The purpose of this case is to help you practice some of the project management skills you are developing as part of the course, and to provide an understanding of the project management issues and processes of an organization expanding to a new line of business, upgrading existing tools, and adding capacity and expertise.

Acknowledgements: This case was written by Elizabeth Harrin, the author of Project Management in the Real World and SocialMedia for Project Managers. She also writes the award-winning blog A Girls Guide to Project Mangement. Elizabeth is a project manager in the healthcare industry. Prior to that she worked extensively in the financial services industry in the UK and France.

Contents

Part 1: Initiating1

Background Scenario:1

Tasks Initiation3

Part 2: Planning5

Background Scenario:5

Tasks Planning5

Part 3: Executing7

Background Scenario:7

Tasks Executing7

Part 4: Monitoring and Controlling9

Background Scenario:9

Tasks Monitoring and Controlling9

Part 5: Closing10

Background Scenario:10

Tasks Closing10

Part 1: Initiating

Background Scenario:

You and several of your friends have been volunteering at St. Judes, the local hospital, for a couple of years now. St. Judes is a small, privately-run hospital serving your town and the surrounding area. As a specialist in cancer care, it also accepts referrals from the wider region. It does not have an emergency room or a pediatric capability. It has 125 beds for patients who require an overnight stay and 40 consulting rooms where doctors meet with patients before and after surgery. The hospital has 360 staff, ranging from kitchen porters to nurses, an on-site pharmacy team, to surgeons.

St. Judes has operating rooms (ORs) already, but for a while the hospital Board has wanted to make better use of the facilities and expand the range of services provided at the hospital. With this in mind, the hospital has been raising money for equipment and buildings to become an orthopedic center of excellence, meaning it will become the preeminent place in the district for orthopedic surgery such as joint replacement. This makes good use of the existing bedrooms, consulting rooms and ORs while allowing the hospital to expand at a manageable pace. The fundraising has finally reached its total and the proposals for the new wing have been agreed to by the hospital Board. The project is now going ahead.

The hospital Board knows that you have good project management skills and have asked you to lead the technology installation for all the non-medical equipment in the new wing.This includes a new operating room, three consulting rooms, and a new administration office for the OR manager, Frankie Stone.The physical building is being constructed by an external company with their own project manager, but once they have completed the shell they will hand it over to the hospital teams to equip the building.

The main goals of the Healthcare IT Project are to:

prepare a budget for the project

develop a plan and schedule

install and test the IT equipment including PCs, printers, software, and computer desks

train the users in the use of the PCs and the new orthopedic templating software, which is used to help surgeons determine what size prosthesis (new hip, etc.) is required.

close out the project appropriately.

The overall budget has been approved and the building contractor expects to have the new buildings finished in three more months. Work started five months ago. Once the building has been handed over, the Hospital Director, Jonathan Grey, wants to start using it as quickly as possible, so the IT installation should be done within three weeks and the training should be done two weeks after that. You should start planning the project as soon as possible since you will outsource a lot of the work.

Assume you will carry out the project management role as a volunteer, but that other contractors like the trainer and computer experts will be paid. The 15 OR staff will also need basic PC training on how to use things like Word and email, so assume you or another volunteer can carry this out at no charge.While Jonathan wants the new facilities to open as quickly as possible, it is expensive to have contractors working onweekends, so the work will be planned and carried out on weekdays only to avoid paying overtime rates.

1. Begin the project work by preparing an Assumptions Logfor the project. This will be continually reviewed and revised/added to as the project unfolds. Use TAB 3 in theAssignments Workbook.

2.The Business Case and Project Charter are two of the documents that help management to commit to and get behind the project. These two documents become the contractbetween the project manager and the organization. Prepare a Project Charter/Business Case using the template providedand the assumptions in your assumption log. Use the Project Charter Document Template.