Background

Sincere Care Services (SCS) was established in Singapore ten years ago by its Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Dr Danny Tan. SCS's mission is to provide patients with effective medical care from extensively-researched treatments and approaches. One of the ways it achieves the goal is through collaborations with renowned foreign hospitals and with doctor exchange programmes. Currently, SCS operates one hospital in the city and a chain of specialist clinics across the country. It is publicly listed on the Singapore Exchange (SGX). However, it is facing high operational costs and stiff competition from other hospitals.

SCS's senior management is planning for next year's budget. It has gathered a list of potential projects as shown below:

• Project A: Implement a Patient Location System by Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to know the patients' whereabouts within the hospital premises.
• Project B: Organise a two-days bonding camp that involves all the SCS staff.
• Project C: Conduct a series of public seminars jointly with People's Association at various community clubs to promote awareness of major diseases.
• Project D: Convert patients' medical records to electronic formats as required by the Ministry of Health (MOH) to deposit into a national database so that patients' data can be retrieved quickly during emergencies.
• Project E: Implement a Robotic Surgery System which will allow doctors to operate remotely on patients at SCS Hospital.
• Project F: Develop a Medicine Dispensing System to provide medicine to patients through automated machines.

Question

1a) Categorise Project A to F individually into one (1) of Compliance, Strategic or Operational categories with explanations on how the project will affect SCS.

1b) SCS Senior Management has decided to implement a Medicine Dispensing System (MDS) to provide medicine to patients through an automated system and vending machines. It is called the MDS Project. Assume that you are an Information Technology (IT) Manager at SCS. You have just been appointed by SCS Senior Management as the MDS Project Manager. Before starting the project, it is important that you contemplate how it will evolve. Introduce Project Life Cycle (PLC) to SCS Senior Management and relate the four (4) phases of the Project Life Cycle (PLC) to the MDS Project. For each phase, briefly describe any four (4) tasks and/or actionable items in that phase and these are to be related to the MDS Project. You can make reasonable assumptions, including desirable MDS features, actions that you will take, values such as costs (in Singapore Dollars) and durations for budget and schedule estimates, with good justifications where possible. You are authorised to deploy appropriate internal resources and outsource some of the work to relevant external organisations. However, you are the sole interface between the project team and SCS Senior Management in charge of raising project requests, and reporting progress and performances to the management.