Homework answers / question archive / Course: MIS 661A Problem Solving Methods and Tools Assignment: Project Grading Scale: 0-100 points (with a weight of 14% for the course grade) General Instructions This assignment is for completion individually or in pairs as assigned

Course: MIS 661A Problem Solving Methods and Tools Assignment: Project Grading Scale: 0-100 points (with a weight of 14% for the course grade) General Instructions This assignment is for completion individually or in pairs as assigned

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Course: MIS 661A Problem Solving Methods and Tools

Assignment: Project

Grading Scale: 0-100 points (with a weight of 14% for the course grade)

General Instructions

This assignment is for completion individually or in pairs as assigned. Those working in pairs will complete a peer evaluation (form to be provided), which will be considered in determining individual grades on the assignment. You may not consult with anyone else except for clarifications on the requirements. The assignment is to create a set of programs in Python that addresses the Specific Requirements below. All the code files and input/output data files should be in a single folder, which should be named such that it includes your last name(s). The folder should also contain a Microsoft Word file with any brief instructions that may be needed by the user, e.g., the broad purpose of each code and/or data file, order in which they should be executed, etc. Zip the folder using the Windows utility (right-click on folder, Send To, Compressed (zipped) folder.) Upload the zipped folder to Project in Assessments (or Assignments.)

The project will be evaluated on the extent to which it meets the Specific Requirements successfully as well as on robustness (in preventing/handling user/data errors), ease of use/maintenance/changes, code documentation, etc.

Specific Requirements

ABC Consulting, Inc. needs some support for its analysis of annual employee performance bonuses for its professional staff. Professional staff are one of two types: Consultants or Directors. All professional staff work on client projects. In addition, Directors are responsible for generating new revenue, i.e., sales. The sales.txt file contains a maximum of one entry per Director structured as the employee ID and the total sales for the year separated by a comma. There would be no entry for a Director who may not have had any sales in the year.

A metric used for figuring performance bonuses is the project utilization rate, which is the ratio of total hours worked annually on projects to a benchmark rate of 2,250 hours per year (based on a norm of 45 hours per week for 50 weeks in a year) rounded off to the nearest integer. For instance, an employee who works 1,800 hours across all assigned projects would have a utilization of 80% (i.e., 1800 / 2250 * 100). This metric could be more than 100% for an employee, e.g., works more than 45 hours per week, does not take time off, etc. It could be 0 if an employee has not worked on client projects all year. The timesheet.txt file contains the number of hours worked by each employee on each project during the year. There would be no entry for an employee who may not have had any client engagement in the year. (Project information has been removed from the file leaving only the employee ID and hours for a project separated by a comma; note that there could be multiple entries for an employee if multiple projects were involved.)

Consultants (but not Directors) are evaluated on their performance by their project managers, home office managers, clients, etc. These evaluations are qualitative, i.e., just text, although evaluators are asked to use certain keywords in their comments. All comments for an individual employee are compiled and stored in the evaluation.txt file, which has at most one entry per employee consisting of the employee ID followed by the # symbol followed by the compiled comments. Since these evaluations are a factor in performance bonuses and typically all employees are not evaluated by the same number of evaluators, a metric similar to a net promoter score is used. This metric is computed as the number of positive keywords minus the number of negative keywords as a percentage of total number of keywords in an employee’s evaluation, rounded off to the nearest integer. For instance, if the comments about an employee contain four positive keywords and one negative keyword, the employee’s score would be 60 (i.e., ((4-1)/(4+1))*100). A score could be negative, e.g., an employee with only keyword – but negative – would have a -100 score. If there are no evaluations for an employee (or no keywords), the employee is to be assigned a score of 0. For now, positive keywords are: excellent, good, dependable. Negative keywords are: poor, error, unreliable, late.

Only those employees with a utilization rate above the 75th percentile of all employees are eligible for a bonus. Further, Consultants must have a minimum score of 50 on the qualitative evaluation metric to receive a bonus. A single bonus percentage rate supplied by the management team is used for all those who qualify. For Consultants, this rate is applied to their base pay to compute the bonus. For Directors, the same rate is applied to their total sales to compute the bonus. However, the bonus is capped at $50,000 for Consultants and $150,000 for Directors.

The emp_beg_yr.txt file contains initial data for all employees structured as indicated by the first row in the comma separated file. Note that a JobCode of C indicates Consultant and D indicates Director. After all bonuses have been computed, a similar file – emp_end_yr.txt – file should be created for record keeping and querying/analytics purposes. However, this file should also contain the utilization rate, either the evaluation metric or total sales amount (depending on type of employee), and bonus amount (which should be 0 for those who do not qualify.) The header row for this file is identified below.

In addition to the above, note the following requirements:

• The management team should be able to enter a bonus percentage rate and see the resulting total bonus payout, i.e., sum across all employees (to help budget for the bonus.) They should be able to try out different rates before finalizing the rate. The bonus calculated according to the finalized rate should be stored in the emp_end_yr.txt file (along with other data separated by commas formatted as in the emp_beg_yr.txt file) as indicated by this header row for the file: ID,LastName,FirstName,JobCode,BasePay,Utilization,Evaluation/Sales,Bonus

Note that if an employee does not qualify for a bonus, a bonus value of 0 should be stored.

• The program should allow users to search for a particular employee’s information by entering the employee ID. In response, the details for an employee should be displayed in this format depending on the type of employee, i.e., for Consultants:

ID: 101

Consultant: Jack Smith

Utilization: 30

Evaluation score: -100

Base pay: $50,000.00

Bonus: $0

or for Directors:

ID: 102

Director: Mary Jones

Utilization: 39

New sales: $1,100,000.00

Base pay: $300,000.00

Bonus: $55,000.00

• Users should be able to obtain basic descriptive analytics (i.e., number of data points, minimum, maximum, median, mean, and standard deviation) for the utilization rate, sales, evaluation metric, and bonus amount for relevant groups of employees. For instance, only consider those cases that qualified for a bonus for the bonus amount statistics. For the utilization and sales metrics, they should also be shown the details of the person(s) with the maximum (so they can be sent a letter of recognition.)
• Users should be able to obtain a list of Consultants with poor performance (based on a combination of two criteria, i.e., utilization less than one standard deviation below the mean, i.e., less than mean minus standard deviation, and evaluation metric less than 0), if any, so they can be put on probation.
• Any data that could not be processed should be logged in an error.txt file. For instance, if there is a sales, timesheet, or evaluation record for an employee that is no longer with the company, that employee ID and the name of the relevant file/record, e.g., “101 in timesheet.txt” should be added to the error log file. The emp_beg_yr.txt file has an accurate list of all employees.
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