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Final Graded Case Study: Comprehensive Project Analysis, Part II

Project Scope, Planning, and Time Management

DiBello's next task was to create a detailed project plan. In order to get information about the activities and resources needed to create the portal envisioned by McKenzie, he scheduled time to speak individually with key IT experts, the two freelancers hired to compile and develop content for the portal, and various members of the sales teams. Back at his desk, he opened up a new Microsoft Project file to begin developing the plan, identifying tasks and resources, estimating work assignments, calculating costs and creating budgets.

While aware of the critical nature of a well-organized project plan, DiBello found it tedious to build new GANT charts and workflows from scratch. Having been involved in the Sales department's Salesforce.com implementation several years ago, he decided to pull up the project plan from that initiative. Noting the similarities in the two projects and the involvement of some of the same people, DiBello decided it would be much more efficient to use portions of the existing Salesforce project plan. After all, why reinvent the wheel since there were plenty of other things to get done.

DiBello reviewed the Salesforce scope statement and, rather than write a new one for HighLEARN, he decided to wait and have the team complete the scope statement after development and approval of the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).

DiBello arranged for a 3-hour session with the project team to create the WBS so that it would show a hierarchical breakdown of work needed to complete HighLEARN on time. While the WBS identified key subprojects, milestones and major activities, it did not include all the work packages to complete the project. The team chose instead to update the WBS as issues surfaced along the way and during review checkpoints. Shannon Valley, a senior IT employee who has been involved in many similar projects, validated this approach: "We know that we will be identifying new tasks along the way ‐ this happens on all of our projects so we don't need to include them in the WBS now."

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DiBello then created the Risk Register:

Risk ID Number

Risk Probability Impact Risk

Score Response Responsibility Status Comments

Team members do not fully understand roles

Low High .16

Review specific roles, expectations and boundaries. Increase communication checkpoints, if necessary.

Project Manager

Open

Personality issues and team member conflicts

Med Med .24

Consult with Human Resources and, if necessary, engage a moderator to

Project Manager

Open

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work out conflicts

Short timeframe to complete the project before Aug launch date

High High .56

Request additional resources, look for opportunities to conduct activities in parallel

Project Manager

Open

Limited availability of product specialists and salespeople to help generate content

Med High .30

Put some product modules on hold or identify alternative SME's to work with content team

Project Manager

Open

Scarce IT resources available; hard to get them to treat projects as a priority

High High .72

May need to get more hire external resources or get executive level mandate for IT employees to be responsive

Project Manager, Project Sponsor

Open

Insufficient budget for required hardware, servers, software and development vendor?

High High .54

Will need to make choices and trade-offs. May need to request additional budget resources.

Project Manager, Project Sponsor

Open

Salespeople will not use the portal or find it helpful.

Low High .18

Directors to provide incentives or mandates for sales associates to access the portal

incentives or mandates for sales associates to access the portal

Open

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Vendor reliability ‐ will they deliver a quality portal with working functionality?

Med High .42

Need to closely monitor progress, establish frequent communication checkpoints

Project Manager

Open

Based on the WBS above, DiBello created Responsibility Assignment Matrices (RAMs) for each of the major activities identified. He integrated these with the WBS document to help establish accountability for project tasks. Following is the RAM for the "Login/Registration Completion" activity, indicating people in the IT department who are actively involved in the task or will need to be consulted and/or informed:

Chris Steward (IT)

Randy Marsh (IT)

Ricardo Contin (Learning/Dev)

Conception A C R C

Finalize A C A I

Test A I C I

Sell Internally

I C A R

Although DiBello knew that it would be very difficult to accurately estimate costs for this project, he sat with McKenzie and Arjun Mehta from Hightower's Finance Department to communicate budget- related input he had gathered from speaking to project team members and researching comparable projects. He showed them a cost worksheet and a suggested cost baseline, which Mehta reviewed carefully.

