CIS498 Final Project: Project Plan

Project Overview

Bicycle Trader is a new approach for cyclists, regardless of skill level, to participate in a community that will offer the freedom to look for the best possible deals affording them the opportunity to grow in this sport through their participation just as it has over the past several years. Based out of Tampa Florida, voted one of the 50 friendliest cycling cities, the company expects to have a strong impact on the market (“Tampa, once dubbed dangerous for bicycling, now one of ’50 Best’ in U.S,” 2016). As an internet-based company, the intent is to provide a service such as Craigslist.com where sellers have the freedom to negotiate their sales, while having a specific focus, such as Autotrader.com. Ultimately, the intent is to immerse the cycling community in one general area where they can conduct business. While the hub will be located in Tampa, the website will conduct business nation-wide. This will call for gradual expansion of the company to allow for the current number of employees to grow from 10 to 30 and revenues from $5 million to exceed $30 million in a projected two years.

Background

Growth in this sport has facilitated the perfect opportunity for Bicycle Trader to be successful by providing cyclists with the previously described service. In order to do so, the first step will be to outline a detailed business plan including all of the requirements and how it will meet the customers’ needs and in turn, increasing the company size and revenue. This project will be comprised of several, carefully outlined components. The following is a list of the aforementioned.

· Acquiring a suitable building or land to construct Bicycle Trader’s headquarters.

· Establish a computer and network infrastructure to facilitate all business operations and communication.

· The new infrastructure will be comprised of all physical components and software requirements as deemed by the operations, along with venders of other required services such as security and cloud database resources.

Scope of Project

A project of this scope will demand detailed research and information in order to establish guidelines and parameters for the overall budget. Contacting suppliers and venders will be a major focus after establishing the business location, and more importantly ensuring adherence to the proposed budget. This is where a Request for Proposal (RFP) will be implemented. This document will outline the determined business requirements that will allow vendors to gauge what hardware or software will be needed. This tool will solicit competitive bids and effectively offering the consumer the best price. Multiple entities will collaborate to come to proposal decisions pertaining to the company’s financial, application, and time constraint needs. The following are items to be included in the RFP’s.

· Databases

· All Required Software

· Security Solutions

· Network Hardware

· Computer Infrastructure

· Web Design

Assumptions

In order to create a basis for the functional timeline, some assumptions will be made. “Assumptions are factors that we believe to be true, although these factors are not confirmed to be true” (Identifying Project Assumptions and Constraints, 2012). Based on knowledge gathered from all the entities whom are responsible for everything from the construction or acquiring of the building, to the procurement and installing of all hardware, software, and other related assets or services, a timeline for sequence of events can be determined. More specifically, the following lists some of the assumptions that will be considered.

1. The building will be acquired and suitable for use in the projected amount of time.

2. Hardware will be identified and readily available for purchase and delivery.

3. All client Operating Systems will integrate appropriately with all business and network requirements.

4. Security, Cloud, and network software will be purchased and launched in conjunction with business operations.

5. Web design operation, features and framework will launch smoothly with minimal necessary adjustments.

6. Employees will be well versed in their areas of operation in time for system testing and evaluation.

Constraints

Just as there are hopes and assumptions that tasks and objectives will be accomplished in accordance with the project plan or business requirements, it is inevitable that obstacles and constraints will arise. The following list identifies some potential areas that can cause constraints.

1. Deadlines

2. Budgets

3. Lack of available resources or qualified personnel

4. Vendors unable to meet timelines or requirements

5. Legalities

Risks

As with any other project or business launch, there are inherent risks. They should all be taken into consideration and contingencies should be accounted for as much as the scope of the project will allow for. These risks can vary anywhere from falling within the realm of being consider constraints, to being completely catastrophic and halting or altering the business plan. Computer and network architecture alone can account for a substantial amount of risk due to the abundance of variation between organizations, differences pertaining to users which need to be accounted for, and the operational differences between individual work functions and databases that are specific to their departments such as finances and human resources. The risks appear when trying to obtain the appropriate interoperable devices and software from vendors, and usability among the employees and the organization. Non-computer-related risk might lie in budgeting and acquiring a competent team of employees to successfully train and launch the business with.

