Principles of Project Management-W2024

Case 1 C: It's payday!

BACKGROUND Viscom Consulting, a small consulting firm in Toronto, was created 2 years ago due to the the partnership of a group of three professors who managed the integrative project course for

the end of the master's in Health Business Management. Health Business is a very particular and specialized consulting area that has not a lot of competition yet, but it is increasing year by year. The company is looking for new payroll software that can help in reducing the processing time of regular monthly activities. This project is important for the firm to comply with the application of new regulations for businesses to comply with the declaration of employment and tax deductions for all permanent and contract employees. If the company doesn't achieve the de due date of the project the company will need to pay a penalty of 10% of the total payroll monthly until the company complies with these new regulations.

It has been cleared that the company cannot continue doing payroll in the improvised and unregular way Viscom is doing until now since all their employees were students in the last year of the master which was contracted for each project of the firm and a Group Students Name: Group Student #:

________________________________________ ________________________________________

Course & Section:

MGMT 312 W2024 was Prepared by Dr. Eduardo Jasson for limited time under the form of a limited contract. Since the company showed staggering growth, Viscom began to hire employees on a permanent employment relationship form.

You have been assigned as a project manager for this implementation. The payroll software is to be implemented as the number of employees has increased and manual processing of payroll is becoming cumbersome for the HR team. Your manager, Paul Jones, has asked you to look into the various options available and solve the issue faced by the HR team. Paul is a detail-oriented person and likes to explore all possible options available. He would like you to come up with the options for discussion and then arrive at the best solution. For this reason, Paul presents to the executive board several options for them to decide. The meeting will happen in the morning of the following day. He needs to state the generalities of the project and the options that Viscom could have. To solve this critical problem THE OPTIONS You start to think about some options:

1. Develop the software in-house as per the requirements of the HR team. 2. Purchase the software from a vendor who has been providing services to the similar companies and implement it directly. 3. Purchase the software and customize it according to the requirements of the HR team. 4. Contract a firm that could make payroll for them. While these firms exist none of them are specialized in the particular nuances of consulting business activities in which you charge sometimes for the full report on an issue related to the industry, and other times the firm is contracted by consulting hours of different levels of specialization of consultants, with a cap for each particular client.

The first option (in-house development) results in less cost. However, this option will require more time than desired by the management, considering the specialized skill set required for the development of the software. A rough estimate of the cost is about $65,000 over six months for this option. The second optionpurchase the software and implement it 'as is'has the least cost ($22,000) but will result in modifying the current payroll process according to the software.

MGMT 312 W2024 Prepared by Dr. Eduardo Jasson The third optionpurchase the software and customize itis the most expensive option ($22000 +45,000) but will be able to accommodate the company's future growth for the foreseeable future. Also, the senior HR manager, Rita Arora, who is very particular about the internal processes, would like to have something very similar to current manual processing but with automation. This option will take two months to be implemented. The fourth option is the shorter to be implemented, It will take less than a month to be transferred to a third-party supplier of payroll service, but they will charge by ticket (by payroll receipt) approx. $ 100 for each person and each and each month, plus the issuing of Government deposit and bank transference which will be $ 1000 per month for these two things and per month (total) THE DECISION After the Executive Board meeting the current president of Viscom met with Paul and Rita and asked them to do their decision over all options and justify it. In the end, the President made the decision. Which could be and why? PROGRESS SO FAR The customization includes several major changes required in the application due to the current payroll process. The development is agreed upon the decision made according to the time spent building the requirements, implementation, and any future troubleshooting of incidents reported by the users. Employees will also receive training and the procedures document from the IT department of a third-party service provider, respectively according to the option selected on how to use the software.

Paul mentioned that it would be great if the requirements were gathered from all the teams involved including the hiring, accounting, HR, and tax processing teams. Your team is responsible for gathering the requirements from the various teams and communicating them to Steve Murali, the senior Manager in charge of this specific project along with another developer from the software team on the option selected. Today is June 1 and the requirements must be gathered and communicated to the team and the project manager by June 10. The must be completed ASAP according to the option selected including implementation and testing of the new system. Therefore, the development Testing and addressing issues raised by users must be estimated and taken into consideration.

