CIS 8020 Assignment 2 FF Google Chart API - Mega Hot Pot Financial Group

The Scenario Mega Hot Pot Financial Group is a start-up insurance company in the South East. Recently it announced its purchase of 5 financial applications to manage its retail annuity business which is worth thousands of dollars. Risk Management manager, Susan builds a group of 3 Risk Assessment Analysts (RCA) working on controls established for these financial applications. They are required to follow Susan's work process perform their control testing. Susan arranges a Friday meeting for the new group and also invites her boss to the meeting.

This Friday morning Susan found that her chart couldn't be opened 10 minutes before the meeting. Luckily her assistant Mary happened to know how to create a chart from scratch by using Google Chart API. According to Susan's requirements, this chart will mark the work process for the team. It will mark the start process, the end process and each step with the percentage. It will visualize the process, standardize the process and help the team management manage their time and resources under each control test. Additionally, this chart will be easily generated, shared by everyone, and easily updated by each team member if there is some variance on the percentage phase by phase.

A Potential Solution Google provides a useful Chart API (Application Programming Interface) which can be accessed to quickly and easily produce highly customizable charts. The Google Chart API lets users generate line, bar, pie charts within a web page. The user can specify parameters such as color, size and titles. Mary created this chart by defining its type, its parameters for data and labels, its size, its title and its color in Google .

The Prototype Here is the chart prototype:

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=p3&chd=t:5,5,15,5,20,25,15,5,5&chs=550x200&chl=Start>>>Send requests(5%)|Receive the population(5%)|Request change tickets(15%)| Collect change tickets(5%)|Document the test table(20%)|Document the work paper(25%)|1st review(15%)|1st review approval(5%)|End>>>2nd review approval(5%)&chtt=IT+RCA+Control+Testing+Work+Chart|By+Mary&chco=ff0099

The Reason Why This web API is chosen for implementation because:

1. It is easier to generate

2. It is shared by all the team members

3. It can be updated by all the team members

4. It meets their requirements including marking the start, the end, the work process and the work step percentage

5. It provides a dashboard like chart visualizing their work process

This prototype is ideal for users who don’t want to buy complex charting solutions like Mega Hotpot. Other charting solutions like Excel can achieve the goal. In this scenario, Excel can't be used, so they have to build the chart from the scratch.

There are other solutions building the chart. They include:

1. Insert the chart JPG after creating a chart in a software(e.g. Excel)

2. Input some data into a database and create a chart by using data analysis tools (e.g. Crystal Reports)

But these two solutions have their drawbacks compared with the Google Chart API:

1. The process is complicated and long to create such a chart

2. The user should know how to know how to input the data into a database and how to use the tool