Scope Control

Ensuring the project is on track according to the timeline and budget is a task that can easily get away from anyone without taking proper precautions or considerations. Conflicting expectations between the client and project manager can present a situation where one can experience scope creep, the tendency for a software project to grow beyond the established budget and timeline (How to Manage Scope Creep - and Even Prevent It From Happening, 2017). For instance, the client deciding they want more or different functionality or set new parameters for the requirements, while the project manager is insistent on staying on budget. Some steps that can aid in avoiding scope creep are listed below.

1. Be vigilant on a daily basis and address changes as they arise

2. Understand the ultimate goal of the project and what end result needs to be achieved.

3. Understand project requirements, complexities, and manage these against the timeline and budget.

4. Break down deliverables into specific tasks.

5. Ensure the development team adheres to the established parameters and do not exceed requirements.

6. Recognize when you must say “no” to requests or changes that simply cannot be afforded by the project scope. If this cannot be avoided, balance this change elsewhere within the project.

Definitions

Throughout this or any other project, there are terms that will likely be come across. Found below is a listed of some of these terms and their definitions.

· Assumption: a thing that is accepted as true or certain to happen, without proof.

· Client/Customers: a person served by or utilizing the services of another or an agency.

· Constraints: any limitation that defines a project’s limitations.

· Critical path: an algorithm for scheduling a set of project activities.

· Deliverable: a tangible or intangible good or service produced as a result of a project that is intended to be delivered to a customer.

· Earned Value Management (EVM): a project management technique for measuring project performance and progress in an objective manner.

· Functional manager: person who has management authority over an organizational unit. Project managers usually report to functional managers, who report to senior management.

· Gantt chart: a chart in which a series of horizontal lines shows the amount of work done of production completed in certain periods of time in relation to the amount planned for those periods.

· Life cycle: the sequence of phases that a project goes through from its initiation to its closure. Can be defined and modified as per the needs and aspects of the organization.

· Milestone: a task of zero duration that shows an important achievement in a project.

· Objective: lower lever goal statements that describe the specific tangible products and deliverables that the project will deliver.

· Program: composed of several underlying, interconnected projects.

· Program manager: articulates a program’s strategy and objectives and assesses how it will impact a business.

· Project: temporary, one-off undertakings, generally bound by cost, resources, budget, and time constraints.

· Project baseline: value or condition against which all future measurements will be compared.

· Project definition: process in which all aspects of a proposed project are explored to examine the relationship between activities, events, durations, and costs.

· Project manager: oversees the operations of individual projects within programs.

· Project phase: goal-oriented work steps that end in milestones.

· Project plan: a formal document designed to guide the control and execution of a project.

· Project schedule: tool that communicates what work needs to be performed, which resources of the organization will perform the work and the timeframes in which that work needs to be performed.

· Project team: team whose members usually belong to different groups, functions and are assigned to activities for the same project.

· Request for proposal (RFP): a document that an organization, often a government agency or large enterprise, posts to elicit a response for a formal bid from potential vendors for a desired IT solution.

· Requirements: conditions or tasks that must be completed to ensure the success or completion of the project.

· Risk: the prospect of loss resulting from inadequate or failed procedures, systems or policies.

· Schedule variance (SV): an indicator of whether a project schedule is ahead or behind and is typically used within Earned Value Management (EVM).

· Scope: describes the boundaries and deliverables of a project.

· Scope change management: formalizes requests for changes during the life of an implementation project including scope, product functionality and product deliverables that may have a major effect on the budget, staffing changes, and schedule adjustments.

· Stakeholder: entities that have an interests or a gain upon successful completion of a project.

· Work breakdown structure (WBS): a key project deliverable that organizes the team’s work into manageable sections.

References