Your company, IRTC Manufacturing Enterprises, is upgrading its legacy billing system. The system was installed originally ten years ago, and has been upgraded according to the vendor's schedule, each one taking 9-12 weeks in duration with a team of 2 full time employees (FTE's).

IRTC will be doing a major upgrade for the new web-based version of the system, in addition to the mainframe legacy system update. It is anticipated that this upgrade will take 16-20 weeks in duration; however, everyone has agreed that a more formal scheduling process should be completed which may change the duration estimate. The project will involve significant changes to existing business processes, changes to existing jobs, as well as the creation of several new positions. Customers will be able to view and pay their bills on-line, accessing a billing customer service agent when needed. This change, which will affect both the billing and customer service departments, is expected to reduce costs, improve customer satisfaction, and reduce the number of days for outstanding accounts receivable. The existing customer service staff has some proficiency with web applications, but the billing staff does not.

To date, the Billing Department has owned the applications, and the director of the department has been the sponsor for all upgrade projects. For this upgrade, however, the chief operations officer has indicated that the Customer Service Department also needs to play a major role. It will be up to you to determine the project sponsor and steering committee structure and participants. You will doing this during the initiation phase.

You have been chosen to be the project manager; you will be on the project 30 hours a week and your rate is $125 per hour. You have significant experience with the system and have managed previous upgrade projects. You have acted as a business analyst, developer, and tester for projects on this package in the past. You will select your team, which will consist of several IT staff, supplemented by staff from the vendor. You have been told you can have up to 2.5 IRTC FTEs, in addition to yourself, for the duration of the project. (The list of available people is described in the Phase Two task.)

The vendor's role is to be determined by you; their consultants cost $140 an hour for business analysts, $120 an hour for technical architects, $100 an hour for programmers or testers, and $90 an hour for instructional designers, trainers, or technical writers. You have a budget of $100,000 for vendor resources. You may supplement your team with vendors based on the holes in your IRTC team. For example, you may choose to have the vendor provide programmers if you choose not to have any of the internal staff provide programming resources, if your budget permits.

You will follow your organization's standard methodology for a package upgrade. Part of that process includes the development and delivery of documentation and training materials--a responsibility generally filled by the IRTC IT training group. You have access to .5 FTE for the duration of the project to develop and deliver the materials. The person with the most experience on the package and current training/documentation will be unavailable to the project due to other projects; however, the vendor has adequate materials that can be purchased for an additional $6,500. You will need to determine the training needs, analyze the costs associated with each option, and determine the project's scope.

With this version, the vendor also has another software add-on that supports the integration of your existing customer service system with the billing system's customer service functions. There is not a decision yet as to which customer service system will be used, whether or not they will be integrated, and the extent to which customer databases will be integrated (if at all). According to the vendor, the installation of the add-on will cost $25,000 and take an additional four weeks.

Description

In this assignment, your group will develop a presentation to be given to the project sponsor. The presentation will be developed and presented by each individual in the group; however, it must have a consistent look and feel. The group will need to work together to define the project's parameters because the plan's components relate to one another, and the members will need to work together to ensure that there is no redundancy or gaps in the presentation. The information must flow together as if one project manager created all of it.

Project Plan (to be developed by entire group) Provide an introduction to the project. Develop the project charter, and identify the project sponsor and customer. Describe the components of the project plan, how it will be used throughout the project, and its benefit to the sponsor

Project Scope (to be developed by entire group) Discuss and come to a consensus on the scope of the project, including the major deliverables and the items that are not part of the scope. Using your knowledge of a packaged system upgrade, describe the interim deliverables that will be created as part of the development process. Discuss how the scope will be approved and how changes to the scope will be documented, reviewed, and approved. Use the Small Group Discussion Board.

Project Human Resource (to be developed by individual) Describe the roles and responsibilities that need to be filled on the project. Give a rationale for the staff for the project, assign roles, and describe staff involvement with each major deliverable. Decide if you will use vendors to supplement the team, and ascertain their roles and responsibilities as well as your rationale for making the decision. Describe how staffing changes will be identified, escalated, and resolved.

Project Schedule (to be developed by individual) Use a work breakdown structure or similar tool to explain the major activities that will be completed as part of the project. Describe the major milestones for the project. For each milestone, identify the associated deliverable, the approximate effort involved in creating the deliverable, and the people involved. For 2 of the milestones, detail the activities to be completed to achieve the milestone. Be sure to address dependencies, duration, and resource effort. Describe how changes to the schedule will be identified, escalated, and resolved.

Project Budget (to be developed by individual) Describe the budgeting process that will be used for the project. Identify the components of the budget, the items that will need to have costs associated with them, and the mechanisms that could be used to estimate the project. Describe how changes to the budget will be identified, escalated, and resolved.

Project Risks (to be developed by individual) Describe the possible risk events for the project. Identify the high-probability, high-impact risk events. For each of those risk events, identify the possible actions to mitigate the risk. Describe how changes to the risk management plan will be identified, reviewed, and approved.

Project Communication (to be developed by individual) Describe the system that will be used throughout the project for recording and sharing project information related to schedule, budget, utilization, and status components. Describe the tools and techniques you will use to capture and report metrics. Describe the frequency with which the metrics will be captured and how the resulting analysis will be applied and communicated.

Project Stakeholders (to be developed by individual) Describe how stakeholders were identified and analyzed, what tools and techniques were used to categorize and understand stakeholder interests. Describe your stakeholders, who they are and what their interests are in the outcome of the project. Describe the strategies planned to manage stakeholder engagement.

This task will be completed as a true group project. The groups will consolidate the individual responses into a single presentation. It will be determined by the members of the group whether the group willhavea singlemember do each section or merge the responses of eachmemberfor the 5 areas of interest listed above.

Assignment Guidelines:

Group Portion

• Develop the project plan.
  • Use the Small Group Discussion Area to collaborate, and produce the slides for the final project plan.
• Develop the scope of the project.
  • Use the Small Group Discussion Area to collaborate and produce the slides for the final project scope.
• Determine how you will divide the following project management areas of interest among the group members.
  • Project human resources
  • Project schedule
  • Project budget
  • Project risks
  • Project communication
  • Project stakeholders

Individual Portion

• Complete individualportion of the presentation based on the decision that the group made previously with regard to the project management areas of interest.
• Submit your slides, and allow sufficient time for peer review by the other group members.
  • Note: Eachslide must be submitted with detail words of speaker notes.
• If necessary, make any corrections or modifications.

Final Presentation

• As a group, determine how the final presentation will be compiled.
• Use the following outline as a guide for the structure of your presentation:
  • Slide 1:Title slide that identifies all active group members
  • Slides 2-4:Group project scope and planning statementsand brief explanation of how the group organized the presentation (e.g., merged responses or by designated areas of interest)
  • Slide 5 and onward:The presentation portion by students (each slide in the presentation will identify the contributor of the slide)
  • Final Slides:Conclusions/recommendations/wrap-up/references