Assessment Information 1
Subject Code:MBA 641
Subject Name:Strategic Project Management
Your task
You are required to read the following case study and prepare a Statement of Work (SOW) based on the information contained in the case study - Pashendale Holdings Ltd (PHL)
Assessment Description – Case Study
You are required to read the following case study and prepare a Statement of Work (SOW) based on the information contained in the case study.
PHL is an Australian construction company with a strategic plan to enhance marketing and customer service. This involves a multi-tiered approach to winning new clients and capturing additional market share. To help achieve this strategic objective, Virna Pashendale, the Chief Executive Officer of PHL, has approved the Website Redevelopment Project. The project is an update of the current PHL website: www.pashendale.weebly.com
The purpose of the Website Redevelopment Project is to build a new website rich in content including new building developments, client testimonials, recent company news, an affiliate network platform, and other industry information, but with a simplified and user-friendly interface for clients. The website must help PHL work more closely with clients to develop tailored construction solutions. The website must also facilitate the delivery of more timely feedback to prospective clients and generally improve customer interaction with the company.
As PHL has no internal IT department, the design, testing, implementation, and training for the new website must be outsourced. The scope of work for the project, therefore, includes all planning, execution, implementation, and training for the new website but does not include any work on PHL’s internal intranet site. For this reason, the website design contractor ultimately chosen by PHL to perform the work must ensure it has adequate resources for designing, building, testing, and implementing the new website and is properly staffed for the training of PHL personnel as well.
For each phase of the project, there are a range of specific tasks that the website design contractor must perform. For the planning phase, the contractor must create and present to PHL a detailed project plan including schedule, work breakdown structure, testing plan, implementation plan, training plan, and transition plan. The contractor is required to present this project plan to PHL for review and approval.
For the definition and design phase of the project, the contractor must initially work with PHL to gather requirements and establish metrics, create a website design based on collected requirements, and develop a website design proposal for PHL review and approval.
The contractor must then complete all coding for the approved website design, provide PHL with a detailed testing plan, include all content provided by PHL on the redesigned web site, conduct testing in both the contractor’s iLab as well as in a limited beta release, resolve any coding and site issues identified in testing, and compile a testing report to present to PHL for review and approval. During the definition and design phase, the contractor is required to provide PHL with a written status update in weekly meetings to be held between the contractor and PHL.
For the implementation phase, the contractor must first implement the newly redesigned web site on PHL servers then begin providing 24x7 website support from this point forward until the end of the project. The contractor must then provide training in accordance with the approved training plan. As with the definition and design phase, the contractor is required to provide PHL with a written status update in weekly meetings to be held between the contractor and PHL during the implementation phase.
For the conversion phase of the project, the contractor will provide PHL with all documentation in accordance with the approved project plan and present a project closure report to PHL for review and approval. The contractor must then complete the project requirements checklist showing that all project tasks have been completed. At this point, the contractor will conclude 24x7 web support at 11:59 pm on the final day of the project. The contractor is required to provide PHL with a written status update in weekly meetings to be held between the contractor and PHL during the conversion phase.
The first milestone for the project is the release of the Statement of Work on 6 September 2019 followed by a website design contractor selection review process that should last no more than three weeks with a contractor being selected for the project by 27 September 2019. The project is to begin a week later. The website design review is to be finalised three weeks after project commencement and the website implementation review is to be finalised six weeks after project commencement.
Implementation must then be completed by 6 December 2019 with the training of PHL personnel to be completed a week later. The project completion review must be performed a week before Christmas Day and the project formally closed on Christmas Eve.
The cost structure for the project is on a fixed fee basis. Initial estimates for the cost of each phase of the project are planning - $30,000, definition and design - $145,000, implementation - $60,000, and conversion - $30,000.
PHL’s Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Sennveasna Naveen, will be responsible for the acceptance of all deliverables from the website design contractor. The CMO and her team of three advisors must ensure each project task has been properly completed. At the conclusion of each project phase, the contractor must provide the CMO with a report for her review and approval. The CMO will either sign off on the project phase completion and grant approval for the next project phase to commence or advise the contractor in writing of the project tasks that remain outstanding.
