Case Study : H.P. Norton Furniture Rentals LLC¶
Background¶
15 years ago, Howard Norton formed his furniture rental business in a small rural town in the Western United States. Howard operates an efficient, family run company that focuses on customer service and individual customer attention.
Always profitable, the business has continued to grow, but is now starting to have a few issues handling increased work volume.
The town (and surrounding area) where Howard operates has seen explosive growth. This came about due to the establishment of many technology companies. These companies take advantage of the affordable local power, excellent living conditions for staff and large supply of labor. Lots of younger people are moving to the area and residing in apartments, making an ideal market for furniture rental.
Howard has now realized that his business could be at risk if he is not able cope with a significant upturn in demand for rented furniture. Therefore, after discussing his concerns with his accountants, Howard has hired a software development firm on a contract basis. Their development team will help Howard to build the back end IT infrastructure to help his business grow, while retaining its core value of providing personalized customer service. Note that the front end web functionality is beyond the scope of this course. All functionality will be run from the command line or from tests.
Current Situation¶
What follows is a summary of the way that the furniture rental business currently works.
Sales¶
Customers and prospective customers browse products in the store.
Customers, with help from sales staff, fill out a “Rental Requisition Form”, which specifies the products they have selected, delivery address, and credit details.
It is a 4 part NCR form.
Part 1 of the form is retained at the service desk.
Parts 2 and 3 are sent to the delivery department.
Part 4 is given to the customer.
Delivery department¶
Receives Rental Requisition Forms around every hour from the service desk
The delivery staff go to the showroom and mark the items listed on the Rental Requisition Forms as reserved (by attaching a slip with the relevant order number to the item). They add the items on the Rental Requisition Form to the delivery schedule for the date specified by the customer.
Prior to showroom opening on the delivery date, the delivery staff move the items from the showroom to the loading dock.
The items are loaded on the truck and delivered, with copy 3 of the Rental Requisition Form.
On delivery, copy 3 is signed by the customer to confirm delivery.
On return to the office, copy 3 is returned to the service desk. If the rental is for a fixed contract period, copy 3 is added to the file for the respective return date.
Your Role¶
You are one of developers on a team that has been commissioned to work on the project for H.P. Norton Furniture Rentals. This development team is lead by a Product Owner, who interacts directly with H.P. Norton to understand their requirements and assigns the different activities, or stories, required by the project to the members of the team, including you.
As you progress through the course, you will be working on several stories given to you by your Product Owner in the form of assignments, all related to the overall goal of bringing the project to a successful completion. Each assignment will have a number of requirements that need to be fulfilled for the Product Owner to consider the story completed.