRONICS

The Sources of Software

Jim Watanabe looked around his new office. He couldn’t believe that he was the assistant director of information technology at Petrie’s Electronics, his favorite consumer electronics retail store. He always bought his new DVDs and video games for his Xbox 360 at Petrie’s. In fact, he had bought his Blu-ray player and his Xbox 360 at Petrie’s, along with his surround sound system and his 40″ flat-screen HD LED TV. And now he worked there too. The employee discount was a nice perk1 of his new job, but he was also glad that his technical and people skills were finally recognized by the people at Petrie’s. He had worked for five years at Broadway Entertainment Company as a senior systems analyst, and it was clear that he was not going to be promoted there. He was really glad he had put his résumé up on Monster.com and that now he had a bigger salary and a great job with more responsibility at Petrie’s.

1 perquisite

Petrie’s Electronics had started as a single electronics store in 1984 in San Diego, California. The store was started by Jacob Rosenste in a strip mall. It was named after Rob Petrie, the TV writer played by Dick Van Dyke in the TV show named after himself. Rosenste in always liked that show. When he had grown the store to a chain of thirteen stores in the Southern California area, it was too much for Rosenstein to handle. He sold out in 1992, for a handsome profit, to the Matsutoya Corporation, a huge Japanese conglomerate that saw the chain of stores as a place to sell its many consumer electronics goods in the U.S.

Matsutoya aggressively expanded the chain to 218 stores nationwide by the time they sold the chain in 2002, for a handsome profit, to Sam and Harry’s, a maker and seller of ice cream. Sam and Harry’s was looking for a way to diversify and invest the considerable cash they had made creating and selling ice cream, with flavors named after actors and actresses, like their best selling Lime Neeson and Jim Carrey-mel. Sam and Harry’s brought in professional management to run the chain, and since they bought it, they added fifteen more stores, including one in Mexico and three in Canada. Even though they originally wanted to move the headquarters to their home state of Delaware, Sam and Harry decided to keep Petrie’s headquartered in San Diego.

The company had made some smart moves and had done well, Jim knew, but he also knew that competition was fierce. Petrie’s competitors included big electronics retail chains like Best Buy. In California, Fry’s was a ferocious competitor. Other major players in the arena included the electronics departments of huge chains like Wal-Mart and Target and online vendors like Amazon.com. Jim knew that part of his job in IT was to help the company grow and prosper and beat the competition—or at least survive.

Just then, as Jim was trying to decide if he needed a bigger TV, Ella Whinston, the chief operations officer at Petrie’s, walked into his office. “How’s it going, Jim? Joe keeping you busy?” Joe was Joe Swanson, Jim’s boss, the director of IT. Joe was away for the week, at a meeting in Pullman, Washington. Jim quickly pulled his feet off his desk.

“Hi, Ella. Oh, yeah, Joe keeps me busy. I’ ve got to get through the entire corporate strategic IT plan before he gets back—he’s going to quiz me—and then there’s the new help-desk training we are going to start next week.”

“I didn’t know we had a strategic IT plan,” Ella teased. “Anyway, what I came in here for is to give you some good news. I have decided to make you the project manager for a project that is crucial to our corporate survival.”

“Me?” Jim said. “But I just got here.”

“Who better than you? You have a different perspective, new ideas. You aren’t chained down by the past and by the Petrie’s way of doing things, like the rest of us. Not that it matters, since you don’t have a choice. Joe and I both agree that you are the best person for the job.”

“So,” Jim asked, “what’s the project about?”

“Well,” Ella began, “the executive team has decided that the number one priority we have right now is to not only survive but to thrive and to prosper, and the way to do that is to develop closer relationships with our customers. The other person on the executive team, who is even more excited about this than me, is John [John Smith, the head of marketing]. We want to attract new customers, like all of our competitors. But also like our competitors, we want to keep our customers for life, kind of like a frequent flier program, but better. Better for us and for our loyal customers. And we want to reward most, the customers who spend the most. We are calling the project ‘No Customer Escapes.’”

“I hope that’s only an internal name,” Jim joked.

“Seriously, I can see how something like this would be good for Petrie’s, and I can see how IT would play an important, no, crucial role in making something like this happen. OK, then, let’s get started

 

Chapter 3:

CASE: PETRIE’S ELECTRONICS

Managing the Information Systems Project

Jim Watanabe, the assistant director of information technology at Petrie’s Electronics, a Southern California–based electronics retail store, walked into his building’s conference room. It was early in the morning for Jim, but the meeting was important for him. Jim was going to put together his team for the customer relationship project he had just been named to manage. It was Jim’s first big project to manage at Petrie’s, and he was excited about getting started.

“Hi Jim,” said Ella Whinston, the chief operations officer. With Ella was a guy Jim did not know. “Jim, this is Bob Petroski. I’ve asked that he be on your project team, to represent me.”

Jim and Bob shook hands. “Nice to meet you, Jim. I’m looking forward to working with you on this project.”

