Faculty of Commerce and Economics

Department of Business Administration and Marketing

Project Management
)BUSA739(
MBA

Assignment
Aims:
This assignment is designed to demonstrate your:
• understanding of project planning, in particular the methods and techniques used in
planning and controlling a project
• ability to develop appropriate deliverables at different stages of the project
• understanding of risk, communications, team management, and quality management
aspects of a project
• ability to appropriately document aspects of project management using project
management software tools.

Assignment Details
You are a manager responsible for the IT function of a medium size pharmaceutical
distribution company. Mr. Peter Seddon (VP of Operations) who is an influential
member of the senior leadership team has asked you to consider developing an
ecommerce project that involves creation of a company web site with transaction
handling capabilities with key customers. The project is urgent and needs to be
completed within four months. The company has Internet access that includes space
on a web server, but has no prior experience in developing online applications using
web technologies. In addition to creating the ecommerce application, Peter would like
you to train two sales staff to do simple web site updates. Peter also wants the web
site to include the following details:
description of the organization (mission, history, and recent events)
- list of services offered
- contact information

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- graphics (photographs and other images)
- online purchasing by the company’s customers
The online purchasing facility will need to include
- protected customer password entry
- product codes on the online form should be selected from the company’s ERP
system
- customers should be able to view the stock status accessed from the company’s
ERP system
- online submission of customer enquires
YOUR TASK:
Drawing on this description of the e-commerce project you are required to produce a
series of documents that address the main activities and milestones of the initiation,
planning and control phases of project management.

Project Initiation Phase

Peter Seddon has made a presentation about his proposed e-commerce project to the
senior leadership committee meeting in order to get approval for the ecommerce
project. He presented a Business Case to the committee to help him secure their
approval for this project.
The Business Case includes many of the details that will form the Project Charter.
At the conclusion of his presentation, the committee authorized Peter to implement
the project. To get the project started, Peter has asked you to draw up a Project
Charter as the formal authority for the project. Peter has agreed to serve as the
primary sponsor of the project and he has appointed you as the project manager.
While preparing the Project Charter report you will also need to - identify other
stakeholders (e.g. key customers) in consultation with Peter
- identify costs involved in the e-commerce project
- hire an e-commerce consultant for a short period
You may need to make other necessary assumptions in preparing the Charter but
make sure these are clearly stated.
An outline of the Project Charter is provided below:
• Project title and date of authorization
• Project manager’s name and contact details
• Summary schedule

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- Start and end dates
- Milestones
• Summary budget
• Brief description of objectives, and the business requirements or justifications for
project
• Summary of the project management methodology including
- Assumptions, constraints and expectations
- Governance
• Roles and responsibilities
• Sign-off section
• Comments

Deliverables: A Project Charter

Project Planning Phase
Peter has obtained formal approval for the e-commerce project by getting the sign off
from the company CEO. You are now required to develop a project plan to implement
this project.
To support the project plan, you may need to collect additional information from the
stakeholders.
In addition to yourself as project manager, Peter has assigned 2 other staff to the
project (Rahim and Henry) and has authorized you to hire Thomas as an ecommerce
consultant.
Thomas will be under contract for 2 months at a rate of $60/hr. Other team members
will be charged out at $40 per hour. All team members will work under the
company’s Enterprise Agreement that specifies normal working hours as 8 hours per
day, Monday to Friday.
After further discussion with Peter, an outline of the project scope including some of
the specific analysis, design, and implementation tasks required for the e-commerce
project are set out below:
Collect information on the organization in hardcopy and digital form (brochures,
reports, organization charts, photographs, and so on)
• Research web sites of similar organizations
• Collect detailed information about the company’s design preferences and access to
space on a web server

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• Develop a template for the company to review (background colour for all pages,
position of navigation buttons, layout of text and images, typography, including basic
text font and display type and so on).
• Create a site map or hierarchy chart showing the flow of web pages
• Digitize the photographs and find other images for the web pages
• Create the individual web pages for the site
• Test the pages and the site
• Implement the web site on the company’s web server
• Get user feedback
• Incorporate changes
• Create training materials for the company on how to update the web pages
• Train the company’s staff on updating the web pages
• Include project review that will be recurring over the life of the project
• Crash test the web site, a task that will take 2 days and run 24 hours/day.
The project plan you draw up should include the following:
• The systems development methodology adopted for the project;
• A work breakdown structure including task duration estimates and dependencies
• Milestone list
• A project schedule
These four items should be summarized with a Gantt chart showing dependencies and
milestones with duration as horizontal bars, and with a network diagram.
• Identification of resources and costing the project by assigning resources to project
activities.
• A quality management plan
• A risk management plan
An outline for the Project Plan is given below:
• Title
• Author/authority
• Overview of the project (the context of the project and goal of the project)
• Project organization (who is involved i.e. stakeholders) and the reporting structure)
• Work to be performed (overview of what will be done and how its will be done)
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• Schedule information (project duration, dependencies and other time constraints)
• Budget for the project by assigning resources to the tasks
• Use of project management support tools/techniques/methods
• Management of the projects including quality management plans, risk management
plans and communication management plans
• Appendices (reference to other project planning documents)

Deliverables: A Project Plan

Project Control Phase
As the project manager, you need to monitor the progress of the e-commerce project.
At this stage, you are required perform the following specific activities:
a) Assume that after one month from the commencement of the project, Thomas, the
ecommerce consultant, has re-negotiated his hourly rate with the company
management and his new rate has changed to A$80/hr. Indicate how it affects the
budget and take appropriate action to accommodate this change.
b) Assume that one project team member (Rahim) will become unavailable (due to
overseas conference attendance) for 1 week in the middle of the project. Make
adjustments to accommodate this leave so that the schedule does not slip and the costs
do not change.
Document the changes from the original plan and prepare a new plan.
c) Assume that user feedback indicates some areas in which major changes are
required which is estimated to take 1 week’s work. Indicate how the original plan is
affected by this proposed change.

Deliverables: Revised Project Plan

Note:-
I need a complete Project Charter, Project Plan and Revised Project Plan. All are
required in both word and MS Project format.
Please read the directions carefully and submit all the deliverables required.

Assessment Criteria:
Deliverables 20%
Presentation : 10%

Submission Date: Thursday 5/5/2011