Reference no: EM131200602

Assignment-

The objective of this assignment is to assess your understanding of basic project management concepts and your proficiency in using project management software to produce project documentation. In particular, the assignment focuses on the following PMBOK knowledge areas:

• project integration management;
• project scope management;
• project time management, and;
• project cost management.

Your task is to develop a PowerPoint presentation followed by a report for a major theme park company. This business has several parks around Australia and attracts approximately 200,000 families per month. The parks appeal to all types of individuals (both nationally and internationally) including children, adults, teenagers and senior citizens.

The existing corporate information systems are quite dated. Several of them utilise superceded or legacy technologies. Management reporting out of these systems is difficult to produce and general growth is constrained by the limitations of these underlying systems.

Recognising the fact that the systems are not meeting management, frontline staff or customer needs, the board has endorsed a "Digital Transformation" strategy, with the high level goal of modernising its information systems.

As an initial project, you have been requested to initiate a replacement of the Customer Relationship Management system and associated "park pass".  The current application is a thick client (limited to operating on a PC), with no mobile or web capabilities.  There is also no integration between the current CRM and "park pass" (a payment card that is used to access to rides and purchase refreshments and souvenirs while in the park).  In addition, each park has their own customer systems, which are not integrated across parks or with other management systems.    A team  of  analysts  collate extracts  monthly to  produce  overall performance reporting.

From the customer side, there is no way to reward families that are loyal visitors to multiple park brands. The board would like to see customer be able to use their park pass to book online and through a newly developed mobile app.

The immediate task on hand is to develop a business plan including financial modeling aspects, human resource requirements, scheduling tasks, and solution scope. The management board would like to see an integrated, up-to-date system being developed that is accessible anywhere and hosted externally, away from the company's data centre (i.e. cloud).

There are 1500 employees, made up of:

• 250 back office (operations, finance, etc) staff, who need insight to customer data and park performance from their primary work computers
• 50 park and corporate managers, who are highly mobile and primarily need performance information (e.g. customer profitability) on mobile devices
• 1200 park employees, who need customer insights such as cross sale and discount points at point of sale systems or on mobile devices at ride kiosks, etc.
• understand the genesis of project management and its importance to improving the success of information technology projects
• understand the triple constraints of project management: scope, time, cost
• demonstrate knowledge of project management terms and techniques such as: project selection methods; work breakdown structures; network diagrams, critical path analysis, and critical chain scheduling; cost estimates; earned value management; motivation theory and team building
• apply project management software to help plan and manage information technology projects.

Your task is to develop a professional business presentation (PowerPoint Presentation) to the CEO and board of directors of the business, addressing the types of strategies the organisation should consider regarding this project. In this presentation you are expected to provide a business plan/project management document to define the project idea and an overview of costs.

Your business plan/project presentation to the CEO of the business and the board of directors should include the following elements:

1. Necessary assumptions and justifications about the business;

2. A summary of solutions and strategies on expanding the ICT unit to meet the problem at hand;

3. An initial estimated cost and resource structure with appropriate justifications to meet the organisational needs within the scope of the problem;

4. A schedule (Gantt chart) with key project aspects such as milestones, slack, etc to indicate how long will it take to deploy the project;

5. Cost-benefit analysis, incorporating:

a. Return on Investment, with brief interpretations for non- technical board member; and

b. A Payback Analysis Scenario, with brief interpretations for non-technical board members;

6. Outline the plan of tactics and strategies as to how the project can be managed; and

7. A set of recommendations for the consideration of the CEO and the board such that they may be able to make the final decision regarding the future/implementation of this project.