MGM2203 Assignment 3 Case study Individual task
Contents
TOC o “1-3” h z u 1Overview PAGEREF _Toc124862131 h 22The Case Study PAGEREF _Toc124862132 h 22.1 Background PAGEREF _Toc124862133 h 22.2 Milestones PAGEREF _Toc124862134 h 32.3 Initial Data PAGEREF _Toc124862135 h 33. Assessment Tasks PAGEREF _Toc124862136 h 63.1 Part A: Developing the schedule PAGEREF _Toc124862137 h 63.2 Part B Project Documentation PAGEREF _Toc124862138 h 7Marking rubric PAGEREF _Toc124862139 h 9
1. OverviewThis case study simulates a project management scenario where the student takes on the role of project manager. Students are required to use Project Libre software as part of this assessment task.
To assist students in their assessment solution development the following information is provided:
A product development case description.
Specific assessment questions that must be answered.
Information regarding the submission of the assessment.
Marking criteria.
Where necessary, students are expected to find relevant information in the academic literature to justify their answers. Students may have to make assumptions and argue the pros and cons for any recommendations that they make. Any assumptions made must be clearly documented in the answers.
2. The Case Study2.1 BackgroundAAPoly Infotech Pty. Ltd is a small family business that provides ICT solutions to other small businesses and individuals. As part of their 2024-26 strategic planning process, it was identified that the business wanted to give back to the community by engaging in social innovation projects. The staff had many ideas about what type of project they wanted to run. To decide on the project, Mr. Sunny, the CEO ran a competition. Staff could enter a concept document outlining their proposed projects and the board of Directors, which consisted of Sunny and his brother Mr. Vinny, would choose the best proposal.
The successful project will be able to begin on 30th September 2024. This will be the official start date of the project and should be noted in the Project Information section in Project Libre.
You are an employee of AAPoly Infotech Pty. Ltd and have been working as a project manager in the product development and service unit. The people involved in this case study are:
You (project manager)
Mr. Sunny, CEO
Mr. Vinny, Director
If your proposal is successful – A project team where you will be able to draw from the following skill sets
Software engineer
Business analyst
Test Engineer
Marketing officer
Project officer
You are not sure about the type of project you want to suggest so you start thinking about the last project you worked on. The project was the development and implementation of a neighbourhood classifieds and sales application (The NexSales project).
You decide to develop an app for mobile phones that link all families in a suburb to access a variety of resources, advertisements, items for sale, services available etc. You think it would be good if people could post their requirements or items for garage sale, used or new items for sale or lease on the mobile application. Besides, you would want the application to show advertisements by businesses or shops in the suburb to attract more customers. Your target is to cover both businesses and people in a suburb to use the app for their business and shopping.
2.2 MilestonesWhen creating your work breakdown structure, you consider the points in the projects where you could identify the projects progress. You list these milestones for the project as:
Milestone Name M1. Initiation Gate: Charter approved The project charter must be approved before any marketing or requirements analysis begin.
M2. Functional requirements approved After the functional requirements are complete.
M3. Design Gate – SC detailed design approval This gate is a go/no go decision point where the Steering Committee (SC) has reviewed the detailed design for the prototype and approved that the detailed design in sufficient to proceed with the development of the prototype.
M4. Prototype Development Complete This milestone occurs after the completion of all three modules of the prototype have been developed.
M5. Release 1 Development complete This milestone occurs after the completion of the two modules of Release 1 have been developed.
M6. Go-live Gate Go-live approved by Project Board The project board will approve the Go-live after the errors and bugs identified in the system and user acceptance testing of release 1 have been fixed.
M7. Completion Gate – Project final report approved by Project Board The project board will approve the Project Final Report has been written which includes lessons learnt, confirmation that procurements have closed, and all other documentation has been archived in compliance with the organisations document management procedures.
2.3 Initial DataAs the project manager you have described a number of tasks that will need to be completed to achieve the desired outcomes of the project. You use these tasks as a basis to create the project schedule and allocate resources.
You have noted down the following information:
A work break down structure (WBS), resource estimates and some dependencies summarised in Table 1 below.
