Project Scenario

Introduction

This course allows you to apply the project management knowledge and skills learned in the previous eight Project Management Professional Certificate (PC) courses. You can take a preparation test for the Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM) at the end. We recommend that you complete all previous studies before beginning this.

You will receive a real-world scenario and able to complete numerous hands-on activities. We will also provide templates and guidance to help you create a portfolio of artifacts to demonstrate your expertise and readiness for higher levels of responsibility in project management.

You will be assessed on the following skills:

• Analyze a completed business case to drive the creation of a project charter
• Create a project charter and stakeholder register
• Develop a work breakdown structure (WBS), network diagram, and high-level budget to support a predictive project
• Develop user stories, complete a product backlog, and develop a sprint backlog to support an adaptive or Scrum project segment
• Complete support planning for the predictive project segment, including a quality management plan, a communications management plan, and a risk register
• Analyze a burndown chart and Kanban board to determine the status of the adaptive Scrum segment of the project and propose corrective actions
• Analyze a change request to determine the most appropriate recommendation and develop a status report for the ongoing project
• Prepare a final project closeout report

The Scenario:

Acme Health Innovations (AHI) primarily provides advanced skin care products. Their product line includes advanced technology solutions, such as beautification wands, massagers, facial treatment devices, infusers, spot treatment lights, wrinkle removers, and a variety of other different facial treatment devices. These products are of high quality. However, they must keep pace in a growing and competitive market.

Key Corporate Contacts:

• CEO: Mary Lin
  • Key project advocate and supporter
• Sponsor (Marketing): Mary Smithers
  • Project approval and funding
• Project Manager (Marketing): Cary Manning
• IT: Priya Service
  • IT lead
• Marketing Director: Ram Samuels
  • Operational lead, advisor, Subject matter Expert (SME)
• Finance Director: Oscar Money
  • Manage and control funds disbursements.
• Project Core Team (Marketing): Keiko Tanaka and Jose Garcia
• Product Owner (PMO): Cal Hamer
  • Product backlog management, Voice of the Customer (VOC)

The leadership team at AHI recently launched a strategic initiative to improve its understanding and analysis of its target market on a real-time basis. AHI has a robust marketing department. However, marketing analytics depends on numerous disconnected systems to provide the information needed to adapt to a changing competitive and technological environment.

The corporate team reviewed and approved a business case for developing an app for internal and external customers. This app will solicit, collect, and analyze information and data in critical areas and provide real-time analytics and information. The initial app will perform the following functions:

• Identify, understand, and address current and developing segments and target markets (External)
• Facilitate easier customer access to AHI products and pricing (External)
• Enable secure invoicing and order processing (External)
• Track current market trends in the skin care industry in real-time (Internal)
• Monitor customer interest and preferences for AHI products based on opinion analysis (Internal)
• Generate competitive analysis data by analyzing global sales data (Internal)
• Calculate AHI market share and trends by product category (Internal)
• Identify competitor products with the largest market share (Internal)

Benefits

AHI believes the design and implementation of this app will provide the following initial benefits:

• Enable faster introduction of new and updated products to the target market
• Improve the overall AHI customer experience
• Enable better positioning to be worked out through analysis of individual product sales
• Enable better business decisions
• Accelerate the testing of new product concepts
• Gain insights into current shoppers and demographics
• Enable improved brand tracking

Marketing Process

AHI uses a five-step marketing process. The leadership of AHI believes that this process can be improved as follows:

Step 1: Analyze opportunities:

• Get a better understanding of the customer needs.
• Get an improved analysis of competitive products.
• Analyze the market trend and estimate the long-term product feasibility.

Step 2: Select target market:

• Get accurate and real-time buyer demographics.
• Analyze potential market size and economic value

Step 3: Segment the market:

• Determine the demographic characteristics of buyers.
• Distinguish among different market segments.
• Target the segments and position products more effectively

Step 4: Determine market strategies:

• Make more 4-P decisions roduct, price, place, and promotion.

