Chapter 14: Practice the Review Board – Second Mock

In this chapter, we will put all the knowledge we have accumulated in the previous chapters into action. We will be introduced to our second full mock scenario, which is very much like a real scenario you may encounter in the review board.

After reading this chapter and the next ones, you are advised to reread the scenario and try to solution it on your own.

You can do that as many times as needed until you feel comfortable enough. Try to stick to the three-hour solutioning window. We will learn some handy time management techniques in Appendix, Tips and Tricks, and the Way Forward.

In this chapter, we're going to cover the following main topics: 

• Introducing the full mock scenario – Packt Lightning Utilities
• Analyzing the requirements and creating a draft end-to-end solution

By the end of this chapter, you will be even more familiar with the shape, size, and complexity of a full...

Introducing the full mock scenario – Packt Lightning Utilities

Packt Lightning Utilities (PLU) is a European utility company that serves cities across Germany, Italy, France, Portugal, Belgium, and the UK. PLU operates in 40 cities. PLU offers services to both B2C customers (residential) and small and medium B2B customers. They offer a wide range of services related to electricity and natural gas distribution. They currently serve more than 6 million households and over 700,000 small business accounts.

PLU has been struggling with its existing CRM solutions for many years, and as a new strategic movement, has decided to switch to Salesforce. PLU is looking to use its new CRM to launch a new set of unified global sales and service processes. This is part of a bigger digital transformation that PLU is undertaking to become a more customer-centric organization.

The new services should offer the most modern customer experience and maintain an overall low-cost-to-serve operating...

Analyzing the requirements and creating a draft end-to-end solution

Give yourself enough time to go through the scenario and understand the big picture. You can even start adding notes with potential solutions.

Similar to what we did in Chapter 12, Practice the Review Board – First Mock, and Chapter 13, Present and Defend – First Mock, we will split the solutioning and the presentation creation over two chapters. This is due to the size of the full scenarios and the number of shared requirements. We will cover the business process requirements in this chapter. Then, in the next chapter, we will continue with the remaining requirements and create the presentation pitch.

As we did in all previous mocks, let's start by understanding the current landscape and creating our first draft of the diagrams.

Understanding the current situation

Starting with the first set of paragraphs, we see a description of PLU's activities and geographical presence. We also...

Summary

In this chapter, we were introduced to our second full mock scenario. You are now more familiar with the nature of full scenarios. They are longer, more thorough, and contain many more challenges than mini-scenarios.

In this chapter, we tackled the first part of the scenario. The business process requirements are usually the meatiest part of a scenario. This part is also where you start creating your comprehensive solution. You start by understanding each business process, then dividing it into digestible chunks and solving it as a whole.

We came across compelling use cases and design decisions, including a complex data model that supports both B2B and B2C. We created several business process diagrams that will help us a lot during the presentation by visualizing our solution.

In the next chapter, we will continue to solution the scenario and then put together our presentation pitch. We covered a lot of land in this chapter, and we still have plenty more to cover...