Challenge Overview
The entire system is a tool suite that
- collects data as a answers to questions (grouped into surveys),
- evaluates metrics for respondents based on submitted data/answers,
- categorizes respondents into peer groups based on submitted data or computed metric values,
- computes statistical data and
- generates various reports (in MS Excel and PowerPoint).
The main component is a Visual Basic 6 application that controls the data processing and reporting part. It also provides direct data import from MS Excel files into DB2.
The scope of this project is to re-implement this data processing and reporting (DPR) component using Java based technologies.
Additional customer's main requirements are:
- move the entire processing onto a server (centralized place).
- asynchronous processing (users are allowed to start a process and sign off).
There are new functions to be added to the new system and old functions to be removed.
The attached document is the current version of business requirements (still work in progress). Section “Order of implementation” (on page10) lists all the major functions that new system must support and their priority based on business needs.
For the beginning we’d suggest to focus on the first three major functions:
- Bulk configurations of new reporting outcomes and surveys
- Excel imports of respondents and their associated answers, and computations associated with those imports and APQC ETL imports. This includes deletion by datasource.
- Changes management and data synchronization (replication with Benchmark Wizard and ezSurvey
The package also includes a document that categorizes the entire content based on the degree of computation needed to derive each content category as well as a sample Excel file for one of the data import functions.