At the completion of the project, the website design contractor must provide the CMO with a project
closure report and project tasks checklist. The CMO will either sign off on the project closure report or advise the contractor in writing of the project tasks that remain outstanding. If the CMO does sign off on the project closure report, this will represent acknowledgment by PHL that all project deliverables have been accepted and the contractor has met all assigned tasks.
Should a disagreement arise between the website design contractor and PHL over the completion of project tasks or a project phase, the matter will be referred to the contracting officers of both organisations for review and discussion.
Assessment Instructions
You are required to read a case study based on a fictional company and prepare a Statement of Work (SOW) based on the information contained in the case study. You will be required to include a minimum of 15 references in your Statement of Work at least 5 of which must come from academic journals or textbooks. You are required to use at least 15 sources of information and use Kaplan Harvard Referencing Style. Wikipedia and other ‘popular’ sites are not to be used.
Assessment Submission
This file must be submitted as a ‘Word’ or ‘PDF’ document to avoid any technical issues that may occur from incorrect file format upload. Uploaded files with a virus will not be considered as a legitimate submission. Turnitin will notify you if there is an issue with the submitted file. In this case, you must contact your lecturer via email and provide a brief description of the issue and a screenshot of the Turnitin error message.
You are also encouraged to submit your work well in advance of the deadline to avoid any possible delay with the Turnitin similarity report or any other technical difficulties.
hin the first 24 hours after the deadline will be considered to be one day late and therefore subject to the associated penalty
Important Study Information
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Click here for answers to these questions: http://www.kbs.edu.au/current-students/student-policies/.
Word Limits for Written Assessments
Submissions that exceed the word limit by more than 10% will cease to be marked from the point at which that limit is exceeded.
Statement of Work
Introduction/Background
PHL is well known construction company in Australia. In order to expand the business the management of the company has come up with the strategic plan (Maleka, 2014). In the technology driven world and real time availability of information the strategic plan of the company needs to incorporate the efficient and effective system for exchange of information by the company with the outside world. Thus the CEO of the company has approved the Website Redevelopment Project for the company.
The project will upgrade the current website of PHL www.pashendale.weebly.com . The new website is proposed to help in increased marketing of the company and provide quick customer service. The website will display detailed information about the new project undertaken by the company. And the tailored solution provided by it to its customers. The website will also have a section wherein the prospective customers can post their queries and ensure a timely response to their queries. The project will increase the customer interaction with the company and thus will help it to gain more projects and capture additional market. The website will have the section containing latest news about the company and industry so that the users are well informed about the legal and administrative changes in the construction industry. The Website Redevelopment Project is thus a strategic move to improve the interaction with the company and enhance its sustainability.
PHL Ltd does not have an internal IT department and thus to get the expertise and excellence the website redevelopment project will be outsourced to the contractor with adequate resources for carrying out the all the task involved in the project management on a timely and efficient manner.
Project Management is the combination of skill, knowledge and tools and techniques to carry out the activities and achieve the desired results (PMI, 2019)
Project Scope
The Scope of the project specifies the all the work that are to be performed in order to complete the project successfully (PMI, 2013). The deliverables of Website Redevelopment Project includes the completion of the different phases of the project life cycle as follows (Eby, 2018):
1. Project Planning: The planning phase will include the detailed project plan for every activity that will be carried out by the contractor. The study on success of the project by Dvir, Raz and Shenlar (2003), shows that there is a direct relationship between project plan and success of the project. The availability of modern computerized tools for project management makes the implementation and monitoring part relatively easy if the planning of the project activities is done in detail and with precision (Watt, 2019). Thus the contractor needs to provide a detailed project plan with the work break down structure, the schedule and pan to carry out the testing and implementation. The project plan will be presented to the company for review and approval.
