Master of Information Technology

IT8x10 - Business Process Analysis

Business Process Analysis

Prepared by:

Neha Tiwari

Prepared for:

Dr. Diane Strode

Date Submitted:

May 31, 2023

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Executive Summary

Problem statement

The New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) is a government body that is responsible to
develop the national transport system to promote road safety, managing the state highways,
and providing licenses to all vehicles to the NZ public.
At present, The NZTA is keeping track of all the road quality issues by a manual system
which is not capable enough to track all the road surface quality issues, there are a few errors
in the manual system as well which causes ambiguity in the NZTA database system. It has
become a tedious job for the NZTA for tracking and monitoring all the road-related issues
like potholes, missing manhole covers, and uneven road construction patches on public roads,
thus, the NZTA needs a smartphone mobile application that will help the New Zealand public
to report road quality issues all the by using this mobile application.
The NZTA has given a name to this project NZ Road Surface Quality Project (RSQ).

Proposed solution
The New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) (Waka Kotahi) has hired BAS Inc. for this road
surface quality project. BAS Inc. is responsible for creating a solution for NZTA, to resolve
the present state of the public roads. BAS Inc. has proposed a smartphone application that
makes reporting road issues hassle-free, this application will allow the NZ public to report
potholes, missing manhole covers, steep speed breakers, and chipped road issues.
This Road Surface Quality mobile application will have features like, free download, user-
friendly, integrated with Google Maps, three-dimensional (3D) access view integration, and
multilingual feature (Māori and English),

Table of Contents
Introduction..............................................................................................................................3
Customer Value Proposition.....................................................................................................4
Stakeholder Analysis.................................................................................................................4
Requirements Gathering Method.............................................................................................8
Functional Model.....................................................................................................................9
UML Activity Diagram........................................................................................................9
Business Level Use Case Model.........................................................................................11
Requirements Catalogue.........................................................................................................12
Glossary of Terms....................................................................................................................14
References...............................................................................................................................15

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Introduction

The NZTA is the government organization that is responsible for registering, tracking, and
monitoring all road-related issues in New Zealand. Road issues such as potholes uncovered
constructed patches, and uneven road bumpers. Specifically, potholes play a vital role in
creating a disbalance in the public transport system including NZ public. “Pothole numbers
have significantly increased across the country during winter, compared to the previous three
years, Waka Kotahi Bay of Plenty”. According to one of the local newspapers in New
Zealand “During winter, when water falls on the road, it can pass through cracks and chips in
the road surface to reach the soil underneath, once water is inside the soil, it can freeze,
pushing up the road surface – then when it melts, it leaves a gap between the soil and the
road’s surface, weakening the road”.
To make things poor, every time a vehicle drives over these damaged and fragile parts of the
road’s surface, it gets broken down even more. This creates larger potholes and can displace
parts of the road surface – leading to huge potholes like the one that caused travel chaos
every weekend when the NZ public use public roads to commute from one place to another.

Considering the current situation, the NZTA is using a manual system to track, analyze and
inspect all the road surface quality issues. NZTA assigns many road quality inspectors to
assess and inspect the general condition of the road surface quality. These inspectors are also
responsible for inspecting structural assessments, the NZTA needs to do more to report and
record road quality condition information, and NZTA must be more consistent and implement
appropriate approaches to such inspection activities. If the NZTA is not aware of the potholes,
loose chips and debris, and cracked surface, how does the NZTA take action on such road
quality issues, instead, the NZ public are left to fork out for car maintenance and repair the
road defects themselves.
However, a few smartphone applications are available in the market that is developed by
overseas manufacturers, which are the “Find & Fix mobile application” and “PotholeFixGP
App”.
“The app is the first of its kind to be launched in the Southern Hemisphere, Middle East,
Asia, and Africa regions. Another African first for Joburg,” said Skhumbuzo Macozoma, MD
of JRA. In a nutshell, these applications are still in the development and testing phase, which
will take much more time to reach the NZTA government.

BAS Inc. has taken this project to fulfill this current situation of handling road surface quality
issues in New Zealand. The proposed solution by BAS Inc. will incorporate all the major
features such as NZ public (User) registration, taking photos of the road damage, uploading
the pictures along with the live location, time, and date, and receiving an acknowledgment
receipt.
This application will be called the “RSQ Application”, and this application will be freely
accessible by the NZ public. The RSQ Application would be user friendly and it will be
compatible with all smartphone operating systems, thus, there would be no hassle to use this
application in the time of emergency as well like if the user (the NZ public) is running out of
time and still wants to report any of the road quality issues, this RSQ application would be
easily assessable to open, click and upload features at one go.

