Outline for CPTE442 Evaluation Documents

Please use the following outline for your evaluation document. All sections of the outline must be completed. Additional custom sections may be added as needed..

Title page:

• Type of software being evaluated
• Name of organization commissioning the evaluation
• Name of the primary evaluator(s)
• Company logo (optional)
• Date

Executive Summary

• Last section to be written, contains a summary of the rest of the report in 1-2 pages, focusing on conclusions and recommendations

1. Company Background

• Brief description of the company including the products it produces, services it provides, market it serves, etc. The company background section should set the stage for understanding the business problem detailed in the next section..

2. Business Problem

• Business problem to be solved. The business problem must be stated in business terms, not technical or solution terms.
• Description of the current inadequate solution citing it’s inadequacies.

3. Stakeholders

• List of all the stakeholders by both name and position and a description, by stakeholder, of each of their top concerns relative to the solution. An enhanced actor model would be a good diagram to add here.
• Risk identification and classification as perceived by the stakeholders

4. Requirements

• Functional – specific feature set the software must support.
• Non-functional – security, performance, transaction volume, number of concurrent users, platform, ease of use, open source
• Other constraints – vendor market position, political considerations, purchase cost, cost of ownership, technology used to develop the software

5. Evaluation process

• Specific evaluation criteria and weighting of each criteria formatted as a multi-level spreadsheet. See the camera assignment, AHS case study, or text for an example.
• Committees to be formed
• Steps to be followed,
  • RFIs, RFP, phone interviews,....
• Vendor presentations to be scheduled, or evaluation copies to be obtained and tested.
• References to be checked

6. Candidate solutions

• Long list and how it is narrowed
• Short list

7. Evaluation results and recommendations

• Results of following the evaluation process
• Table that shows for each software product evaluated: the weighting for each attribute, the value for each attribute, the weighted value for each attribute, and the sum of the weighted values.
• Recommendations
• Next steps that would be taken if additional evaluation is desired.

8. Deployment and support considerations

• Consultants
• New hardware, networking, etc, needed
• Level and type of support required

9. Training and documentation

• What training will be required? Who will do it?
• What user documentation will need to be written

10. Policies and procedures

• Detail the associated policies and procedures necessary to achieving the business goals

11. Summary

• Brief wrap up to conclude your document

Appendices

• Graphs, additional text, charts, and tables showing detailed comparisons of things referred to in the body of the report