Project status: case study

Wilmont’s is a top‐ranked U.S. retail pharmacy company based in St. Louis, MO with more than 8,000 stores nationwide. The company is in all 50 states and employs more than 244,000 people overall. The company has engaged in a number of innovative business practices, and now it is once again secretly considering breaking ground with an even newer concept—delivering prescriptions and drugstore items by flying drone.

The concept isn’t new—a small firm named DronesTech, Inc. in San Francisco, CA announced the approach in March, and it is looking to develop a relationship with drugstores nationwide to launch the concept for real. Wilmont’s may be the big break DronesTech, Inc. is looking for! George Cranston, the operations vice president of Wilmont’s, has asked the CIO to develop a pilot project to get something moving and see how this works. Mr. Cranston will provide the funds and will oversee all aspects of this initiative.

Mary Pearson is the project lead on the business operations side; she will manage the project generally for Mr. Cranston. Mr. Cranston has made an agreement with Jordan Kempler, the CEO and founder of DronesTech, Inc., to prototype this project in the San Francisco area, which is the home location of the DronesTech, Inc. organization where it developed the system. DronesTech, Inc. will customize its systems, interfaces, and business processes to conform to project requirements from Wilmont’s.

You are a project manager for Wilmont’s internal IT department, and you have been assigned by your CIO, James Connor, to lead this project in terms of the information systems that will be needed to support the initiative. Phillip Greenberg is the project manager at DronesTech, Inc. who will work with you. Generally, from the IT perspective, the project will likely need to accomplish the following:

● Develop a modification for Wilmont’s online order entry system that will allow customers in the San Francisco area to register their willingness to have a drone deliver their orders by means of online entry or smartphone entry. There will be significant restrictions on the approval of customers for this service, so there will need to be a segment of the system to allow Wilmont’s management to approve the customer, send a confirmation to the customer, and so on.

● Create reports for Wilmont’s management to provide information on sales, customer reactions, and key performance indicators that senior management will define for you.

● Create electronic communications for customers through email, the internet, and mobile alerts as the customer requests.

● Interface to the DronesTech, Inc. corporation for its order entry, delivery confirmation, and mobile application software. Eileen Seymour is the point of contact on the information systems side with DronesTech, Inc., and she will be overseeing the team on their side. A price for this system customization has not yet been determined, and the development of this proposal will be a part of your project plan.

● Develop security options for all systems that will safeguard the data as it is stored within your company, and also as it is exchanged with DronesTech, Inc. You will work with Wilmont’s information security management team to accomplish this, and William Scott is the project lead on that team for this project.

● You will need to identify basic requirements and then determine your team members from the list of people given in this document as you move toward final project planning.

● It has been determined that only four of Wilmont’s pharmacies will participate in the prototype delivery system. These pharmacies are in a close geographic area to one another, and they are in a non‐city environment consisting mainly of suburban homes and small businesses. Customers in apartment buildings will not be permitted in the prototype due to delivery issues.

No hardware, servers, workstations, or other network infrastructure will be required for this project, as all of that is only on the DronesTech, Inc. side, and DronesTech, Inc. will be including this in its proposal, along with a separate project plan that it will give to you as a part of its contract.

Wilmont’s can accommodate this prototype system within its existing infrastructure that handles customer orders. Ongoing system maintenance scheduling or planning after the prototype is implemented will not be a part of the project schedule or plans—you will be developing that plan separately once the systems design is known.

Wilmont’s has allocated a maximum of U.S. $1,750,000 for this prototype project. You have been asked by your CIO to ensure that your project does not go over this figure, and, if possible, to have the total project cost be under that amount.

The two companies agreed that they would like to begin the project on next January 5, and that their first customer delivery flight should take place no later than November 30 to avoid harsh weather in the San Francisco area.

Of course, you also need to include specific steps and processes for the following:

• Regular meetings with the team, stakeholders, and cross‐impacted areas of the company

• Approval points as needed through the project sequence

• Points at which you will refine cost and staffing requirements

• Points at which you will produce the various project plan documentation deliverables

• Testing, quality control, and provision for issues that may develop

• User training and other preparations for system implementation (The Wilmont’s change management team, headed by Shirley Johnson, will assist you in this effort.) Summary of Personnel Involved in the Project (Initials are provided in parenthesis.) DronesTech, Inc. Corporation Staff:

• Jordan Kempler (JXK), CEO and Founder

• Phillip Greenberg (PAG), Project Manager and main point of contact

• Stephanie Williams (SMW), Senior Business Analyst

• Gerald Hasper (GPH), Senior Systems Engineer

• Eileen Seymour (ERS), Project Lead, IT Systems Wilmont’s Staff:

• George Cranston (GWC), Operations VP

• James Connor (JFC), CIO

• Mary Pearson (MJP), Project Lead, Business Operations Team

• William Scott (WKS), Project Lead, Security Team

Julie Green (JRG), Pharmacy Manager Store #35864

• Steve Haskell (SLH), Pharmacy Manager Store #32185

• James O’Donnell (JLO), Pharmacy Manager Store #38734

• Wilma Marcy (WPM), Pharmacy Manager Store #33001

• You as the project manager (Include your own initials)

• Mary Kerstner (MJK), Business Systems Analyst

• Jonathan Perry (JSP), Programmer

• William Postner (WKP), Senior Programmer

• Sherry Loganthorpe (SPL), Database Administrator

• Linda Thornton (LET), Reports Systems Programmer/Analyst

• Gerald Peritoni (GEP), Testing Specialist

• Elizabeth Walton (EMW), Senior Testing Specialist

• Shirley Johnson (SPJ), Change Management Coordinator