ITP Project 1

The following discussion addresses the description and requirements of the weekly integrated team project assignments.

Imagine that your team works for a company that specializes in the design, development and installation of information technology (IT) systems. Your company has been asked to prepare a project plan to install an IT system for a specific client as described below. Because of your company’s experience, the client has selected your company to plan, perform and manage this project.

Your project assignment will be to prepare the project plan to install an IT system needed for the client. This will be done incrementally throughout the course of this class. The scope of the project will be identified in the ITP Project Charter (ITP-1 assignment). The project description is deliberately generalized in order to allow your team the opportunity to use creative thinking and decision skills to develop the specifics of what the client needs (hardware? software? PCs? servers? networking? cabling? wireless? application systems? Web sites? Cloud storage? what?) and the scope (how many and for whom?) and extent thereof. In other words, the requirements are vague and will need to be defined and refined by the project team working with the client. By not providing a preconceived system, the team has room for ingenuity in planning the design and implementation of the IT system.

Remember that you are not to do the hands-on technical IT work of the project in this class or as part of this ITP, but are to build a project plan that demonstrates the company’s ability to plan, manage and control the project of designing and installing the IT system for this client.

Your team has been asked to prepare a project plan to install an IT system in a small dental clinic. Dr. Bob is in practice with his son, Dr. Robert Jr. The current practice and dental office is in a “store-front” in a strip-mall. The practice employs one dental hygienist, two dental assistants, and one receptionist/bookkeeper. The receptionist keeps all patient and practice records on paper in file folders. The staff of the dental clinic have no computers or other IT tools.

Drs. Bob and Robert Jr. have been offered the opportunity to expand the office into the store area adjacent to the current office. This would more than double the space for the practice. Coincidently, two of Dr. Robert Jr.’s classmates from dental school would like to come to work for this practice. With the additional space, the office would easily accommodate these two additional dentists, with expansion room for two additional dentists in the future as the practice grows.

Bringing in the two new dentists will require hiring of 2 more hygienists, 2 more dental assistants, a full-time bookkeeper, and a part-time receptionist.

The current office has 2 dental chairs in semi-private areas, one hygienist chair in a semi-private area, the reception and waiting area, plus a private room for files and a central area for the X-ray machine, enclaves, and other dental equipment. The new area will be have a similar design to provide working area for all of the new members of the dental clinic.

Dr. Bob and Dr. Robert Jr. have identified $150,000 to provide an IT system that will be modern and will make the practice more efficient. The cost estimate is just that, an estimate.

The doctors would like to move to on-line banking capability for patient payments and payments to the practice’s suppliers. They would like to allow patients to make appointments electronically. They would like to have immediate access to dental organizations to help with diagnoses, as well as to keep up to date on new dental procedures. And they would like to have an IT system that allows them to accept and process dental insurance claims and billing.

While Dr. Robert Jr. has some experience working with computers and IT systems, Dr. Bob has none. He is very old-school and old-fashioned. Unfortunately, he will be your point of contact and the person you will be working with as you “fill-in” and finalize the requirements and move to the design and implementation of the IT system. This means that you will have a need to define and explain terms as you work with him.

As you begin to plan the ITP project, keep in mind that until now the client has had no IT system and has had no IT staff. In addition, there is no networking, LAN, or Internet installed, and no productivity software or other applications. You may assume that Internet connectivity is available in the area, however (whether via ISP or satellite or whatever). Dr. Bob is the major stakeholder and your point of contact for this proposal. Your instructor will fill the role of Dr. Bob and major stakeholder. So all questions for the client should be directed to your class instructor. Your team may consider clarifying the requirements, including the available funding, through Private Message email interviews with Dr. Bob.

Message email interviews with Dr. Bob.

Explanatory Notes and Tips

For those not intimately familiar with dental offices, they are rather similar to medical clinics or doctor's offices -- something that everyone has experienced – and there are some level of complex government health care regulatory requirements and privacy requirements to deal with. So you may need to address some basic privacy requirements.

Other things were omitted in order to both minimize the length of the assignment document so that you don't bite off more than you can chew, and to be realistic . In real world project management, it is very typical for the clients to be experts in their own business areas but have little knowledge of IT or especially of projects. Consequently they have little understanding of what kinds of information are needed to do a project, and especially of what levels of detail are needed. They also have little knowledge of technical IT details that may be important for an IT project but aren't their field of expertise. The clients often genuinely don't know what they want or need. They don't know what IT can and can't do for them, so they don't know what to ask for or what's reasonable or unreasonable to request. They also speak a different language than we do. The result is that their requests are often quite vague from our point of view (even on the occasions that they seem specific from their point of view). This will be the case with Dr. Bob!

