Project Management Assignment

Aims: This assignment is designed to demonstrate your: understanding of project planning, in particular the methods and techniques used in planning and controlling a project ability to develop appropriate deliverables at different stages of the project understanding of risk, communications, team management, and quality management aspects of a project ability to appropriately document aspects of project management using project management software tools

Assignment Details You are a manager responsible for the IT function of a medium size pharmaceutical distribution company. Mr. Peter Seddon (VP of Operations) who is an influential member of the senior leadership team has asked you to consider developing an ecommerce project that involves creation of a company web site with transaction handling capabilities with key customers. The project is urgent and needs to be completed within four months. The company has Internet access that includes space on a web server, but has no prior experience in developing online applications using web technologies. In addition to creating the ecommerce application, Peter would like you to train two sales staff to do simple web site updates. Peter also wants the web site to include the following details: - description of the organisation (mission, history, and recent events) - list of services offered - contact information - graphics (photographs and other images) - online purchasing by the companys customers The online purchasing facility will need to include - protected customer password entry - product codes on the online form should be selected from the companys ERP system - customers should be able to view the stock status accessed from the companys ERP system - online submission of customer enquires YOUR TASK: Drawing on this description of the e-commerce project you are required to produce a series of documents that address the main activities and milestones of the initiation, planning and control phases of project management.

Project Initiation Phase Peter Seddon has made a presentation about his proposed e-commerce project to the senior leadership committee meeting in order to get approval for the ecommerce project. He presented a Business Case to the committee to help him secure their approval for this project. The Business Case includes many of the details that will form the Project Charter. At the conclusion of his presentation, the committee authorised Peter to implement the project. To get the project started, Peter has asked you to draw up a Project Charter as the formal authority for the project. Peter has agreed to serve as the primary sponsor of the project and he has appointed you as the project manager. While preparing the Project Charter report you will also need to - identify other stakeholders (e.g. key customers) in consultation with Peter - identify costs involved in the e-commerce project - hire an e-commerce consultant for a short period You may need to make other necessary assumptions in preparing the Charter but make sure these are clearly stated. An outline of the Project Charter is provided below: Project title and date of authorisation Project managers name and contact details Summary schedule - Start and end dates - Milestones Summary budget Brief description of objectives, and the business requirements or justifications for project Summary of the project management methodology including - Assumptions, constraints and expectations - Governance Roles and responsibilities Sign-off section Comments Deliverables: A Project Charter

Project Planning Phase Peter has obtained formal approval for the e-commerce project by getting the sign off from the company CEO. You are now required to develop a project plan to implement this project. To support the project plan, you may need to collect additional information from the stakeholders. In addition to yourself as project manager, Peter has assigned 2 other staff to the project (Rahim and Henry) and has authorised you to hire Thomas as an ecommerce consultant. Thomas will be under contract for 2 months at a rate of $60/hr. Other team members will be charged out at $40 per hour. All team members will work under the companys Enterprise Agreement that specifies normal working hours as 8 hours per day, Monday to Friday.

After further discussion with Peter, an outline of the project scope including some of the specific analysis, design, and implementation tasks required for the e-commerce project are set out below: Collect information on the organisation in hardcopy and digital form (brochures, reports, organisation charts, photographs, and so on) Research web sites of similar organisations Collect detailed information about the companys design preferences and access to space on a web server Develop a template for the company to review (background colour for all pages, position of navigation buttons, layout of text and images, typography, including basic text font and display type and so on). Create a site map or hierarchy chart showing the flow of web pages Digitise the photographs and find other images for the web pages Create the individual web pages for the site Test the pages and the site Implement the web site on the companys web server Get user feedback Incorporate changes Create training materials for the company on how to update the web pages Train the companys staff on updating the web pages Include project review that will be recurring over the life of the project Crash test the web site, a task that will take 2 days and run 24 hours/day. The project plan you draw up should include the following: The systems development methodology adopted for the project; A work breakdown structure including task duration estimates and dependencies Milestone list A project schedule These four items should be summarised with a Gantt chart showing dependencies and milestones with duration as horizontal bars, and with a network diagram. Identification of resources and costing the project by assigning resources to project activities. A quality management plan A risk management plan An outline for the Project Plan is given below: Title Author/authority Overview of the project (the context of the project and goal of the project) Project organisation (who is involved i.e. stakeholders) and the reporting structure) Work to be performed (overview of what will be done and how its will be done) Schedule information (project duration, dependencies and other time constraints) Budget for the project by assigning resources to the tasks Use of project management support tools/techniques/methods Management of the projects including quality management plans, risk management plans and communication management plans Appendices (reference to other project planning documents)

Deliverables: A Project Plan

Project Control Phase As the project manager, you need to monitor the progress of the e-commerce project. At this stage, you are required perform the following specific activities: a) Assume that after one month from the commencement of the project, Thomas, the ecommerce consultant, has re-negotiated his hourly rate with the company management and his new rate has changed to A$80/hr. Indicate how it affects the budget and take appropriate action to accommodate this change. b) Assume that one project team member (Rahim) will become unavailable (due to overseas conference attendance) for 1 week in the middle of the project. Make adjustments to accommodate this leave so that the schedule does not slip and the costs do not change. Document the changes from the original plan and prepare a new plan. c) Assume that user feedback indicates some areas in which major changes are required which is estimated to take 1 weeks work. Indicate how the original plan is affected by this proposed change. Deliverables: Revised Project Plan

Note:I need a complete Project Charter, Project Plan and Revised Project Plan. All are required in both word and MS Project format. Please read the directions carefully and submit all the deliverables required.

Best of Luck.