System Specification Document for Warehouse Management System

In business computing, we understand that we need to capture and translate the business requirements into technical specifications in assist and understand what and how the proposed system is going to be designed.  Due to different solution for the different industries, the contents in a system specification document will vary but it should capture all the required information for the solution design.

For our warehouse management system we identify the following information to be captured into the system specification document:

1. System Architecture - A description of the network and hardware design for the solution.
2. System Design – A description of the system flow and integration with internal and external systems that includes communication protocols, formats and frequency.
3. System Process Flows – A collection of all the system process flows showing all the key points of system interaction and integration with internal and external systems.
4. Data Dictionary – Shows all the tables, primary and foreign key constraints, fields’ values, stored procedures and triggers that provides its propose and usage.
5. Message Mapping – A description of the mapping requirements between the message and the system.
6. Message Management – A description of the message execution and error handling within the system, includes staging tables, validation rules and error handling.
7. Screen Design and Execution – a description of the screen layout, field validation, database mapping/computation formula for each field and action upon clicking.
8. RF (Radio Frequency) Design Flow – a description of the RF flow and explanation of the logic including exception handling on each RF screen.
9. Reports – a description of all the reports required (operational and planning).  The details should include descriptions of all online reports, purpose/usage, intended audience, parameters and corresponding validations on screen, data extration source and logic, report format/layout and report export requirements.

Effective Meetings with Stakeholders

Most project meetings are always over-do or not following according to the agenda or the topics are out of sync from what the presenter is really trying to bring out.

We need to acquire the effective ways to bring out the points to the stakeholders to deliver and close with the maximum impacts that are to bring to the stakeholders.  Herewith are my personal tips on how to prepare for effective meetings.

1. Keep the meeting on time
2. Keep it short and sharp
3. Involve your audiences
4. Open the meeting effectively to stimulate interest
5. Communicate persuasively and effectively
6. Involve your stakeholders in discussions

When preparing the presentation materials:

• Understand your objectives for the meeting
• Understand your audience’s needs and their expectations
• Highlight key issues for discussion
• Use visual aids appropriately

Missing Data via Web Service Request

In all testing, one of the important test scope that need to be implemented in any web interface is data loading testing.  In this type of testing, mass records from a single message interface are generated to stimulate any possibility of encountering data loss and the immediate solution to rectify the problem.

Currently my project is going through SIT (system integration testing) and we recently experienced multiple records “missing” from the web service request.  We validated the total records of this message interface “A” with the Customer and gone through a couple of rounds on that testing with the same set of data and this incident still happened and the defect pattern is different (initial = 765 missing, 1st retry = 349, 2nd retry = 428).

Further analysis, we tracked our error log and realized for those missing records that we attempted to download, they flagged an error status with reason code “Timeout Error”.  The connection to the client’s web service gateway is via HTTPS and every time our program triggers to establish the connection we are to provide valid user information as provided by the Customer that will authorize us to have the access and setup the connection with the gateway.

We tackle the issue on “Timeout Error” and we includes the below codes to extend the receiving timeout:

HTTPConduit http = (HTTPConduit) client.getConduit();
HTTPClientPolicy httpClientPolicy = new HTTPClientPolicy();
httpClientPolicy.setConnectionTimeout(36000);
httpClientPolicy.setAllowChunking(false);
httpClientPolicy.setReceiveTimeout(120000);
http.setClient(httpClientPolicy);

With the above, we retry and able to grab all the records from the web service gateway.   This is not a permanent solution to the “timeout error” and the team will monitor this scenario as we go along with the project.

Scopes for Freight Implementation

We had got the business for ODM Shanghai Freight.  The implementation that we need to work on is to receive the shuttle manifest from the Customer’s AS2 gateway and also to send back EDI214 back to the gateway as well.

The scopes involves data-mappings, application interfaces at both origin and destinations for the shipment receiving and infrastructure setup at the origin/destination facilities to cater this new business.

From IT perspective,  we need to do the following scopes:

1. SCAC – Standard Carrier Alpha Codes – to use for EDI214
2. Track and Track Status Code and Reason Code
3. RF Scanning
4. Application to track shipment’ status and invoicing details.

Feasibility Study – Suppliers’ ASN Reconcilation

When we perform VMI (Vendor Managed Inventory) receiving at our warehouse and perform receiving of the shipments based on the shipment documents, the electronic feeds from the suppliers do not include ASN (Advance Shipment Notice) information.  We need to perform the suppliers and ASNs’ reconciliation from our customer’s planning and forecast application, and triggers the receipt feeds back to this application as well.

To-Be Process

In this case when the valid supplier/vendor does not have ASN we are to manually create an ASN and send the Receipt feed to the Planning and Forecasting system.  If the reference numbers in the receipt feed will not match that application’s ASN number, the application is able to determine that the receipt has been manually created.

Work flows:

1. User logins to the Planning and Forecasting application
2. Search for the expecting ASN
3. Down load an ASN as tab delimited flag format and save it on local PC
4. Generate an ASN into WMS (warehouse management system) and receive the shipment after physical inspection.
5. After receiving, extract Receipt feed in WMS with ASN Numbers
6. Upload the feed into the Planning and Forecasting ftp Server.