Step 5: Evaluate results and realign:

• Evaluate the sales data.
• Evaluate the financial data.
• Evaluate the market share data

The functions and stakeholders with their expectations from the app:

Stakeholder	Needs
C-Suite	Identify and understand current and evolving segments and target markets and engage with them
Marketing research	Identify competing products with the largest market share
Marketing strategy	Track current market trends in the skin care industry on a real-time basis Monitor customer interest and preferences for AHI products based on opinion analysis Generate competitive analysis data by analyzing global sales data Calculate AHI market share and trends by product category
Finance	Enable secure invoicing and order processing
IT	Financing of hardware and software Financing of app security Financing of additional storage capability Two new hires (technicians)
Customer (focus group)	Facilitate customer access to AHI products and pricing (external) Enable secure invoicing and order processing

Initial cost estimates:

Cost	Estimate
App development	$180,000
IT software and hardware	$15,000
IT storage	$15,000
Data feeds	$5,000
App security upgrades	$20,000
IT personnel (HR)	$15,000

Lab 5: Burndown Chart Analysis

Estimated time needed: 60 minutes

Objectives

After completing this lab, you will be able to analyze the project overview and burndown chart and respond to the following three questions:

• What problems does the burndown chart show about the project?
• What changes could the team make now to improve the chances of meeting the project scope and schedule?
• What changes could the team have made earlier to be more successful?

Scenario: Develop an Application (App) to Provide Real-Time Marketing Data

The AHI development team is working to complete all app development deliverables supporting the project. They are using the Scrum methodology.

The team plans to complete development in two Sprints. (Note: Sprint Backlog Lab Solution reference). It identified five user stories, estimated at 20 story points. The team assumed it could complete 10 story points in each Sprint. It budgeted 165 hours for Sprint 1 and 170 hours for Sprint 2. The team estimated 335 hours as the total time for the entire app development and scheduled each Sprint to last 30 days.

The team is new, and the members do not know each other. The group consists of two internal developers and one external development consultant. Cal Hamer is the product owner. Cal understands the needs of the customers well. However, he is new to the Product Owner position. AHI does not have a Scrum Master to support app development. Cary Manning is the designated Scrum Master. Cary is well-versed in predictive project management methods. However, he has no experience in Scrum.

The Sprint 1 User Story was 0004, developed to ensure that all IT hardware, software, and interfaces were installed to support the new app. Cary worked with the team to create an updated Sprint Backlog. He assigned tasks to team members and held a daily one-hour meeting to discuss status. He also developed a change form to manage changes. The team initially developed an IT infrastructure to support 500 internal and 20 million external app users.

User story 0002 dealt with marketing support requirements. After the Sprint began, Cal worked with marketing staff and updated the user story to reflect the new needs. Cal scheduled a meeting with marketing and the team to discuss the changes.

The first demo for Sprint 1 surprised the stakeholders. They informed the team that the app should support 200 internal and four million external users. That notice came too late. IT invested in more infrastructure than the app realistically needed. Cary determined that issues were impacting the budget and schedule for the app development and used the Sprint 1 retrospective as a forum for a comprehensive root-cause analysis and development of solutions to support Sprint 2.

The team is now in Sprint 2. It encountered issues on user story 0001 and completed only 20 of the planned 40 hours. Some key executives added reporting requirements not included in the original user story.

The team reviewed the project network diagram and found that the total development cycle for the app was 90 days. Cal realized that the five planned user stories in the product backlog did not include updating the original app prototype and developing an initial launch plan. AHI leadership approved the network diagram and a 90-day development cycle. The current roadmap calls for two 60-day Sprints.

Cary and Cal worked together to create a burndown chart for the entire app development phase of the project. Here is the current version:

Exercise: Analyze a Burndown Chart

1. Open the Burndown Chart Analysis worksheet and respond to the three questions listed in it.

2. Save your Burndown Chart Analysis document with a meaningful name such as AHI Burndown Analysis.

Use these directions to save a Word document as a PDF if you do not know how already. You will need to upload a PDF for your final project.

Burndown Chart Template

Burndown Chart Analysis Worksheet Instructions: Use this worksheet to perform and document your analysis of the AHI app development project. List at least three observations for each question. Question 1: What problems does the burndown chart show about the project? Question 2: What changes could the team make to improve the chances of meeting the project scope and schedule? Question 3: What changes could the team have made earlier to be more successful