University Case Study: Homeless Help Mission Business Analysis

This case study analyzes the Homeless Help Mission, a charity organization assisting homeless individuals in South East England. The assignment begins with a rich picture diagram illustrating the organization's environment, stakeholders (including information system managers, government funders, and volunteers), organizational structure (Executive Committee, Head Office, Local Project Centres, and Volunteers), and the need for a Management Information System (MIS) to streamline data collection and reporting. Conflict areas and individual issues are identified, along with organizational culture and high-level processes, such as the development of a new MIS and the Dig-It project. The study then proceeds to a use case diagram for the Dig-It project, detailing primary and secondary scenarios for registering homeless people and volunteers. The use cases describe the actors, preconditions, flow of activities, and post-conditions for each process, highlighting the steps involved in data entry and registration within the system. The document provides a comprehensive overview of the charity's operations and the proposed IT solutions.

The Homeless Help Mission
Case Study

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
PART A...........................................................................................................................................2
A1................................................................................................................................................2
A2................................................................................................................................................2
PART B............................................................................................................................................7
B1. Use case picture ...................................................................................................................7
B2. Documenting the use case diagram......................................................................................7
B3. Describing and justifying the process followed to arrive at the final documented use case
diagram........................................................................................................................................9
PART C..........................................................................................................................................11
Comparison of two approaches.................................................................................................11
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................13
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................15

INTRODUCTION
The Homeless Help Mission is considered as the charity organisation situated in South
East England. It assists and provides betterment to the homeless people and those at risk of
becoming displaced. Projects involved in it support those who are sleeping rough. The following
report will cover a rich picture for the complete charity organisation's environment. It will also
discuss the requirement's analysis using use case diagram. Apart from this, it will cover the
process that has been followed to arrive at final document. Further, it will demonstrate
involvement of stakeholders, organisational structure, systems that are needed to be built and
high level processes that exist within the organisation. Part B will contain primary scenario for
each use case within the system. Additionally, part C will critique the Use Case and Rich Picture.
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PART A
A1.
Rich Picture Diagram Of Homeless Help Mission Environment
A2.
Stakeholders involved
The Homeless Help organisation is considered as a charity foundation that is primarily
based in the South East of England. Single homeless individuals and people having the risk of
becoming homeless are supported by this organisation with the help of range of funded projects.
It has been determined that the charity started in 1985 as a small group of volunteers.
Stakeholders are people who are considered to be a part of organisational process. Primary
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HEAD OFFICE
Senior Executive group
CEO
Charities don't
know
IT
Reports to
funders
Not enough
finance
Funders
Other
charities
Government
Inspectors
Member
Charity
Local centres
CEO
Database