MGMT 312 W2024 Prepared by Dr. Eduardo Jasson

It was agreed that the company must be paid up to $6000 will be paid in advance only for software acquisition and the rest will be paid in monthly installments after the software is provided and support is achieved by the software developer, only in the case of option 3, Two developers will be assigned for three weeks, working 7.5 hrs a day for five days a week for both cases the adaptation of a third-party software, option 3, or for in-house software development. They will be paid $20 per hour for the hours spent during the ten weeks of development, resolving issues and implementation, if new developers are added, the time decrease proportionally to the number of developers. It is also agreed that the vendor will provide technical support for one year to resolve any issues occurring in the software, for option 3. Regular testing will be done by the vendor and the respective departments to ensure that all the features are implemented and there are no errors. An annual fee of $2,000 will be paid with the final payment at the end of the project. You will be reviewing the hours booked by developers and paying the vendor every month according to the hours booked for the next four weeks. You also anticipate a few changes from the tax department in the third week, as they were still waiting for some new tax regulations to be made effective on June 15. Therefore, you discuss and decide to keep an additional 10 hours of effort by the developers in the third week. After implementation (at the end of the project), you will also pay the vendor the negotiated agreement of the software purchase price along with the one-year support annual fee, for option 3, at the end of the project. As all these details swirl around in your head, you decide to write them down into several planning documents. There is just too much to keep track of and you really don't want to forget anything. Case B On July 1st, 2023, the executive committee had a meeting to analyze the different options for this internal project. I(t was decided that the best solution, even if it is more expensive is a mix approach in which part of the project will be done in - home and part will be done contracting a third party supplier. They third party supplier will be used for all what means a software development and the in - home activities were to implement the software and to prepare the migration from the old manual system to the software-based system. Elizabeth will oversee project management and Samir, the director of Human Resources, payroll and development will be the project sponsor.

MGMT 312 W2024 Prepared by Dr. Eduardo Jasson On the other hand, Rodney the Executive director of the firm, that depends of the board of partners will contact Canada Revenue Agency to negotiate an extension of the period when they must have the new payroll system in place and working for another six month, Assuring them that all the payments will be done on time, using the manual or the system with no delay at all. Rodney thought that this is achievable, and he promise to achieve it. Next day Elizabeth and Samir meet again Elizabeth said to Samir that he will present a project planning in one week. Next day Elizabeth began to work on that. He listed the main achievements or phases that must be achieved: 1 - design the architecture of the payroll system. 2 - Prepare the data from payroll in a format that then could be translated into other software language 3 - Implementing a labour hour card system (with a software) in which each consultant will charge to different client accounts the hours of work in their project 4 - Select the company that have a software that could be used almost directly, or with some adaptation to the needs of Viscom Consulting 5 - Trial of the work hours of each consultant to each customer account 6 - Installation of scalable payroll software 7 - Trial of the payroll software using a pilot project and data prepared for this purpose 8 - Developed an interface for transforming data from a database and excel sheet to the required format used by the new payroll system. 9 - Prepared the payment transference system to each consultant bank account 10 - Begin to use the payroll system 11 - Correction of Software glitches supported by the third-party provider.

Then Elizabeth which and had experience of doing the same work for Viscom Consulting's customers, ask for your help in detailing each of the activities that implies all of these things

MGMT 312 W2024 Prepared by Dr. Eduardo Jasson that need to be achieved. All of you become permanent or partial members of this project team. Additionally, to that list of deliverables, which requires to be organized into deliverables and sub deliverables, the project manager in consultation with other people have arrived to the following list of working activities and their duration:

Activity Duration Critical factor

Contract Negotiation of the Software and Assistance services

2weeks 7

Contract the payroll system with a third-party provider

2 weeks 9

Installation of the standard payroll software

1 week 7

Adapt the payroll software to be compatible with Revenue Canada and the company regulations and standard

13 day 9

Design the interface to incorporate all the data into the new software by contract and by person

7 days 5

Let each consultant to begin to complete a data card system for each contract open now and for the last 6 month.