Conflict Management, to Negotiate and Resolve Them

Working as a Program manager, not only do we need to acquire the skills and knowledgeof managing projects, strategy alignments and understanding of financial analysis/reports, we must acquire the ability to negotiate and salve kind of difficult situations to maintain a win-win settlement between ourselves and the parties involved.

The relationship with the Customer is long-term and along the path problems may boil to surface from time to time.  There are ways to manage them and herewith are the negotiation styles tha can be used:

1. Problem Solving – engaging both parties to try to find solutions that work best for each other.
2. Compromise – a situation where both parties give in more or less regardless on how that will meet their needs.
3. Agression – only one party forces concession from the other side.

When the negotiations gets aggressive, and involves threats and demands this will affect the relationship with the Customer.   As such, we need to resolve the conflicts.  The ways we can do to cool down the conflicts when facing the aggressiveness are:

• Calm ourselves down.
• Show them our willingness to work things out by talking about the issue rather then escalating it with more agressions.
• State our point of view in a neutral tone than in an argumentive tone.
• Try ways to resolve the dispute, and working together to find the solution that both sides can embrace/accept.

The above are strategized for win-win solutins for both parties.  It is not that simple to execute the above as it requires oneself to build the competence of self-awareness, self-confidence, self-control and empathy.

Agile Method for WMS solutioning – Dynamics System Development Method

With only the fixed time frame to achieve the required scopes for the project, we have to adapt a software development methodology, probably apply one of the “Agile Methods” to focus to deliver the WMS solution quickly and efficiently.  The one I am looking to adapt is DSDM (Dynamic System Development Method).

Why will I choose DSDM as my project’s software development methods?  A few points have been considered to adapt this method to the team:

1. The solution has to delivered on time and on budget.
2. The core functions (as based on the business requirements)have to be delivered quickly and the future features will be delivered in a regular/iterative intervals.

The activities to be planned to work towards the delivery of the solution, we have to decide and work out the plan on:

• High-level business requirements are defined before going into the details during the course of the development
• What functions we can consider for iterative releases based on user feedbacks.
• Decision-makings have to be made rapidly through the team members instead of going through any management processes/red-tapes to get approved.
• We have to consider to meet the business needs rather on the technical perfection or good product quality.
• Collaboration and cooperation with internal users and Customers must be actively involved to ensure the success of the project.

Implementation Design for a Regional WMS Solution

We were discussing with our solution team about the implemenation design for the regional WMS (warehouse management system) .  With the tight timeline to achieve and without any confirmed system design to work on, the Management agreed to go forward with a localised platform (stand-alone, single instance) and using this solution to deploy to other sites that may needs double-bytes/UTF-8 encoding.

We have reviewed the possibility to move forward to a centralised solution,  and to host in a site centrally accessible by the countries.  The contraints we have identified what we need to do to see if it is feasible to do centralised solution.

Points taken for considering a Centralized Solution:

• The cost of purchasing the WMS application’s software license
• The support structure, change management and SLA (service level agreement.
• Multi-language support example to support UTF-8 encoding/double bytes characters.
• Interfacing with local systems (country-specific)
• Network performance
• Inclusion of data manipulation from the web service
• Centralised Hosting of the application server, database server, web server and possible RF (radio frequency) application at one site.

Implement Extreme Programming for Warehouse Management System

Before we kick-off this intensive 3 months’ development to come up with a full WMS (warehouse management system), we need to set up ground rules and expectations from each project team member so that we are on track and cannot afford any delay in communications.

Extreme Programming’s Principles:

• Set weekly milestones on what are the modules/stages of the application is to be completed.
• Every project team member must communicate and work together daily throughout the project.
• The measure of project progress is to work towards a working software.
• A face-to-face or phone conversation is to be established as to maintain the best effective method on conveying information among team members.
• Keep things simple as to maximize the amount of work done.
• Provides support and the environment they need and trust them to get things done.
• Continuous attention towards good software and technical design.

Fast-tracking the development work with additional resources

Full-fletch solution to be completed in 3 months.  Unrealistic but this is what we promised to deliver for the Customer to save the business.  We have analysed and it is not possible to do iterative development as this is a new, full-fetched system and it has to be delivered as a complete package.

Lots of the activities  are to do in parallel with the development work, possibly the test cases, test data, training etc.  I am worried with the one month’s testing (both SIT and UAT) to be done in the whole month of December.  Project team members have to work overtime and not sure how much resources we need to cover some of the project activities.

The difficult portion of the development is how to spilt the modules to the assigned 6 resources to do the development work and importantly to define the roles and responsiblities for each of the project team member assigned so that we can quickly resolve any disputes on the resources’ skillsets and expectations.

Next I have to review the project cost for the additional inshore and offsource resources, not to mention the travel cost as well for the lodgings and any allowances that the resources may need to claim when they are to reside in Australia for 2 to 3 months period for the project.

The biggest risk of all is that we do not have enough time to do comprehensive testings of all the modules and we are at the big risk that we may experience unforseen system issues when we cutover the new system in early January 2010.  Everyone wants to rush and get the system out on time but we need to do testing to ensure we are able to deliver quality solution to the Customer.  If we do not do well, this will bring more dissatisfaction for the Customer but the Management is aware and we all have agreed that this is the risk we need to take.  But they do not understand the pressure and stress this have put outfront to my project team members and this is very unhealthy.

Counting down, 4 months to complete all planned project activities and this is another project failure I am working towards to.