stakeholders are beneficiaries or targets of the efforts. They are those who stand to gain
something. Secondary are those who care for those people who offer services directly to them.
People who can pass certain laws or regulations such as government officials are considered to
be the key stakeholders (Wright, 2017).
 Information system manager (Stuart McTavish):- His role is to support head office
functions.
 Information Quality Officer (Kylie Marshall):- She gathers data regarding present
projects from the local centres to demonstrate how well it is running.
 Government or project funders: - Provide funds for projects for this charity. They are
being reported that their finances are used successfully.
 Information system Consultant (Dines Patel):- Support charity to analyse and develop
their information needs.
 Chief Executive officer (Lisa Attward):- decision making is her responsibility for every
department in Head Office. It is necessary for her to be very careful while taking
decisions as the charity organisation has to depend on funds by public and their trust.
 Director of Central Administrative Support (Ade Adetayo):- Task of managing
information is performed by him.
 Finance Director (Ken Wong):- Stakeholder is one who is responsible for handling all
finance related proceedings and further, he sends the required amount to each local
project centre. He also collects report which is then received by Executive Committee
and Funders (Spiller and Khan, 2014).
 Centre Manager (Selina Ali)
 Assistant & Centre Manager: - Accountable for the overall operating of project.
 Volunteers: - They are crucial part of any project because The Homeless Help Mission is
a non-profit organisation and needs to cut down their cost as much as possible.
 Lead Worker: - He leads the project and a number of volunteers.
Organisational structure
Organisational structure is such which demonstrates the roles and responsibilities of
workers such as allocation of tasks, flow of information between different managerial levels,
controlling etc. Based on the rich picture, it can be seen that there are 4 different levels of The
Homeless Mission.
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1. Executive Committee: The composition of CEO and some other workers to assist them
with his work are considered as a team of executives. The decisions of the head office are
taken by CEO for transactions that occur daily and he is solely responsible for managing
the entire organisation (So and et.al., 2016).
2. Head Office: This department is managed by executive committee. Instructions by them
need to be obeyed by head office and manage local project centres as they have been
ordered and then need to be submitted to the EC.
3. Local Project Centres: Based on the findings, services through local centres can be
extended by head office in different cities like Manchester, Oxford, etc. There is centre
and assistant manager in each centre who are responsible for reporting to the head office.
4. Volunteers: They are crucial for charity organisation because they are unable to wage for
all workers. Hence, these people interact & supply services to the clients as well as
oversee them.
The systems that need to be built
Based on the observations made through this rich picture and requirements discovered by
each worker as well as processes, it can be seen that the required system that is needed to be
made-up for this organisation is Management Information System. The Homeless Help Mission
Executive Committee has taken a decision which is to introduce MIS to assist and manage the
charity more effectively. They have to overcome various barriers to collect data and find
standardized ways of gathering data regarding each project as well as services that are being
offered. Thus, there will be fewer chances of getting wrong information which may lead to
failure in providing report to EC and funders on time (Snyder and et.al., 2016).
Conflict areas identified
Based on the findings, area of conflict that arises are identified when something happens
which are discussed with different thoughts and ideas by more than 2 persons. The above rich
picture drawn is full of conflicts which are discussed by various levels of organisation. CEO is
basically obsessed with whether the charity has earned public belongings and raises its honour or
image. Further, the EC is not satisfied with the work of officer of data quality because he doesn't
send report to EC on time. Moreover, he is frustrated in getting information with different
formats provided by local centres as the data is inconsistent. Another conflict seen is that the
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finance director is disturbed about not having enough money as he needs to send required
financial amount to local centres on time.
Issues that individual people discuss
It is known by the CEO that there is not enough usage of resources in some projects and
she is disturbed about it because it might affect organisational image. Further, she also wants to
know that whether the decisions taken by her are effective or not.
I can be further seen that the lead workers are always tensed about whether the funds or
resources left available to them are enough or not. Some homeless people find it difficult to
interact by volunteers which makes it hard for them to provide services and arrangements.
Issues discussed by the funders are that they want to know in which area their funds are
being used. Another concern for them is that they want to know how people living in the
homeless charity organisation are being treated (Smelson, Zaykowski and Kane, 2016). They are
always anxious to receive right reports from the Head office & EC.
Organisational culture
It refers to the demonstration of social values and mental background of an organisation.
It consists of experiences, internal workings, interaction with clients, etc. based on the rich
picture, cultures and sub cultures recognised which are like:
The Head Office and its managers are managed by EC and he instructs them regarding
how to operate all projects. It has been determined that all the employees are hardworking and
dedicated towards their work. Moreover, the homeless people are monitored by volunteers which
provide services to them. They are being taught with life skills and to find employment for
themselves. Executive committee receives finance from funders and if more is required, EC
communicates with them. Further, a report is presented to funders on how the funds are used
effectively.
High level processes that exist within the organisation
It has been determined that there are many processes which are needed to be carried out
by an organisation daily. There are mainly two high level processes from the rich picture out of
many. It can be seen that without these processes, organisational working can be affected. They
are being classified as development of a new MIS and using Dig-It project as a pilot system.
Currently, local centres can't provide correct information to the head office because there is no
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standardized way available to them to record data and give reports to the funders on regular
basis. They also find it hard to evaluate the projects with KPI and those which are presently
running along with the way they are being run. So, a new MIS as a high level process have been
chosen because the EC and Head office face problems in managing the entire organisation
(Smelson, Chinman and Glickman, 2015).
Further, it can be demonstrated that IT project is considered as an ideal one among all
other projects in the charity organisation. Moreover, the UK’s prime minister also had a visit to
see the way how workers and volunteers are operating and were found very impressive. Due to
the project's success, financiers want to offer more financial support to grow. This is the reason,
it was chosen as the 2nd high level process.
Sources of scrutiny within the environment
There are many sources of examination available with the environment such as checking
progress of each local centre on daily basis, maintaining the security of information, having the
correct data and sending right reports to the financiers.
If the development of local centres is not checked by head office regularly, then they
won't be able to provide right instructions and support as well as unable to know centres run
which project in what way. Security of data is not considered a big issue as it is considered as a
non-profit organisation but the information is misused and can affect its reputation. Therefore, it
is necessary to access data to the right person. It is the responsibility of an organisation to make
sure that the financiers get right reports as finance comes from them on which it has to stand
(UML Use Case Diagram Tutorial, 2018).
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PART B
B1. Use case picture
Use Case Diagram for Dig-It Project
B2. Documenting the use case diagram
A primary scenario for each use case within the system
Primary scenario
Use Case Name: Homeless people (clients)
Actor: Ade Adetayo (administrative assistant)
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Homeless
People
Volunteers
Ask for
DRB
Create volunteer
Rota
Add daily project
activities
Report project's
progress
Ade
Adetayo
Head
Office
Tim
Tidy
Centre
Manager