Project Activity Estimated Cost

Comments Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug

Enterprise Portal Development (vendor contract)

$60K $75K $100K $180K $220K $150K $75K $50K Based on quotes and comparable project costs

Content creation and editing

2X contract resources Travel and expenses Video equipment

$17K $17K $20K $35K $35K $30K $25K $25K

Signed agreement with freelance writers at monthly rate, plus expenses

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and editing software

Hardware, software, infrastructure costs

Servers SSL certificate Maintenance

$25K $15K $95K $250K $75K $30K $5K $3K

Investment to support desired architecture, security specifications

Cost of in-house resources (priced at $50/hour): estimated phase hours

Project definition and requirements: 60 hours Site architecture: 60 hours SME Availability: 150 hours Q/A Testing: 80 hours Piloting: 50 hours Sales and Training Input: 150 hours

$5K $3K $5K $6K $6K $5K $3K $1.5K

Use of functional employee time for various aspects of project work (e.g. SME consultation, sales and learning department input and testing, IT involvement, etc.)

Ongoing site maintenance:

$5K $5K Ongoing after site is live

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After a moment, Mehta noted that DiBello had projected more than $1.5 million in costs, and he asked if this included buffers or variances. DiBello replied that since everything has been taken into account, he doesn't feel it is necessary to add any buffers into the cost baseline. He also believes the team will find areas to save cost, find efficiencies, and deliver the final product for less than the total budget.

With change an inevitable part of any project, DiBello realizes he should compile a change management plan that identifies members of a change control board. While McKenzie has made it clear that he intends to have final approval over any changes, DiBello assigned the following individuals to the change control board to analyze and authorize project changes:

Peter McKenzie Ed Correia, Director of Hightower Operations Shannon Valley, IT Systems and Security Steve Quan, IT Operations Specialist Pradeep Bhatt, CTO

Recognizing that most changes impact IT in terms resources and time, DiBello felt it was crucial to have key IT department representatives on this board to help the team understand the full system impact of any proposed changes or deviation from the plan.

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The HighLEARN project will rely heavily on at least two vendors: the portal software developer and the content specialists.

To choose the first of these, DiBello issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) to five different software development firms to bid on the project. This RFP asked for bids to design and build a customized portal according to specific requirements and specifications, within an 8-month timeframe. He included information about scope, portal size and end user needs, indicating that, in addition to a competitive price, the ideal vendor would have highly experienced and available personnel, a proven development methodology and excellent references from prior engagements.

Before all of the bids were received, however, McKenzie introduced DiBello to Jed King, an old college friend who had just joined the advisory board for Taurus Design, a newly established web design agency on the west coast. King had promised McKenzie that Taurus could develop a state- of-the-art portal at a favorable hourly rate. McKenzie was eager to give the business to Taurus: "These young developers really know so much about cutting edge social technologies; I think they will bring us into the 21st century." Rather than challenge McKenzie, DiBello suspended the RFP and proceeded to negotiate terms for a Time and Materials contract with Taurus' Accounts Director.

***

It had been a busy first week for DiBello, and he sat at his desk late on Friday, listening to the sounds of rush hour on the streets below his building. He knew there were other things he should be thinking about and adding to his project plan before the kickoff meeting next week. He thought of all the projects he'd been involved with during his career and wondered what else he could do to anticipate problems and ensure success.

One thing that came to mind was training. Clearly there were many people at Hightower who would use the portal ‐ either as administrators, content developers, learning specialists, and sales end users. They would need various types of training to support, implement and update the site on an ongoing basis. DiBello had trouble pinpointing exactly what this would entail so he decided he would wait and procure training resources later in the process when it would be easier to see what was needed.

Another issue troubling DiBello was the timeline. Several people had bluntly told him that 8 months was a very aggressive timeframe to develop a custom portal from scratch, not to mention compiling original content on more than a hundred products and solutions. To make matters worse, McKenzie had been telling the CEO, CFO and Sales Directors that, based on his three point estimate using the PERT technique, the project will be completed a month before the August offsite, giving the team time to make final modifications and embellishments. When DiBello asked McKenzie to explain his timeline reasoning, he showed how he used triangular distribution to arrive at his estimate:

Mean Project Duration = (160 days + 190 days + 240 days) / 3 = 196.6 days or 6.5 months

With the project due to kick off the first week of January, McKenzie was confident a mid-July project delivery date was achievable. DiBello was more pessimistic ‐ he felt it was much more likely they would miss the deadline than finish the project early.

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Before you move on to the next section of the case study, identify the problems and/or issues that you'll need to include in your analysis. Document this information, and consider how you will integrate it into your evaluation of the project.

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Final Graded Case Study: Comprehensive Project Analysis, Part II

Project Scope, Planning, and Time Management