So what happens? The project team must ask . The project team has to spend a lot of time eliciting requirements, assumptions, constraints, business rules, and so forth; especially requirements. This is usually iterative, takes a lot of time, and continues (though hopefully decreasing) throughout the project. I'll try to reduce the iterative and incremental nature a bit in order to speed things up a bit for this class. Nevertheless, we intentionally want the project management experience to be realistic, so there are a lot of open ended things in the project scenario that the teams will simply have to ask about.

Who does the team ask? The client, of course. In this ITP class project, the professor serves in the role of instructor and also in the roles of the client, project sponsor, and functional business stakeholders. So when you need more information than you are given -- which will occur, especially during the project charter and WBS phases -- don't guess, please ask!

The remainder of the requirements and instructions apply to all ITP deliverables, both individual and team assignments.

The files submitted should be named as follows:

· Your name, Project Deliverable number, Project Deliverable title. For example: "TEAM 7 Projecteers - ITP-1 - Charter.doc"

· Deliverables must have a cover page that includes contributing team members’ names.

ALL of the assignments for this class must be provided in the APA style format, which means and includes the following:

• APA style cover page For All Assignments.

· Use Microsoft Word for text documents. If you do not have Microsoft Word, "Save As" a word document in Word .doc or .docx format.

· Use Microsoft Project for project documents. Use Microsoft Excel for assignments that specify Excel. Use Microsoft PowerPoint for the presentation.

· The following requirements apply to all submitted documents in this class:

· Use Page Setup to configure Word documents.

· Use 1" margins top, bottom, left and right sides.

· Use Times New Roman size 12; or Arial, or Verdana size 10.

· Use appropriate headings and subheadings.

· The first word of each new paragraph should be indented.

· For documents that are longer than one page, number each page in the bottom right corner. The title page should never be numbered.

Title Page (Cover Page)

All deliverables for this class must have a cover page. Use an un-numbered title page as the first page of the document. Add optional graphics if you wish, as long as it is professional looking. In the center of the page, in this order, double spaced, put:

· The name or number of the team

· The name or acronym of the project itself

· IFSM 438: Project Management

· Title and number of the project deliverable assignment

Nothing else needs to be added to the title/cover page. Remember, the title page is not a separate document. It is the first (unnumbered) page of your document and does not count in the number of page requirements.

Include a 1-page Executive Summary that summarizes the purpose of the document, the problem statement or need for the project, the solution or approach (a high level description of the IT system, which might include a graphic), and conclusion of the document. The Executive Summary should be consistent through the semester with the same basic information plus improvements, additions and/or changes as determined by the assignment(s). Questions should be answered in a way that provides the reader with enough background and information to understand the answers.

Unless otherwise noted, the written deliverables (as opposed to the MS Project deliverables) will be graded in part on format and writing quality. The majority will be based on project management content and project management quality. (Specific points and proportions are specified in the rubric for each assignment, below.) This means that the quality of writing is worth as much as one quarter to one third of the grade for the assignment. Please notice that there is a STRONG incentive for ALL team members to carefully proofread team documents before submitting. This incentive will continue through the semester.

Writing quality includes considerations such as, but not limited to:

· Grammar, Verb Tenses, Pronoun Use, Spelling, Punctuation, and Writing Competency.

· Spelling. Remember to spell-check, and then to proofread. Better yet, have a friend or colleague read it before submitting it. Read it out loud to yourself. It’s amazing how many mistakes we find when we read out loud. This is because we are forced to slow down and LOOK at the words.

· In a professional paper one does not use contractions ("doesn't", "don't", etc.) and one does not use the personal "you" or "your".

· Use the impersonal as I have in the previous sentence. It is more business-like than saying, "Also in a professional paper you don't use contractions."

· In a professional or academic paper in the US, companies and organizations should be referred to as “it” not “they.” (It may be different in Britain, but we are an American university.)

· Use references -- in APA format – (in text citations and Reference pages) even if you have all the information in your head. References add credibility to your work , provide sources for the reader to find more information and lend academic credence. References show the professor that members of the team did above and beyond what was required in order to produce a high quality deliverable.

· Write at the "almost graduated" level-at this point in an academic career, written works should reflect the level of education achieved. Barebones or barely adequate type answers will earn barely adequate type grades.

Use the APA format for references and citations. Use a Reference Page as a bibliography or list of works cited when using references, as the last page of the document. Remember that the Reference page ONLY includes sources that you used in the text with in-text citations. The sources used should support your own words and comments. The in-text citation should demonstrate where and how the sources were used. APA format does NOT use a “bibliography” or a "works cited"; only a Reference Page.