11 days 3

Prepare all the data and data entry into a database that could be recognized by

6 days 4

MGMT 312 W2024 Prepared by Dr. Eduardo Jasson the new software with the interface. Codification of each consulting contract and each person by category of specialization

3 days 6

Provide to each worker or consultant a code number and a password to access the information and let them change to their own password

2 days 2

Incorporate the data bank for each consultant to be able to deposit payments on their own account

4 days 1

Make a trial run of the payroll system to verify there is no glitches

2 days 6

Repair Founded Glitches 3 days 4 Begins to incorporate historical data into the system to be able to achieve Revenue Canada requirements and verify the integrity of these historical data for at least 5 years

3 weeks 2

Evaluate the risks of the system toward the future

7 days 7

MGMT 312 W2024 Prepared by Dr. Eduardo Jasson and design the contingency plans for each case Produce a sudden - dead meeting to learn which lesson can be extract for the future

2 days 3

Do a control and monitoring that the system is working according to what was expected

2-month, 1 week each month

2

Received the inspection of Revenue Canada for verification of standards and regulation and certified the system.

1 week 6

Case C The Project Manager Received approval from the executive board to launch the whole project. For this reason, this person began to form the team that will work on it and to commit resources of stakeholders for the project. As a consequence of this, the project manager realizes that the human resources available for executing the project is: Category Required time Cost per hour Work description Intern (non professional) 225 hs. 20 $/hour Codification and test participation

Junior system engineer (undergrad)

350 hs. 35 $/hour Design of

software architecture, manage coding

MGMT 312 W2024 Prepared by Dr. Eduardo Jasson teams and coordination among other teams Senior Engineer 200 hs. 45 $/ hour Write performance reports, oversee the work of junior system engineers, could act as project manager for lower level of set of activities for the project Project planning manager 200 hs 50 $/hour Produce technical documentations and SOW, Call for RFT, follow the development of the different project parts, approve reports, facilitate project meeting and scrum meetings. Resolve conflict Finance and HR analyst 12 hs. 25 $/hour Administer third party service provider, hire people and manage the availability of

MGMT 312 W2024 Prepared by Dr. Eduardo Jasson personnel, make payments Administrative assistant 350 hs. 20 $/hour Assist any other person related with the project in administrative or ancillary activities. Manage stock of office materials and office space

The effect of experience in working in such kind of projects is 1.25 and 1,50 in between intern, junior system engineer and senior system engineers. This means that the intern will take 25% more of time on developing a task that a junior engineer do in specified time. This fact will affect the total cost of selecting one or the other to do or being responsible of certain work or task. Additionally, it is expected that 15% of the whole time for the project and each of the tasks or activities will be administrative activities that could be done by administrative assistant, and 20% of all the time for the project will be used for management, monitoring and control of the project, each task and activity in general. The last statement includes also the time required to manage RFP and the development of SOW, the management of tender processes, selection of third-party suppliers and contract control and payments. Each person can work 7 hs per day and five days a week. If it is required additional hours or holidays or weekend day the payment for these hours will increase 25% per hour and 50% per additional day respectively. Based on the work done in case A and B and the information provided in this case, it is required from your team to do the following activities and calculations: TASK AND WORK TO DO 1 - CALCULATE IF WITH THE INFORMATION OF THE PROJECT DIAGRAM DONE BEFORE AND THE ASSIGNED TOTAL HOURS ASSIGNED FOR EACH CATEGORY YOU CAN PERFORM THE PROJECT AS IT WAS ENVISION BY YOU. create TOTAL BUDGET INCLUDING THE INFORMATION PROVIDED ABOVE. 2 - IF IT IS NOT POSSIBLE CALCULATE HOW MUCH MORE FOUNDS ADDITIONALLY YOU NEED TO COMPLETE THE PROJECT WITHOUT ADDING NEW HUMAN RESOURCES OR CALCULATES HOW MANY MORE AND OF WHICH CATEGORIES NEED MORE WORKERS TO COMPLETE THE PROJECT? 3 - will THE CRITICAL PATH WILL CHANGE IN THE FIRST CASE? 4 - WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES IF YOU RECEIVE THE DIRECTIVE THAT THE PROJECT NEED TO BE FINISHED 2 MONTHS BEFORE THE DUE DATE. STATE AND EXPLAIN EACH OF THESE ALTERNATIVES.