BAS Inc. has sufficient technical manpower to develop this mobile application and get it live
in the NZTA system.

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Customer Value Proposition

Customer Value Proposition is the statement that explains how the proposed solution will
solve the problem of all the stakeholders, improve their situation and deliver specific benefits
Paul and Cadle (2020).
Four value proposition questions must be addressed to present a customer value proposition
statement: what do you offer? Who is your audience? What is your value? What makes you
different?

BAS Inc. is capable enough to address all the above-mentioned questions.

Customer Value Proposition statement: BAS Inc. will help the NZTA by offering a free, safe,
secure, user-friendly, compatible with all operating systems and smartphone applications.

Stakeholder Analysis

Stakeholder refers to any person, or group of people, who have an interest in or expect a
result from the proposed project or the delivered solution.
Stakeholders are the people who influence a proposed project either directly or indirectly.
Stakeholder management involves finding out the list of all the stakeholders who are
involved in the project, stakeholders might be partners, customers, suppliers, regulators,
employees, managers, owners, and competitors.
Identifying the stakeholders is the first and foremost task in stakeholder management. Once
stakeholders are identified, then analysis of each stakeholder takes place.

In this Road Surface Quality (RSQ) project following would be stakeholders:

 The NZTA (New Zealand Transport Agency)
 NZ Public (all age groups)
 Road maintenance councils: MoT (Ministry of Transport)
 BAS Inc.

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The table below will depict the stakeholder analysis for the RSQ project in terms of
CATWOE analysis to get a better understanding of customers, actors, transformation process,
worldwide, owner, and environmental constraints for this proposed mobile application.

 The NZTA (New Zealand Transport Agency)

Customers End users for this mobile application:

o Students (14-22 age group)
o Office Workers (23-65 age
group)
o Homemakers / retired people
These are the end users who are affected by
road conditions, which subsequently affect
their commuting routes.
Actors The actors would be:
o MoT
o The NZTA
o BAS Inc.
Transformation Process The transformation process of the NZTA
refers to managing, controlling, and
watching all the road quality projects.
Worldwide The worldwide of this project would be: to
address road quality issues and involve the
NZ public to participate in reporting the
road quality issues.
Owner The NZTA has a group of people who are
responsible for working as a team to work
out the plan and provide the solution to the
problem.
Environmental Constraints This mobile application development
process might have a few internal
environmental constraints such as sufficient
manpower to develop this application and
sufficient finances.

 NZ Public (all age groups)

Customers The end user: students, daily commuters

like drivers, office workers, and road
construction workers.
Actors Actors for this mobile application would be:
MoT (responsible to provide enough
resources and funds), the NZTA
(responsible to involve the NZ public in
reporting issues on road surface quality),
and BAS Inc. (the organization who is
responsible to provide sufficient manpower

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 to design and develop RSQ mobile
application)
Transformation Process The NZ public is responsible to
acknowledge and report any issue related to
the road surface quality via RSQ mobile
application
Worldwide Users/people who are willing to report the
road surface issues and these road issues
should be addressed by the NZTA
Owner Ministry of Transport and the NZTA
Environmental Constraints Timeline, finance, and problems related to
the technical constraints.

The RSQ mobile application, which is owned by the Ministry of Transport and the NZTA
provides an opportunity for the NZ public users to address and report the road surface quality
issues and in return look for a solution in time.

 Road maintenance councils: MoT (Ministry of Transport)

Customers The customers are MoT, the NZTA, and NZ

public
Actors MoT, the NZTA, and road construction and
maintenance councils.
Transformation Process The road surface quality should be
addressed and maintained on time.
Worldwide The road maintenance councils are
responsible for investigating the road
quality issue and repairing them on time.
Owner The owners: MoT and the NZTA
Environmental Constraints Environmental constraints would be time
(days or months) and manpower (people
involved in this project)

Road maintenance councils: MoT (Ministry of Transport) are responsible for making sure this
RSQ mobile application will fulfill the current requirement of addressing and reporting the
road surface qualities on time.

