The assignment must be build off my first assignment, which I will send to you to make sure they are in sync.
Directions:
Please use the project from Assignment 1 to complete this assignment, which requires that you provide the necessary scope for your project.
A project scope includes many variables. The Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) must be defined prior to the start of the project to ensure that all of the details are planned.
Write an eight to ten (8-10) page project charter in which you…
1. Define the project including the vision, objectives, and scope of the project.
2. Determine the customers who will use the deliverables produced from the project.
3. Specify the key stakeholders for this project.
4. Determine the role and responsibilities of each project team resource. Include the scheduling duration for each resource.
5. Graphically depict the project organizational structure. Note: Include a screenshot of the image file to show your work.
6. Create a WBS using principles of project scheduling and budgeting through the use of Excel spreadsheet, Word table, or other similar project-specific software. Next, develop the cost and time estimates and allocate resources where applicable.
7. Determine the major project milestones and the required delivery dates. Analyze why each milestone is solely critical to the project.
8. Document the main dependencies, risks, issues, and assumptions of the project. Select the top three (3) most important risks of the project planning and project management process. Suggest strategies to mitigate those risks.
Define the Project
Vision
To meet customer needs and respond to their queries promptly and channelling energies to the growth of the business by getting sales orders in and deliveries out fast.
Objectives
- To reduce the movement of agents to and from the management to the market while responding to customer issues.
- To ensure a successful switch-over from Right Now to Salesforce system.
- To give room to utilization of technology in order to make better decisions on how to meet customer satisfaction.
- To provide the right theoretical framework within which the salesforce will be functioning.
- To enhance management from whatever location hence hastening decision making.
And Scope Of The Project.
The project focuses on the switchover from the traditional RightNow to Salesforce response system which will be useful in not only addressing customer queries and requests, but also capture the service orders from the sales agents. Salesforce will also communicate with the organization’s CARE system and this will no longer have to toggle back and forth between systems. The full implementation of of the switch-over would rope in the critical information and present it in real time to the critical decision makers allowing them to make the right decision given the right and latest information.
Customers Who Will Use the Deliverables Produced From the Project
The deliverables prom the project will be used by consumers such as in an insurance sector where the market can be very flexible in adjusting their products and services to suit the market. Since one of the objectives of the project is to eliminate the agents who represent the management in the market and comes, the project may be focused products as deliverables for this research. For instance, the requirement in case a customer needs a insurance product, the Salesforce is able to get information directly from customers.
3. Specify The Key Stakeholders For This Project.
The key specific stakeholders for this project include the IT Project manager, Sales manager, and Customer Experience and Relationship manager (the three-sided Team), Business Analyst, IT Owner, Business Project Manager and IT Cloud Solutions.
4. Determine The Role And Responsibilities Of Each Project Team Resource. Include The Scheduling Duration for Each resource.
| Team | Roles and Responsibilities | Time Duration |
| Project management | Enlisting other key stakeholders according to requirement s and guides the team to complete the project. | 3 weeks |
| Business Analysis | Determines the requirement of the business and | 2 weeks |
| Sales Team | Identifies customers’ needs and recommends the required improvements. | 2 weeks |
| Training | Provides guidelines on how change of responsibilities upon implementation of salesforce. | 2 week |
| Customer Experience and Relationship Manager |
Project Organizational Structure
WBS Using Principles of Project Scheduling and Budgeting
Major Project Milestones and the Required Delivery Dates
In Salesforce, the organization will be able to achieve its desired long term goal of operating an effective and efficient business. Core to achieving these milestones is targeting to have all the planned activities done according to schedule. This will mean the vision of the organization of making sure the customer requests and queries are addressed rapidly is achieved and growing the business by getting sales orders in and deliveries out fast is vital. When these two components are made central to the operations of any organization, then the growth of the organization can start to be experienced. For the organization, the pain that will be guaranteed with the switch will be smoothed over by the expected growth in order delivery and customer experience optimization that should make them more satisfied thus increasing sales (Jean, 2012).
Integrating the milestone with an informed and well designed scheduling will ensure achievement of the set goal promptier. By making order rising instantaneous, the decision makers in the office who are responsible for preparing order requests from the field will now have better information when making decisions. Then they will be able to determine which product/s trends and consumption cycles. In this case, the management looks forward to achieve this desired outcome using appropriate tools such as Brainstorming, Fishbone or Ishakawa Diagrams and Critical Path Analysis Flow Diagrams (CPAFD). Each tool has its strengths that make it best suited for specific functions and aspects in the process (Batrol & Martin, 2012).
Main Dependencies, Risks, Issues, and Assumptions of the Project
Every project has risks and a proper strategy to manage these risks determines the outcome of the projects. The mitigation strategy employed depends on the risks identified. Risk assessment is one of the core and central mitigation strategy and it comprises f both the identification of potential risk as well as potential impact evaluation of the risk. As stated earlier, the creative process utilized in risk mitigation involves brainstorming sessions during which each team requested to create a list of everything that is likely to go wrong. The team leaders would welcome all ideas at this initial stage since evaluation will be done later.
