Personal Health Manager, Inc. (PHM) is a Fortune 500 company that provides various healthcare services worldwide. PHM has over 18,000 full-time employees and nearly 6,000 part-time employees. PHM recently updated its strategic plan. Key goals include reducing internal costs, increasing cross-selling of products, and benefitting from new Web-based technologies to help customers, employees, and suppliers work together to improve development and delivery of healthcare services and products. The following idea was developed by the IT department to help support the strategic goals:

Recreation & Wellness Intranet Project: Provide an application on the current intranet to help employees improve their health. A recent study found that PHM pays 22% more than the industry average for employee healthcare premiums, mainly due to the unfortunate, poor health of its employees. It is believed that this application will help improve employee health within its first year so that lower health insurance premiums can be negotiated, which will provide a net savings of at least $35 per full-time employee over the next four years. This application includes the following capabilities:

Allow employees to register for company-sponsored recreational programs, such as dodgeball, bowling, tennis, jogging, and walking

Allow employees to register for company-sponsored classes and programs to help reduce stress, stop smoking, manage weight, and other health-related issues

Track data on employee involvement in these recreational and health-management programs

Provide incentives for people to join the programs and do well (e.g., incentives for achieving weight goals, winning team competitions, etc.)

Managers at PHM chose Patrick Littleton as the project manager for the Recreation & Wellness Intranet Project. The schedule goal is eight months, the budget is $300,000, and PHM will not need to purchase any additional hardware or software for the project. Patrick has previous project management and systems analysis experience within the company, and he is a sports enthusiast. Patrick started putting the project team together. He also knew that he would need to develop a survey for soliciting input from all employees about the new system as well as make sure it is user-friendly.