2. Definition and Design: This phase of the project should require the contractor to collect information that has to be incorporated on the website and then lay out the website design which will fulfill the requirements of the company. The project design should not only include the allocation of resources but also include the collaboration and define the interdependence between them so that there is smooth interaction between the teams (Girard & Robin, 2006). The design must be reviewed and approved by the PHL team. This phase will include the coding of the approved design and carrying out the testing.
3. Implementation Phase: The phase will require the contractor to implement the new website on the servers of the company and provide 24x7 support to the company till the end of the project. Weekly status of the project progress needs to be provided to the company. Reporting and updates form a very important part of project implementation and hence it is important that the contractor proves status updates of the project in writing in weekly meetings (Crawford, 2003). This is iterative Phase because if the project implemented does not satisfy all the requirements, the process will be repeated again (Hermann, 2017)
4. Conversion Phase: The phase will lead to project closure after the contractor provides all the documentation of the project and all the deliverables of the project are satisfactory. The PHL’s Chief Marketing Officer, Sennveasna Naveen and his team has the responsibility to ensure that the project has been completed successfully. She will sign the closure of the project after ascertaining that all the work has been delivered by the contractor and the project is completed successfully.
There will be following exception to the Project:
1. Since PHL do not have any Internal IT department, the company cannot provide any technical help in the project.
2. PHL will continue to work on its existing website and keep it running until the new website is ready to be implemented. Thus the internal intranet site of the company will not be available for any work to the contractor. The contractor must have all the required resources to complete the project and deliver the work.
Work Requirements
The details work required in each phase for the successful completion of the project are defined as follows. The listing of work details helps in smooth implementation of the project activities (Harned, 2019). The details of work required are for both the company as well as the contractor:
1. Issue of Statement of work for the project
2. Selection of contractor for outsourcing the project
3. Planning Phase:
3.1 Work break down structure- listing all the activities required for the project broken down into the smallest manageable work (Abbasi & Maharmah, 2000)
3.2 Project schedule- The time line by when the task will be completed
3.3 Testing Plan- how the testing will be done and how the problems will be solved
3.4 Implementation Plan- how the project will be implemented and resources will be managed
3.5 Training Plan- the training to the employees of PHL will be imparted for how many days and duration of the training. Any sort term courses they might need to complete?
3.6 Transition Plan- how to ensure smooth transition from the existing website to the new website so that the work of the company is not affected.
3.7 the project must be approved by PHL
4. Definition and Design Phase:
4.1 Gather the requirement of PHL which are to be fulfilled by the website
4.2 Establish the metrics to achieve the requirements
4.3 Create the website design according to the requirements and which achieve the metrics
4.4 The website design proposal should be prepared and presented to PHL for review and approval
5. Coding and Testing:
5.1 Complete the coding of the website in accordance with the approved design
5.2 Prepare the testing plan
5.3 Check that the website includes all the content provided by PHL
5.4 Conduct testing in the lab of Contractor
5.5 Conduct testing in limited beta release
5.6 Check for any issues identified in testing
5.7 Compile the testing report and present to PHL for review and approval
6. Implementation Phase:
6.1 Implement the new website on PHL servers
6.2 provide 24x7 website support to the company
6.3 Provide training to the staff of the company
6.4 Prepare the report on implementation phase for weekly meeting and present to the CMO
7. Conversion Phase:
7.1 Provide PHL will the detailed documentation related to the project
7.2 Present the project closure report for review and approval
7.3 Complete the project requirements checklist to show that all the tasks are completed
7.4 Conclusion of the 24x7 web support by the contractor
7.5 Contractor provide PHL with weekly progress reports
8. Completion of the project
8.1 Contractor prepares the project closure report and present to PHL for review and approval
8.2 CMO and team Review the Project deliverables and if all the delivered, accept the project
8.3 Sign off the project if acceptable
8.4 If disagreement in project deliverables between the PHL team and contractor, refer to the contracting officers of both the organization- review and discuss
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