Note that the following resource abbreviations are used:
Project Manager (PM)
Business Analyst (BA)
Software Engineer (SE)
Test Engineer (TE)
Project Officer (PO)
Marketing Officer (MO)
Table 1- Work Breakdown Structure
Task Name Duration Predecessor
The NexSales Project 1. System Concept & Planning 1.1Concept paper 1 person day of PM 1.2 Project kick off meeting 1 person day of PM, BA, PO and SE 1.1
1.3 Stakeholder identification 2 person day of PM and BA 1.1
1.4 Risk identification 2 person day of PM, BA and SE 1.1,1.3
M1. Initiation Gate: Charter approved 2. Requirements analysis 2.1 Marketing and awareness campaign Stage 1 10 person days of MO M1
2.2 Focus group – ideation 5 person days of PM M1
2.3 Options analysis 10 person days of PM 2.2
2.4 Business requirements 15 person days of BA M1
2.5 Story board design 10 person days of BA 2.2
2.6 Functional requirements 10 person days of BA and SE 2.1, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5
M2. Functional requirements approved 3. Prototype Design 3.1 Prototype basic design 20 person days of SE M2
3.2 Technical Feasibility Assessment 5 person days of SE M2
3.4 Steering Committee presentation 5 person days of PM 3.1,3.2
3.5 Prototype detailed design 10 person days of SE 3.1
M3. Design Gate SC detailed design approval 4. Prototype development 4.1 Module 1 10 person days SE M3
4.2 Module 2 10 person days SE M3
4.3 Module 3 10 person days SE M3
M4. Prototype Development Complete 5. Prototype Test 5.1 Test case development 5 person days of TE M4
5.2 Prototype system testing 5 person days of TE 5.1
5.3 Prototype User Acceptance Testing 10 person days of TE 5.1
5.4 Prototype system & user interface bug fix 6 person days of SE 5.2,5.3
5.5 Prototype Lessons Learnt 1 person day of BA, MO, PM, PO, SE and TE 5.4
6. Release 1 Design 6.1 Marketing and awareness campaign Stage 2 5 person days of MO 5.2,5.3
6.2 Detailed design 10 person days of TE and SE 5.5
7. Release 1 Development 7.1 Module 4 10 person days of SE 6.2
7.2 Module 5 10 person days of SE 6.2
M5. Release 1 Development complete 8. Release 1 Test 8.1 Release 1 Systems Testing 10 person days of TE 7.2
8.2 Release 1 User Acceptance Testing 7 person days of TE 7.2
8.3 Release 1 bug fix 5 person days of SE 8.1,8.2
M6. Go-live Gate Go-live approved by Project Board 9. Closure 9.1 Lessons Learnt 1 person day of BA, MO, PM, PO, SE, TE 8.3
9.2 Close procurement 5 person days of PM M6 milestone
9.3 Release project team 1 person day of PM 9.1
9.4 Finalise and archive project documentation 5 person days of PM and PO 9.1
M7. Completion Gate – Project final report approved by Project Board 9.4
Notes:
One person-day is a unit of work representing the work done by one person in one day. It means that the task will normally take one person one day to complete. You can assume that a week refers to a normal working week of 5 days (Mon-Fri) with people working 8 hours per day. This is the default in ProjectLibre. Unless otherwise stated you can also assume a linear relationship, i.e. 3 person-weeks will take one person 3 weeks or 3 people one week. Note that this is not necessarily the case in practice. In addition, some tasks will be a fixed duration (e.g. delivery times).
For the purposes of this assignment (to reduce variability in solutions and complications for the markers) build your Part A1 schedule by assuming that you allocate one resource (i.e. one person with the required skills) to each task. In that case, if the task required 3 person-weeks of an SE you would assign one SE to the task and give it a duration of 3 weeks.
Table 2 – Dates staff will not be available to work on the project
Holiday Dates
27 September 2024 AFL Grand Finale
05 November 2024 Melbourne Cup
Table 3 – Available Resources
Resource $/hour Number
Available
Software Engineer $90.00 2
Business Analyst $75.00 1
Test Engineer $65.00 1
Project Officer $60.00 1
Project Manager $120.00 1
Marketing Officer $90.00 1
The software engineers work a 40 hour week from Monday to Friday (i.e. a 5 day week with 8 hour days). There are no differences between the abilities of the two software engineers).
You know that there are items that you may not have sufficient information about yet and that you may need to make some assumptions to complete your schedule and budget. Make sure that you list any assumptions you make at the beginning of your assignment submission.
3. Assessment Tasks
3.1 Part A: Developing the scheduleFor part A of the assessment, you must complete the following tasks and questions. Read all the questions before you commence the tasks. The schedule is to be developed in an appropriately named Project Libre file (see the name specified below) and the questions are to be answered in a Word document. As stated above, any assumptions must also be listed at the beginning of the Word document (after the coversheet).