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 A stakeholder power-interest grid for this RSQ mobile application can be depicted as
follows:

 Low Interest and low power/influence: These are the stakeholders who don’t
have any interest in this project. With this RSQ mobile application, users who
own a smartphone or have no interest in participating in reporting road quality
issues fall into this category.
 Some of the high interest and no or very low power/influence: In RSQ mobile
application, the NZ public (active users of the public road/commuters) fall into
this section.
 Low to high interest but some power/influence: In RSQ mobile application,
stakeholders who are supposed to be informed about the live status of the road
quality issues and situations, Ministry of Transportation falls into this
category.
 Low interest but high power/interest: In RSQ mobile application, stakeholders
like the NZTA and MoT fall under this section as the higher authority might

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 not affect by the current road surface quality, however, the NZTA and MoT are
strong enough to give high authority to the road maintenance councils to stop
or execute any road related project.
 Some interest and high Power / Influence: In RSQ mobile application,
stakeholders like the road construction and maintenance councils fall under
this section as they have some interest in road surface quality projects as they
might have multiple roads construction projects all around New Zealand,
however, they have high authorities to stop or finish the project due to external
factors such as lack of finance or manpower.
 High Interest and High Power: In RSQ mobile application, the NZTA falls
under this category as they are responsible to address and solve road-related
issues such as potholes, chipped roads, loose debris, and mud puddles.

Requirements Gathering Method

Requirement gathering method incorporates the sequential stages,

which starts with the requirement elicitation -> requirement analysis -> requirement
validation -> documentation of the requirements -> requirement management.
The requirement-gathering method for RSQ mobile application involves the various
stakeholders, the NZTA, the public of New Zealand, and road construction workers.
To develop the RSQ smartphone mobile application for public use, the stakeholder interviews
method will be used for requirement gathering:

Crucial Stakeholder Interviews:

People of New Zealand (NZ public) will be interviewed to get an overview of the current
state of the road surface quality they are using for commuting for day-to-day activities.
These interviews will take place in groups of people belonging to specific areas and
locations. Conducting thorough interviews with the New Zealand public will help to set the
right expectation, better understand the objective, and will help in determining their core
objective.

A few members of the BAS Inc. technical team will interview the local people of New
Zealand to understand the existing state of the available mobile applications to report road
quality issues and what are the obstacles the NZ public is facing while using those
applications. Also, to elicit the required features the NZ public is looking for in this new RSQ
mobile application.

These interviews would not be too technical in nature as the New Zealand public is not aware
of the technical terms, however, in this era of smartphones and digital applications, the NZ
public is well-versed in the required functions and features (such as registering, logging in,
taking pictures and uploading in the mobile application, adding information like time and
location to the pictures) they are looking to have in this RSQ mobile application.

Road Maintenance Councils Interviews: Since BAS Inc. will have access to the government
authorities involved in the construction and maintenance of public roads, interviewing the
road maintenance councils will help to get insights on what are the features and
functionalities they are looking for in this RSQ mobile application, these interviews will help

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to drill down the requirements for this mobile application in a more efficient and better
manner.

Functional Model

The functional model for this Road Surface Quality mobile application is following:

UML Activity Diagram: This diagram represents the dynamic flow of the activities of the
system, UML is the advanced version of the flow charts which incorporates the flow from
one activity to another one. This diagram also depicts the list of activities that are coordinated
at multiple levels. For RSQ mobile application project it starts from the availability of this
mobile application at the user end where the user can install this application on their
respective mobile phones.
Once this application gets installed, the user (NZ Public) needs to register by entering the
basic details like name, age, and contact details. Since this mobile application would be only
for adults so the user must be more than the age of 18 if the user falls under the age 18
category, a notification will be sent to the user with a notification “Not eligible”, else user
will be able to log in further.
Now the user will be able to report the road surface-related issue along with the mandatory
details like location, time, date, and severity. Users can upload pictures along with these
details. Once the pictures are uploaded and submitted by the user, the NZTA administrator
will check if all the required details are there, if it’s not then a notification will be sent to the
user with the message “incomplete and not useful” else, the report will be accepted and saved
by the administrator of the NZTA. Once the report of the road surface quality is submitted
successfully, the administrator will send an acknowledgment receipt to the user with the
message “Issue has been received and saved”. Figure 1.

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Figure 1: UML Activity diagram for the RSQ mobile application

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Business Level Use Case Model

A use case model is a visual representation of the approvals given by the system or
application. In the Introduction of the new system or application, one of the major challenges
which come up at the initial stage is the ability to drill down the correct, precise, and
necessary system requirements from the stakeholders and ten later specify them in a manner
that is understandable to all the stakeholders so that all the list of the requirements get
verified and validated by them.
Business use case model emphasis specifically on the process of designing and modeling the
system’s features and functions in terms of business activities and events, and how the system
will respond to these events.
The RSQ mobile application has the following business use cases which can be seen in
Figure 2:
There are two major actors in the RSQ mobile application, the road user (the NZ public) and
the NZTA administrator.

