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I'm getting ready to start a project in my Software Engineering class and I've been assigned the role of Analyst. I will be contacting the "company" to begin the process. If Im remembering my System Analysis class correctly I need to come up with some good questions to ask the "company" in order to start with the diagrams and flow charts prior to coding. The program will be developed in Java and use Oracle.

Im wanting to try and cover all possible issues with the initial meeting to ease the process of structuring this thing out. This is the entire project. This is all I was given:

CapSim
We have a single-step production process through which all our products must run. Subcomponents arrive to be processed with some variation in interarrival time. The time it takes them in processing also varies.
For each order, a customer provides a best finish time plus a penalty for finishing late and a penalty for finishing early. Given Java.class files to generate order arrivals with their associated properties, we need you to deliver a simulation tool that can calculate our long-term average cost over a large number of simulations under different scheduling policies., e.g. First-Come-First-Served vs. Earliest Due Date First.
We have an operations research consultant that will recommend policies. Your deliverable needs to be able to run and store in a database the detailed results of a large number of repetitions for each combination of conditions and associated cost parameters and policy info. You will also need to report statistics of interest for the simulations. e.g. fraction of late deliveries.
We need a simple GUI that will allow our capacity planners to change the number of machines in your and their properties (speed) to investigate factory improvement proposals that are desperately needed.

I am initiating first contact with their "expert" Saturday Morning. I've got a few basic questions such as "user skillset" and "do you need a passcode" but I wanted some more ideas. If there are any technical questions I should ask project related that you see from reading this that would be a huge help too! What are the questions you would ask during this first meeting?

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Member Avatar for _Absinthe_

CapSim
We have a single-step production process through which all our products must run. Subcomponents arrive to be processed with some variation in inter arrival time. The time it takes them in processing also varies.
For each order, a customer provides a best finish time plus a penalty for finishing late and a penalty for finishing early. Given Java.class files to generate order arrivals with their associated properties, we need you to deliver a simulation tool that can calculate our long-term average cost over a large number of simulations under different scheduling policies., e.g. First-Come-First-Served vs. Earliest Due Date First.
We have an operations research consultant that will recommend policies. Your deliverable needs to be able to run and store in a database the detailed results of a large number of repetitions for each combination of conditions and associated cost parameters and policy info. You will also need to report statistics of interest for the simulations. e.g. fraction of late deliveries.
We need a simple GUI that will allow our capacity planners to change the number of machines in your and their properties (speed) to investigate factory improvement proposals that are desperately needed.

General
1. What is your goal after system implementation?
a. What are the strategic objectives that will be supported by our system?
b. What are the transactions the system will process?
2. What’s the skill set of the users?
a. Will management need different information than standard users?
3. What does the user want the system do?
4. Will the new system interface with legacy systems?
a. What system do you have in place?
5. What version of Oracle do you want used?
a. (If Oracle Enterprise 11g is used option for OLAP )
6. What security issues exist?
7. How many computers will the system be installed on?
a. Do you need a logon code?
b. Do you need network security?
c. What types of systems are being used?
d. What extent are these systems integrated with each other?
e. Are there systems used outside of the organization?
8. What role do you envision you [or your company] partaking of during this process?
9. How periodically do you want updates?

Policies
1. What kind of scheduling policies do you have?
a. How many?
2. Do certain policies have precedence?
3. Do you want the policy info in the database to allow for additional policies in the future?

Product
1. What type of product are you delivering?
2. Does the product vary in size? (Delivery time change with size?)
3. Does your delivery method vary per product?

Inventory
What type of information about the inventory will you be storing?
a. (Ask questions about inventory to determine fields for GUI and tables)
b. (How they want the inventory displayed?)
1. Is there going to be a cap on how much inventory you want to keep in the system?
2. Do you need a search function for the database?
Reports
1. What type of reports do you need generated?

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