“And Bob knows how important this project is to me,” Ella said, “so I expect him to keep me informed about your progress.” Ella smiled.

Great, Jim thought, more pressure. That’s all I need. Just then, John Smith, the head of marketing walked into the conference room. With him was a young woman Jim recognized, but he wasn’t sure from where.

“Jim,” John said, “Let me introduce you to Sally Fukuyama. She is the assistant director of marketing. She will be representing marketing, and me, on your ‘No Customer Escapes’ project.”

“Hi Jim,” Sally said, “I have a lot of ideas about what we can do. Even though I still have my regular job to worry about, I’m excited about working on this project.”

“Hi Jim,” Sally said, “I have a lot of ideas about what we can do. Even though I still have my regular job to worry about, I’m excited about working on this project.”

“Who else will be on your team?” Ella asked.

“I am bringing Sanjay Agarwal from IT,” Jim said. “He is in charge of systems integration in the IT department and reports to me. In addition to myself and Sanjay and Sally and Bob, we will also have a store manager on the team. I’m trying to get Carmen Sanchez, the manager of the store in Irvine (California). Like the rest of us, she is really busy, but I think we have to have a store manager on the team.”

“Irvine?” Ella asked. “That’s one of our top stores. Carmen should have a lot of insight into the issues related to keeping customers, if she is managing the Irvine store. And you are right, she is going to be very busy.”

“So,” John asked, “When is your first meeting

 

Chapter 4:

CASE: PETRIE’S ELECTRONICS

Systems Planning and Selection

Now that the “No Customer Escapes” project team has been formed and a plan has been developed for distributing project information, Jim began working on the project scope statement, workbook, and baseline project plan. He first drafted the project scope statement and posted it on the project’s intranet (see PE Figure 4-1). Once posted on the intranet, he sent a short e-mail message to all team members requesting feedback. Minutes after sending the e-mail, Jim’s office phone rang.

“Jim, it’s Sally. I just looked over the scope statement and have a few comments.”

“Great,” replied Jim, “it’s just a draft. What do you think?”

“Well, I think that we need to explain more about how the system will work and why we think this new system will more than pay for itself.”

“Those are good suggestions; I am sure many others will also want to know that information. However, the scope statement is a pretty high-level document and doesn’t get into too much detail. Basically, its purpose is to just formally announce the project, providing a very high-level description as well as briefly listing the objectives, key assumptions, and stakeholders. The other documents that I am working on, the workbook and the baseline project plan, are intended to provide more details on specific deliverables, costs, benefits, and so on. So, anyway, that type of more detailed information will be coming next.”

“Oh, OK, that makes sense. I have never been on a project like this, so this is all new to me,” said Sally.

“Don’t worry,” replied Jim, “getting that kind of feedback from you and the rest of the team will be key for us doing a thorough feasibility analysis. I am going to need a lot of your help in identifying possible costs and benefits of the system. When we develop the baseline project plan, we do a very thorough feasibility analysis—we examine financial, technical, operational, schedule, legal and contractual feasibility, as well as potential political issues arising through the development of the system.”

“Wow, we have to do all that? Why can’t we just build the system? I think we all know what we want,” replied Sally.

“That is another great question,” replied Jim. “I used to think exactly the same way, but what I learned in my last job was that there are great benefits to following a fairly formal project management process with a new system. By moving forward with care, we are much more likely to have the right system, on time and on budget.”

“So,” asked Sally, “what is the next step?”

“Well, we need to do the feasibility analyses I just mentioned, which become part of the project’s baseline project plan. Once this is completed, we will have a walkthrough presentation to management to make sure they agree with and understand the scope, risks, and costs associated with making ‘No Customer Escapes’ a reality,” said Jim.

“This is going to be a lot of work, but I am sure I am going to learn a lot,” replied Sally.

 

“So, let me get to work on the feasibility analyses,” said Jim. “I will be sending requests out to all the team members to get their ideas. I should have this email ready within an hour or so.”

“Great, I’ll look for it and respond as soon as I can,” answered Sally.

“Thanks, the faster we get this background work done, the sooner we will be able to move on to what the system will do,” replied Jim.

“Sounds good, talk to you later. Bye,” Sally said.

“Bye Sally, and thanks for your quick feedback,” answered Jim.

Chapter 5:

CASE: PETRIE’S ELECTRONICS

Determining Systems Requirements

Although the customer loyalty project at Petrie’s Electronics had gone slowly at first, the past few weeks had been fast paced and busy, Jim Watanabe, the project manager, thought to himself. He had spent much of his time planning and conducting interviews with key stakeholders inside the company. He had also worked with the marketing group to put together some focus groups made up of loyal customers, to get some ideas about what they would value in a customer loyalty program. Jim had also spent some time studying customer loyalty programs at other big retail chains and those in other industries as well, such as the airlines, known for their extensive customer loyalty programs. As project manager, he had also supervised the efforts of his team members. Together, they had collected a great deal of data. Jim had just finished creating a high-level summary of the information into a table he could send to his team members (PE Table 5-1).

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