Use Project Libre to develop the project schedule. Note that Mr. Sunny has also asked you to include the following in your schedule:
The project title as the overall project summary (as task 0 and WBS number 0). All other tasks should be indented according to the WBS structure described in the case study.
The project name and start date be noted in the Project Information section in Project Libre.
The Project Libre workbook columns are set up as shown below:
(task number no column title) Task
Mode Task Name Predecessors Duration Start Finish Resource Names
The task names are to include the WBS identifiers prior to the name in the Task Name column (1.2 Project kick off meeting) and the milestones are to be placed throughout the schedule, with the milestone identifier included at the start of the milestone name in the Task Name column (M1. Initiation Gate: Charter approved). All milestones are to be highlighted yellow.
Resource allocation details are included.
Holidays are entered.
The critical path(s) automatically displayed in red on the bars of the Gantt chart view of your schedule
At this point there may be resource over allocation issues. Attempt to resolve these before answering question 2. Save this version of your schedule as StudentID-NexSales_A.pod. You will be required to submit this file as part of your assignment submission.
Based on your StudentID-NexSales_A.pod schedule:
Use the view tab filter to display only the critical tasks. Provide a screenshot showing the task names and the Gantt chart of all the tasks on the critical path(s).
Did the annual holidays make any difference to the end date of your project? If so, note the previous and changed end date. Explain why/why not there was/was not a change in end date.
3) Describe how you resolved any resource over-allocation issues.
4) Write a memo to the CEO, Mr. Sunny, providing your project proposal and include following information:
a) an explanation of the project needs and what it is trying to achieve.
the expected completion date of the project, assuming it commences on 30/09/2024.
the total duration of the project.
b) an explanation of the main factors that cause the project to require that length of time and any recommendations that you might make if time was a priority for the project.
c) the estimated labour costs for each of the resource types working on the project. Present the costs in a table similar to the following:
Labour Costs
Resource Name Cost ($)
Business Analyst Software Engineer Test Engineer Project Manager Marketing Manager Project Officer Total labour costs: 5) Describe at least one strategy that you need to adopt to ensure that the project is completed on time.
3.2 Part B Project DocumentationAs discussed during this course, the project schedule is only one part of the project plan. You also need to create and submit the following planning documentation:
Resource Management Plan. Consider including a RASIC matrix. Refer to lecture material for what your resource management plan needs to cover.
Communications Management Plan. Ensure that your plan includes the different types of communications you intend to use for different stakeholder groups, as well as the frequency of each communication. Refer to lecture material for what your communication management plan needs to cover.
Risk Management Plan. Ensure that your plan covers generic project risks as well as risks that are specific to this particular project. Make sure that your plan includes a completed risk register. Refer to lecture material for what your risk management plan needs to cover.
Stakeholder Management Plan. Ensure that your plan includes stakeholder analysis (e.g., stakeholder engagement vs stakeholder desire for the project to succeed or fail). Refer to lecture material for what your stakeholder management plan needs to cover.
Change Management Plan. Ensure that you include a change management procedure. Refer to lecture material for additional items your change management plan needs to cover.
SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS
You need to submit the following documents to LMS:
StudentID-NexSales_A.pod: Your project schedule developed in Part A
StudentID-A.docx: Consisting of below answers and plans
Answers to the questions (including the Memo) in Part A.
ResourcePlan.docx: Your Resource Management Plan
CommunicationsPlan.docx: Your Communications Management Plan
RiskPlan.docx: Your Risk Management Plan
StakeholderPlan.docx: Your Stakeholder Management Plan
ChangePlan.docx: – Your Change Management Plan
Marking rubricStudent Name:Student ID:
Criteria Possible Marks Awarded Marks
Part A Project Schedule the project file .POD (20 Marks) 20 Project information and Holidays 1 Tasks correctly indented and durations 2 Task durations correct 1 A project title and overall project summary of NexSales Project. 1 WBS and WBS Predecessors columns in correct location. 1 Task dependencies correct and Project Libre shortcomings workaround. 4 Milestones at the beginning of the task list. 2 Resources correctly allocated 2 Resource overallocations resolved. 2 Highlighted and displayed Critical path 4 Part A Questions StudentID#-A.docx (10 marks) 10 Q1 2 Q2 2 Q3 2 Q4 2 Q5 2 Part B Plans (10 Marks) Included in the report 10 Resource Plan 2 Communications Plan 2 Risk Plan 2 Stakeholder Plan 2 Change Plan 2 Total marks