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PRACTICE PROJECT / GUIDED PROJECT

Employee HR platform

Digitise leave requests without copying a broken approval process into software.

BeginnerFictional business scenarioReference approach included
Your task

Read the brief and work through the deliverables before opening the reference approach. Your notes stay in this browser only.

Company context

A fictional 400-person company handles leave requests by email across three offices.

Business problem

Employees cannot see request status and managers use different approval rules.

Stakeholders

  • Employees
  • Line managers
  • HR
  • Payroll
  • IT

Stakeholder interviews

  • Employees: “I never know whether the request reached my manager.”
  • Payroll: “Late changes create manual corrections.”

Existing process

  • Employee emails manager
  • Manager replies
  • HR updates spreadsheet
  • Payroll receives weekly export

Business rules

  • Leave balance cannot go below zero without HR approval.
  • Local holiday calendars differ by office.

Customer feedback

  • “I sent the same request twice because there was no confirmation.”

Sample data

  • Average approval time is five working days
  • 12% of requests need manual clarification

Constraints

  • Respect employment-data privacy
  • Support three local calendars

System / API information

Employee IDs and balances are available from the HR system as a daily export; no live API is currently available.

What would you deliver?

  1. Identify inconsistent rules
  2. Map AS-IS and TO-BE
  3. Define roles and permissions
  4. Write stories and UAT scenarios
  5. Define adoption metrics

Your working notes

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View reference solution / my approach

This is one defensible approach, not the only correct answer. Compare the reasoning and trade-offs with your own work.

Discover

Why: Different offices may have legitimate differences; do not erase them without agreement.

Deliverable: Stakeholder map and policy-variant inventory.

Define

Why: Status visibility is valuable even before full automation.

Deliverable: Request, approval and notification stories with role rules.

Measure

Why: Track whether the new flow reduces friction.

Deliverable: Approval time, clarification rate and adoption measures.