Quiz 1: total of 10 marks (10% of final grade)

You have been asked by your boss (Harpreet Singh, Manager of the IT PMO) to manage a new project.

You work in the IT Project Management Office at XYZ Corporation. It is a fast-growing, medium-sized company located in Ottawa. Your boss is Harpreet Singh. He is the manager of the IT PMO. He has worked for the organization for over 20 years, is well known and respected throughout the organization. He has many connections throughout the organization and relationships are very important to him. He has spent many years getting to know people and is very interested in their backgrounds and often plays sports with many company people outside of work. You really like your boss.

Harpreet reports to the Chief Information Officer, Cindy Beatty. Cindy is a driven, results-oriented person who has little time for small talk. She is all business. Although she can be a challenge to work for (she is very demanding), she is very smart and is well respected because of her knowledge and ability to deliver results. Cindy has been with the organization for the past 3 years.

Harpreet has asked you to manage a new project. The project is very important to the organization. It will also be the largest and most complex project your department will have led. This is a big opportunity for you, and your department. You are very excited about this new project and are eager to get started.

The project involves rolling out a new employee scheduling system for your organization. The system will use biometric finger scanning. Employees will need to scan their fingers each time they enter and leave work. This will be a big change for your organization as it was a very casual place to work, previously. However, since COVID-19, the organization has needed to save money and will need to track and monitor employees more closely going forward. The introduction of an automated employee scheduling and tracking system will be met with a lot of resistance from many people.

You will need to complete business requirements; procure the new system; complete the design, configuration and testing of the new system; roll it out to employees in the HR, Finance and IT departments; and ensure the system is utilized. Change management will be a big challenge on this project.

Being a good PM, you start by talking with Harpreet in order to get a sense of some of the stakeholders in your project. You learn the system will involve the following two departments:

Finance

Human Resources

The finance department is run by Melanie Milosevic. She is the VP, Finance. She is the person sponsoring this project. She has worked at the organization for almost 2 years. Being in finance, she likes numbers, data, and is very detail oriented. She also gets annoyed by people who spend too much time talking and often feels that people in the organization do not work hard enough. She often talks about the many failed projects and initiatives in the organization and how the organization spends a lot of money on failed projects. She is very interested in this project and has high expectations of the project since a successful implementation of this system will save the organization a lot of money and will help her department provide faster and more detailed reporting. The success of this project will make her look good and help achieve some of her career goals.

The HR department is run by Kevin McKay. He has been with the organization for 10 years. He has a history of championing many employee wellness initiatives. However, many of his projects fail and people who deal with him often feel he is hard to understand (he tends to be vague and unclear when he describes various ideas he has). He likes to talk about cutting edge systems and technology but is often vague and is not very good at focusing on urgent details. He is extremely opposed to this project. He feels the approach is wrong. Implementation of the new system will mean that some of his employees will lose their jobs and he will need to layoff some members of his team. He is close to his team!

Your project will also need to coordinate with another project the IT PMO is managing. The other project is an SAP Upgrade Project (SAP is the finance and HR system your project will need to integrate with). This project is being managed by Brenda Olson. She is a Senior PM in the IT PMO. She is very ambitious and hard working. Her projects are almost always completed on time, within budget and she is known for delivering results that exceed expectations. Her project will likely need to slow down as a result of your project, and she is not too happy about this. She is also difficult to work with. She feels that she is superior to the other project managers and often talks about how poorly the other projects are managed. She is very educated, having recently completed her MBA (she is always telling people that she has an MBA!). She has plans to take over Harpreets job in a year or two (as he is planning on retiring soon) and is very ambitious. She is disappointed that she was not asked to manage this project and has told many people so.

You are very excited, but also a little nervous about managing this project. It is a big opportunity for you and your department. Being a good PM, one of your first tasks is to identify the various stakeholders and get a better sense of who they are.

Instructions:

1. Respond to each question below.

2. Submit your responses in a word doc prior to the due date

Questions:

1. List all stakeholders or stakeholder groups for this project (4 points out of 10)

2. Based on the information provided, what do you think are the individual communications styles for each stakeholder listed (explain why)? (6 points out of 10)