Use cases for the road user perspective:

Use Case 1: The age bar for the user must be more than 18 years, to validate this use case
user must enter the name, age, and details as per their identification certificate.
Use Case 2: Road Surface Quality Issue report, the user must enter the time, date, and the
relative severity of the road surface issue along with the correct location, any of the missing
information will reject the report and make it invalid.
Use Case 3: Images, the user must attach the image/pictures of the road surface quality issue
to validate their reports, the 3D (three-dimensional) feature of the RSQ mobile application
will be able to locate and validate the spot more precisely.

Use Cases for the NZTA Administrator:

Use Case 1: Receive the report, the NZTA Administrator is responsible for receiving the road
surface quality reports.
Use Case 2: Check report content, the NZTA administrator is responsible for checking all the
mandatory information for the report. This report must have the time, place, and a small
description of the road damage.
Use Case 3: Acknowledge the report, the NZTA administrator is responsible for
acknowledging the road quality issue by sending the acknowledgment receipt to the user.
Use Case 4: Saving the report in the NZTA database for further tracking and updating the
status of the report.

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Figure 2: The Business Level Use Case Model for the RSQ mobile application

Requirements Catalogue
A requirement is a statement about the functions and qualities a particular system or
application can, should, or must have. A requirement can be categorized as a software
requirement, a user requirement, and a business requirement.
Once the requirements are categorized as mentioned above, requirements must be checked
for the following characteristics:
 Ambiguity
 Incompleteness
 Unstated constraints
 Conflicts

For the RSQ mobile application, the following table depicts the list of requirements:

Category Description
General requirements o The Road surface quality mobile
application must be in Māori (NZ
local language) and English so that
users can understand the features
and functionality of this application.
o This mobile application must adhere
to the safety and security rules and
regulations as per the NZ data
security laws.
o The NZTA administrator must be

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 able to receive, save and
acknowledge the report submitted by
the NZ public.

Technical requirements o This mobile application should be

compatible with all mobile operating
systems like Android and IOS and
should be available on public
platforms.
o This mobile application must link
with the existing NZTA system for
informing the public of road quality
issues that might affect their travel.
o This mobile application should
integrate with Google Maps to
locate the exact location of the road
damage.
o This mobile application shall use the
minimum data and less mobile
battery usage.
o This mobile application must allow
the NZ public (above 18 years) to
report the road surface quality issue
at any time of the day (24*7).
o This mobile application must have a
report status tracking feature.

Functional requirements o As a NZ public users should be able

to activate the mobile camera, click
photos, and upload photos of the
road issues by using this application.
o As an NZ public, the user must be
able to register to register and access
this mobile application.
o As NZTA administrator, the user
must be able to log in and access the
Road Surface Quality issue reports.
o As NZTA administrator, the user
must be able to issue the tickets to
the reported road-related issues.
o As NZTA administrator, the user
shall receive a date, time, location,
photo, and a small description of the
issue.

Non-Functional requirements o As an NZ public, users must be able

to use this mobile application with
ease, this mobile application must be

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 user-friendly with low and minimum
technical features.
o This mobile application must check
the age bar of the user, it must meet
the eligibility of more than 18 years.
o This Mobile application must be
easily available on the mobile
application stores like Android
applications and IOS Applications.

Glossary of Terms

Term Definition
App Store It’s a distribution mall for applications, Big ones owned by Apple,
Google, and Amazon.

GPS Its Global positioning system in mobile phones provides latitude

and longitude data to integrated applications by locating your
locations using satellite.

Google Maps Google Maps is a web service that provides detailed information
about geographical regions and sites worldwide. In addition to
conventional road maps, Google Maps offers aerial and satellite
views of many locations. In some cities, Google Maps offers
street views comprising photographs taken from vehicles.

MoT The Ministry of Transport is the public department of New

Zealand that is responsible to charge with advising the
government on transport policy.

NZTA (New Zealand The New Zealand Transport Agency is a New Zealand Crown
Transport Agency) entity tasked with promoting safe and functional transport by
land, including the responsibility for driver and vehicle licensing,
and administering the New Zealand state highway network.

UML Unified Modeling Language is a standard visual modeling

language intended to be used for modeling business and similar
purposes, analysis, design, and implementation of the software-
based system.

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References

Cadle, J., Paul, D., Hunsley, J., Reed, A., Beckham, D., & Turner, P. (2021). Business
analysis techniques: 123 essential tools for success. BCS Learning & Development
Limited.

Paul, D., & Cadle, J. (2020). Business analysis (4 ed.). BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT.

Davis, K. (2014). Different stakeholder groups and their perceptions of project success.
International Journal of Project Management, 32, 189–201.

Sharma, N. (2017). Overview of intelligent transportation systems deployment and future

development in New Zealand IPENZ Transportation Group Conference, Hamilton
New Zealand, 29 – 31 March 2017

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