Objectives:

To examine specific processes and procedures used by the Systems group and / or other operations groups.  Measurements and evaluations of these designated processes will be used to determine items that could be revised or upgraded to increase efficiencies or enhance operational support systems.

Scope:

Processes from the following areas will be scrutinized

Network’s – Response times, reliability, email services and telcom issues.

Transaction Activities – Daily customer activity, report activities, and customer statement issues.

Help Desk – Current system configuration and levels of service activity.  Ascertain types of issues commonly dealt with and review any available materials for Systems group responsiveness.

Department roles:

The acquisition of baseline measurements can be accomplished by staff members with good general knowledge of IS / IT systems and operations.  Specifics of individual processes will be gathered from knowledgeable personnel in each area or department.   Investigation efforts will be coordinated with identified department leads or supervisory staff.

Project Definition:

Major Milestones and task areas:

1) Identify operations areas and issues of note.

2) Prepare list of processes to research and / or in which to quantify transaction parameters.

3) Submit weekly progress reports.

4) Finalize narrative report of findings, attaching any processed, supportive data acquired.

Benefits, schedule and costs:

1) A general increase in operational efficiency should be realized. 

2) An objective investigation of network issues could disclose problem areas and point to changes to increase efficiency.

3) An evaluation of the Systems department trouble/issue response efforts may identify areas to improve response times and address issues and problems in an efficient manner.

4) An assessment of Systems personnel and the operational processes tended should lead to recommendations for steps to improve accountability, optimize resources, and improve communications with other departments.

Initial issues:

1) Network’s – Branch and support response times for transactions are not quantified.  Measurements of current network responses are needed for comparison following system changes or possibly to point to present problem areas; email delivery times for example.

2) Help Desk – Records and statistics of call types and frequencies are not available.  The lack of information on types and numbers of calls makes staffing level requirements and problem area identification difficult.

3) Backoffice – processes, reports, data transfer activities, and data storage details are needed to evaluate for efficiency and compliance with standard business practice and regulatory standards.

Priority

No information available on priority of project. 

Scope with Desired Outcome and Benefits

A list of specific transaction or process questions was developed from discussions of issues in the Site Audit Report.  The project is complete when a final narrative report addressing the investigation of those specific issues is completed to the satisfaction of the project manager.

Date Needed By

No timeline information available.  The results of some investigations may be required to make decisions on staffing, hardware / software purchases, and the setup of projects to address individual areas found to be of concern.

Budget

40 hrs. Project Management time

200 hrs. Technician time

High Level Steps 

Networks:

            Response measurement:

                        Develop testing outline

                        Develop data record system

                        Acquire and record data

                        Organize data

                        Present findings in required report format

Miscellaneous network issues:

Gather anecdotal information from users and other sources 

Gather anecdotal information from users and other sources

                Present findings in required report format

Processes:

            Back office processes:

                        Gather report summaries from operators

                        Organize findings

Present findings in required report format

            Transaction activity levels:

Contact various department staff to obtain summary transaction history figures for recent past

Helpdesk:

            Help request types/volume:

                        Gather anecdotal information

                        Research Help Request database records

                      Organize findings

                       Present findings in required report format

Project Levels

Primary:

Secondary:

Team:

Active Members – Team to consist of 1-2 staff members to gather information and data from each area of study.  The same team is to be responsible to organize findings and generate the first level report.

Consulting resources – Consists of members of various departments involved in the areas of study.  These are generally supervisory or lead personnel with thorough knowledge of process in question as well as records or statistics surrounding the process.  Participation of any one of these resources is expected to be minimal as the studies involve a wide range of processes in several departments.

Flow of Information

Tools of the Office

MS Excel, Access, and Word will be used to store and organize data and generate reports.

Meetings

No formal meetings are required.  The consultants in the project are far flung and their participation is usually separate from that of other Departments.

Expectations

Project Team Member/s are expected to contact the consulting members of the project and coordinate the information gathering aspects.  They are responsible to produce plans to finish specific parts of the data gathering effort.

The consulting members of the project are expected to participate in reasonable and appropriate efforts to facilitate the gathering of required data.

Service Levels

Definitions

Project Timelines