Risk Identification is an important point to begin from when addressing the risks, issues, and assumptions associated with this project. The ideas suggested earlier forms the checklists of potential risks and in a disciplined way, they will be evaluated from the perspective of the likelihood of the events recurring in the project. In this project, development of risk checklists is based on the experiences drawn from the past projects. Assumptions and constraints must be considered at all the planning stages. They form the reference point for project planning. They fill in the gaps between the clearly identified facts and total guesswork. Every assumption in this project is an thought to affect the implementation of the shift from RightNow strategy to Salesforce. In this project the first assumption is that, the outcome in the implementation of the Salesforce will surpass the benefits of using the RightNow strategy.
Bearing the risks, dependencies in mind, and benchmarks of the projects will easily be implemented. When implementing the switch-over, the main activities will include a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). This allows for decomposition of the project in various levels of detailed tasks. By managing these small smarts optimally, it will ensure project success. A Dependency Analysis will organize the tasks recognized by WBS in a sequence that allows for order while allowing simultaneous implementation where applicable. After this, Network Development, which entails developing a network diagram that captures all tasks in an orderly fashion, will follow. When allocating or committing resources, the appropriate individuals with the requisite expertise and skill are identified and tasked adequately. The resources are allocated to ensure they are adequate and cover all phases – build up to the phase out. It is important to estimate the time it will take on each activity and the whole project.
It is important to point out that studies have shown that there are no alternatives to project management method as a result of the risks and assumptions observed. Should the organization choose not to implement and formalize project management, it will be choosing to work at random with no clear plan. To achieve this, the organization will either employ the quantitative, constraint, forecast or unit of work methods. Irrespective of method chosen, the technique will consider the effort-energy exerted and calendar-duration elapsed. Budgeting is important and the next step. Budgeting allows for the allocation of related project development costs over the lifetime of the project. This ensures that costs do not pile up at the beginning of a project, but appear as they are incurred – in the course of a project implementation timeline. Finally, the status report detailing the work-in-progress on the different components of the project – resource load, schedule and budgets is prepared.
Having established the power of the project management as a technique, it should be noted that this power can be harnessed for both large and small projects. Given the multiplicity of benefits and uses of project management tools, some industries are especially suited for this. They include manufacturing and servicing construction among others. By implementing the switchover project, the organization will benefit from the reduction in the cost of doing business, a reduction in the time used to attend to customer queries and complaints better resource allocation and increased quality of the final product or service. These are the factors that determine the competitiveness and profitability of the organization. By being able to break-down complex projects into small independent task, cost and time resources will be better managed. Additionally, project management techniques accrue to the organization benefits including failure reduction, reduction of inappropriate tasks, close examination of the sub-tasks, scheduling, integration and communication (Fuller, 2010).
Risks of the project Planning and Project Management Process
The three most important risks in the project planning include technical, scheduling and cost (11.2 Risk Management Process, 2013.). When considering the cost of implementation, the switchover will be made up of two components: resource allocation and infrastructure needed, and the implementation schedule. Technical risk is associated with the IT department while scheduling has to do with getting the planned activities done as planned before.
How to Mitigate the Risks
There are general guidelines for the application of risk mitigation strategies. The guidelines provided comprise of handling the options available while considering the consequences. These options available factor in a combination of an event’s occurrence probability and the level of severity the consequence for each of the identified risk. Using these guidelines will help the project management to know how to safely navigate through the risks while meeting all the objectives of the project. Where they will not be appropriate, it is not necessary to apply them in this project. The switchover from the RightNow strategy to Salesforce system requires cross-organizational collaboration where the customer experience is fundamental, especially when in relationship with the sales departments.
To mitigate the risks, four actions are essential. First, assume or accept the risks and discrepancies in the project. Acknowledging the existence of the identified particular risks and deciding deliberately to accept them without initiating special efforts aimed at control will save the managers from a lot of stress. Second, try to avoid the risks by adjusting to the program requirements eliminate the risk. This can be achieved through a change in schedule, funding or technical requirements. Third, control the risks by implementing the actions focused on minimizing the probability or impact of the risk. Fourth is to transfer the organizational responsibility, accountability and authority to a different stakeholder who may be willing to accept or is able to work with the risk (Risk Mitigation Planning, 2014)
In the switchover project, it will be very important that the project costs management be inclusive of the vital processes central to the project completion within its approved budget. To achieve this, the resources to be considered include: resource planning – establishing the resources and precise quantities needed of each in performing project activities; cost estimation – determining an estimate of the costs needed to get the project to the desired conclusion; cost budgeting – apportioning the overall costs estimates to individual work items; and finally, cost control – controlling changes to project budget (Megginson, 2011).
9. Summarize the project budget approved by the project sponsor.
| RESOURCE | COST |
| Project Champion (IT Project Manager) | – |
| IT Owner | – |
| Business Project Manager | 9,000 |
| Business Analyst | 12,000 |
| IT Cloud Solutions Specialist | 5,000 |
| Training | 10,000 |
| Data Entry Devices for the Sales team | 7,500 |
| Dedicated Server | 2,500 |
Budget (7)
| ITEM | COST |
| Training | 15,000 |
| Data Entry Devices for the Sales team | 10,000 |
| Dedicated Server | 5,000 |
| Migration Costs | 70,000 |
| Total | 145,800 |
References
Risk Management Process. (2013.). Retrieved November 15, 2014, from http://pm4id.org/11/2/
Batrol K. M and Martin D. C (2012) Management, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY.
Fuller, J (2010) Managing Performance Improvement Projects: Preparing, Planning and Implementing, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY.
Jean H (2012) Sharpen Your Team’s Skills in Project Management, Hoboken, New York, NY.
