Riordan manufacturing hr system essay

Implementation Plan A successful ERP Implementation Plan involves several steps. These steps include Project Planning, Architectural Design, Data Collection, and Testing (Raj, 2010). In addition, Training is a very important the implementation plan. During the project planning phase, deciding on project goals, project costs, and communication about deadlines and resources.

Within the architectural design phase, decisions on programming languages or vendor selection are made. Data collection is the next phase according to Raj (2010). This phase includes collecting data elements important to the business and putting them into a format that can be loaded into the database. The next phase is the testing phase. The testing phase includes, unit testing on a tester’s machine, system testing in the QA environment, and user acceptance testing. The final phase of the implementation plan is Training.

Training the users on the new system allows the user find ease with the system. Information System Development Method (ISDM)Information System Development Method (ISDM) includes several phases of which the Implementation phase is one. During the Implementation phase, all the necessary tasks are completed to make sure the solution is operational. The systems team will use an extreme programming (XP) methodology approach and develop the ISD project to support the financial department so that all recruiters, managers, training and development managers, payroll clerks, compensation manager, and employee relations manager can access, input, and modify data pertaining to the employees.

The new generation of the HRIS system for Riordan Manufacturing will provide a centralized resume repository, maintain training and development records for new and existing employees, track FMLA/ADA files, and allow employee interaction to update information electronically. Architectural Design Spiral Model According to (Proper, 1994), XP address end-users participation and increase the quality of work by emphasizing the use of professional work practices and ethical software development. Using an incremental spiral model to structure the segments of each programming application phase, in which each of the spiral loops is considered to represent one fundamental development step, thus, the inner most loop is concerned with requirements engineering; the next with analysis; the next with design; the next with development; and finally, implementation. For example, in incremental development, software-program is developed in small usable pieces that can be delivered early on to the departments. Each increment is an operative subset of the final software system and builds on the increments that have already been developed, implemented (Scoffer, 2002). Involving the end users participation improves the quality of the system by providing a more accurate and complete assessment of the user information requirements and by providing business expertise (Ernstmann, Ommen, & Neumann, 2009). In addition, this avoids the development of unacceptable or unimportant features and improves users understanding of the entire system. The best place for the users to be involved in an ISD project is by using a joint application development (JAD) for documentation and can be implemented on the different user roles within the system.

The different user roles of the system can affect different aspects of the business. The vendors and the financial departments can stress how important the involvement of the users is in the development process and design decisions (Shelly, Cashman, & Rosenblatt, 2004). Data Collection According to Raj (2010), data is one of the major driving factors of growth for a company. Collecting this data and verifying is an important phase of any ERP system. The collection of data involves determining the data that is needed in the new system. The software development team must “ massage” the data from the legacy system so that it can be loaded easily into the new system. Once the data is loaded, verification of this data must occur to determine its accuracy and if the correct data was loaded.

Testing Software quality assurance is a very important part of the software development and installation. The main objective of quality assurance is to avoid problems or to detect them as soon as possible” (Shelly, Cashman & Rosenblatt, 2003, p. 410). The best case scenario is to have four instances of the system, a testing environment, a user acceptance environment, a production environment, and a training environment.

The program can be tested on the testing and user acceptance environments. The initial and most important step of the testing phase is creating the test plan. The test plan should include what features and functionality will be tested based on the confirmed requirements. The next step is unit testing or code review. Unit testing involves the QA person testing the code on their machine. Once code has passed the unit test, it will then be released to the testing environment for system testing.

The QA person can then test the integration of the different modules of the code as a program rather than separate parts as well as to find and report bugs and any data inaccuracy. The next phase of testing is the user acceptance test. In this phase the users test the program for functionality and data accuracy. The test phase isn’t a linear phase, more of a circular, back and forth between the developers and the QA people. After all phases have passed, the next step would be to open a change request to release the program into production. Training Shinder (2010), “ you won’t see the bottom line benefits of these upgrades unless the end-users of the software can successfully make the transition. ” Training should be determined at the beginning of the software development process. With training, a few steps must be followed: a training plan, technical skills of the end-users and how the training should be delivered.

In the training plan, setting goals for the training should be established. Getting the users up to speed is one goal, of course but additional goals are set in the training plan. When setting the training plan, the technical skills of the users must be taken in consideration. A person who has some technical skills will not need as much training as those who aren’t comfortable with technology. Another part of the training is plan is to determine how the training will be delivered.

Training could be delivered in a classroom environment or a computer-based. In this case, a classroom environment or a seminar style would work much better than either a book-based or computer-based training. Conclusion The implementation plan has many important steps involved in taking the program from development to production.

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