Case Study: Appliance Warehouse Services

Create a 3- to 4-page document (to submit in Blackboard) that includes the following:

• Summary: Explain your overall approach to analyzing and addressing the needs of the new Appliance Warehouse Service Department. How did you ensure you met the implementation, integration, and maintenance needs of the new Appliance Warehouse Service Department business case?
• Work Breakdown Structure (WBS): Design a WBS for the project of planning and implementing the new Service Department. Identify each task needed in order to implement the new Services Department. Include duration times. Refer to the Week 2 Discussion.
• System Maintenance Plan: Include measures to implement corrective, adaptive, perfective, and preventive maintenance. Include recommendation to maintain the system either using in-house resources or to outsources it. Include pros and cons of both maintenance types.
• Security Risks: Identify and explain potential security risks for the Service Department business case. Consider physical, network,application, file, user, and procedural types of security risks. Include the backup system method to be used.

Our system administrator was asking me about the security for SIM. You and I have not discussed this topic in depth. We need to do a risk assessment and look at all types of security issues: physical, network, application, file, user, and procedural.

Make a list of the security risks for all six security levels. We need to make sure that we don't leave our new system vulnerable to attacks.

Also, what is the backup method to be used for SIM? Please explain why you've chosen this method.

As you well know, maintenance on any system is essential to fix mistakes, add enhancements, or maintain security. I was wondering what you were thinking for SIM's ongoing maintenance plan. We are hoping that this system will last for the next 5 years. We will have to assume responsibility for maintenance if we build this system in-house. Do you think we should hire enough IT staff to maintain this system in-house or should we outsource it?

To help the company think this decision through, please make two lists for pros and cons of in-house maintenance vs. outsourced maintenance. Could you get this to me today?

Now that we have isolated the necessary features for an in-house built system, we need figure out if it will be economically feasible to build this software. Mae Roth has asked for the bottom-line numbers for this project. Not only do we need to tell her how much the system will cost to build, but she wants to know what the total cost of ownership would be if we use this system for the next 5 years. You will need give her the numbers in net present value. Since our IT team is unionized, their contract states that they will get a $3/hour raise each year for the next 5 years.

Assume that we will need 2 servers initially for this project. Also assume that we will have to replace these servers every two years.

In the spreadsheet that you create, show the initial build cost and the cost for years 2-5 of maintenance. Finally, give the NPV for the entire project.

After the cost feasibility is complete, Mae will finally decide between the pre-packaged software and an in-house build. Thanks for all your incredible work on this project!