Project Status Report

Context: You are the project manager for a ten month, $2 million, ERP implementation at Canadian Tire Head Office. The ERP implementation is positioned to replace the many disjointed, legacy systems with 9 enterprise-wide, integrated functions, and finally bring the organization to the 21st century. Senior management is convinced that the success of your project could lead to long-term savings, increased efficiency, increased resilience, and security - as many of the legacy systems are no longer being supported by their vendors.

You lead a core project team that includes the following people:

1. Business Analyst and Scheduler (Jack Diamond)

2. Testing and Quality Assurance Analyst (Omar Kaur)

3. Software Development Team Lead (Paul Underwater)

4. System Integration Specialist (Ridhima Verda)

5. Transition Manager, Liaison to Operations (Song Li)

6. Contract Manager to ERP vendor (Debbie Dobrowski)

You know that the sponsor will cancel the project if the implementation is delayed for more than two months, if all the requested modules are not implemented, or if the project costs exceed 25% of the total budgeted amount. You are also aware that the Project Management Office (PMO) will remove you from this project if any of the project phases (gates) are skipped.

Situation:

1. Business Analyst and Scheduler:

a. Wants to inform you that you are three months into the project, and you have spent 25% of the budget (as planned). The feasibility and the requirements phases have now been completed. The configuration and development, testing, training, and conversion phases remain.

b. Updates you that as last project status was on-track, but is signaling significant delays, cost overruns, or quality issues in the next cycle due to the other issues on the team.

c. Reminds you that, this, your third monthly status update is due next week.

2. Testing and Quality Assurance Analyst:

a. Reports that the preliminary testing scenarios have been developed and approved by business stakeholders. The team is starting development of the beta-testing scripts. They should be completed by the end of this month as planned.

b. Is asking to purchase an update from the vendor (at $50K), which will address upcoming quality-related risks, as the specialist is not convinced that ERP will be seamlessly integrated with your client's backend setup.

3. Software Development Team Lead:

a. Reports that the team has completed requirements review and are starting development.

b. Has lost one specialized resource when they were moved to a higher priority project. Replacing that resource will cause a delay in the delivery of their overall components by 6-8 weeks. However, if we spend an additional $60K we can hire a contractor with the required subject matter knowledge, which will reduce this delay by only 2 weeks.

c. The Operations Team has requested a series of tactical reports they say are critical to their effective operation. To create these reports, we need 1 extra junior resource ($45-$55K/resource) added to the development team. If the resource cannot be hired then an additional delay of 6 weeks will need to be built into the schedule, or 1 of the ERP functions will need to be removed from the project.

4. System Integration Specialist:

a. Reports that the system integration process has been going slow. It has been a week since the team lost access to LEGACY-9 server. The access is needed to prepare data conversion scripts. Without these scripts the system cannot go live. She is asking you to submit a request to Security and Infrastructure team to grant her that access. It can take another week to get the access reinstated.

b. She identified a new integration software that costs $40K but will save 4 weeks of development and testing.

5. Transition Manager, Liaison to Operations

a. Reports that transition requirements are 90% done. They will be completed this week, but suspects that the review and sign off process will take 3 weeks longer than expected due to key stakeholder being on vacation.

b. Requests to skip the beta-testing stage, to grant early access to the system for the end-users in the Accounting department. c. Informs you that the HR Department prefers its existing legacy software and would like to remove the HR functionalities of the ERP, saving the project 8 weeks.

6. Contract Manager to ERP vendor

a. Reports that all necessary vendor contracts have been signed.

b. Has found a loophole in the contract that could allow you to instruct the vendor to skip Quality Control process and speed up implementation by 4 weeks.

Line Item Value No value Partial Value Full Value Title & 1 Does not have a Has somewhat Has a professional and Intro professional and informative title or has informative title, and a project informative title and weak objective. objective no objective Report 2 Has some main Has most of the main Has all the main elements of a Elements elements of a project elements for a project project status report. status report. status report. Articulates 3 Weak status or Articulates some, but Clearly summarizes the status the Overall difficult to follow. not all elements of the of the project from Schedule, Status project status. Budget, Scope, and Quality. Articulate 5 Weak current events Most elements of the Clearly communicates to the the Current report with many events are present, stakeholders the completed Events missing elements. but not all. Or no tasks, the events that affect mitigation strategy the project, and actions that provided. must be taken to mitigate the effects of those events Content 3 Does not positions the Partially positions the Tactfully positions the update and stakeholders to stakeholders to in a way that encourages the Stakeholder support the project. support the project. stakeholders to continue the Priorities project. Requests additional budget or time if required. Corporate 4 Weak or messy Satisfactory Perfectly consistent Template formatting formatting. formatting; Sections/ subheadings are used effectively; Effective mix of points and paragraphs; Effective use of numbering; Key summary points are placed at the top of the report. Research, 1 No references are Some references are References/cites the research Evidence, provided. provided but less than in proper APA citation. and 3. References are not References in APA format, Spelling, 1 More than 2 errors Up to 2 errors No spelling or grammar errors Grammar