Pre-Condition: Responsibility of Ade Adetayo is that he should be permitted and login into the
system.
Flow of activities:
The diagram of Use case starts when administrative assistant selects homeless people's
registration forms.
 The names of clients are entered by assistant to see whether it already exists or not.
 He enters their personal information if doesn't exist (Rogers, 2017). Then, the information is saved by him.
Post condition: Homeless people's personal information will be saved in the system.
Use Case Name: Volunteers
Actor: Ade Adetayo (administrative assistant)
Pre-condition: He must be authorised & login into the system
Flow of events:
Use case starts when volunteer registration form are being selected by Administrative assistant.
 He moves in their private information including his or her present time.
 Then DRB from certificate is being added by administrative assistant adds.
 Ade Adetayo produces terms and conditions of Homeless Help Mission where volunteer
has to sign and then it is saved in JPEG format. Lastly, the complete information is submitted by him.
Post condition: Information of all volunteers will be saved in the system.
Secondary Scenario
1. If there are same volunteer’s names are available, then the system will give a warning
sign with a message box.
2. If the certificate of DRB is found invalid or false, then registration will be offset.
3. If volunteers disagree to sign the provided terms and conditions then registration will get
failed.
Primary scenario
Use case name: Create Register
Actor: Tim Tidy (lead worker)
Pre-condition: login into the system must be done by Lead workers and all volunteers as
well as homeless people’s data has already been entered in systems.
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Flow of events:
Use case starts when Tim Tidy creates rota (schedule) information
 Project ID and name are being created by him.
 He enters activity, date and time for activity (May, 2016).
 Sees to the list of clients and add to the activity
 Volunteer's profile is being checked by him to know their available time in order to
monitor clients and add them to the activity. Confirms the above mentioned data
Post condition: Register for volunteers will be created
Secondary scenario
 If a wrong information is entered by lead worker, then the system will be unable to
recognise and warn to enter right activity. The system will show a message if there are no profiles of volunteers is found and won't
be able to display available time of them (Bender, Begun and Dechants, 2018).
Primary scenario
Use case Name: Report Project's progress
Actor: Centre manager
Pre-conditions: The right data regarding projects has already been saved.
Flow of events:
Use case starts when centre manager selects report type.
 Chooses month for the particular study that is needed to be made. Finds for important data of projects by inserting ID & name (Katz, 2017).
Post condition: Reports will be printed out or sent
Secondary scenario
 If a wrong month is selected by Centre manager, the system will search and present
different month's project information.
B3. Describing and justifying the process followed to arrive at the final documented use case
diagram
Reason behind why actors chosen are key to the system
Based on the observations of the diagram made above i.e. a Use Case diagram of
Homeless Help mission, five key processes are found. It has been determined that the Dig-It
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project is nothing without volunteers and clients. Hence, the information is considered to be
crucial for both volunteers and homeless people for Dig-It. Further, this content can also be
useful to evaluate KPI. However, the project consists of more than 1 administrative assistants to
operate it. Therefore, processes of both clients and volunteers are performed by them as they can
transfer these effectively with the system for the organisation. The lead worker, Tim Tidy was
headed as a primary actor in the given use case diagram. The reason for choosing him as primary
is that he needs to make register for volunteers. The centre manager of this project is solely
responsible for Dig-It project. The information is arranged by her which is gathered & then
added by Tim Tidy in system every month and then report is being sent to the head office (Jung
and Valero, 2016).
Choosing one primary scenario and key activities to include in it
There are about 6 use cases in the diagram given above of Homeless Help Mission. In
order to finish this scenario, three key activities out of 6 chosen are:
 Inquiring for the profiles of volunteers in order to know their accessible time
 inserting data and time activities
 Entering name of the location to pick up client group identified
The above activities are being chosen because the remaining four scenarios and activities
rely on them because Dig-It project will be unable to run without a volunteer registration.
The way secondary scenarios are being identified
Every system has its different errors and so, no perfect method can be made. In order to
report the primary scenario for making volunteer schedule, some secondary ways were thought
carefully normally which may occur because of the error situations. Secondary scenarios are
being identified on the basis of primary ones. For example: if Tim Tidy enters wrong
information, alternative will arise. The system only knows two activities i.e. Dig-It for elderly
and for purposes. Hence, when there is wrong inserting of an activity, system doesn't know and
unable to find the right available time (Hurlbut and Ditmyer, 2016).
In real life, questions that would have been asked to get the necessary information and the person
to these have been asked
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