Instructions
Tasks
Scenario
A project manager in an IT services provider has delegated routine financial reporting to an administrator in the PPSO. Each month the administrator downloads the monthly budget reports from the corporate ledger system into a spreadsheet to put into the project format. This report is what the Project Board sees.
Until this month the budget has appeared to be under control. However, this month’s statement shows a major overspend on hardware: equipment ordered three months ago has only just been delivered and the budget did not allow for the VAT element. The finance department realised that a batch of agency staff invoices had been wrongly coded to another project but have now been charged back to this budget.
The latest report prepared by the PPSO administrator is shown below.
| Cost code | Heading | Month | Year to date | ||
| Budget | Actual | Budget YTD | Actual YTD | ||
| A3 | Server hardware | 3500 | 5400 | 7000 | 6800 |
| G7 | Agency staff | 2000 | 3874 | 4120 | 4150 |
| S4 | Software licenses | 3200 | 1900 | 5600 | 2170 |
| J19 | Training | 2100 | 1840 | 6750 | 7400 |
Exercise 2: Managing an IT procurement
Instructions
Tasks
Scenario
As part of its corporate strategy, a UK retail DIY chain plans to implement customer self-service checkouts in its stores. It has 60 stores in retail parks in large UK cities, each of which has 50 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff and 15 checkouts. The company has three corporate IT systems, each from different vendors: (1) stock control and ordering, (2) financial accounting, (3) customer online ordering. The existing checkouts are integrated with the stock control system. The company uses a fourth supplier to provide data integration between the three corporate systems. All operational IT support is outsourced to a service provider.
Exercise 3: Quality management
Instructions
Tasks
Scenario
On 15 January 2011, a German bank, Schwarzböse, will complete the acquisition of a UK financial services provider, Klesvask, which offers pensions, insurance and investments. Klesvask has 300 staff in 5 sites and uses 15 different software applications, 8 of which are COTS applications supported by the vendors and the others were developed and are maintained in-house. All the applications share a common customer index with a registry of which systems contain records about the given customer.
Schwarzböse plans to migrate 10 of Klesvask’s systems (5 of the in-house and 5 of the COTS) to its standard corporate systems. The other Klesvask systems need to be maintained. The Schwarzböse systems all interoperate using an integration engine, defined XML transactions and a standard data dictionary and reference code tables. Schwarzböse also wants to get its corporate timesheet recording system in use by all the former Klesvask staff by June 2011.
The aim is to complete the system migrations within 12 months. Schwarzböse expects to be able to reduce its UK external IT support costs by 30%, decrease overall headcount by 15% and cut the in-house software development team from 15 staff to 4 when the migrations are completed.
The financial services market continues to be volatile and the European and UK regulators are expected to seek assurances about the quality controls of the takeover plans. As part of its QMS, Schwarzböse has adapted PRINCE2 as its project management standard and ITIL as its service management standard.
This information comprises the project brief. The project is now in its initiation stage.
Exercise
The scenario provides an effective view regarding budget formation conventionally for monitoring the activity of the project. The primary failing that has been led to the problem of the major overspend on the hardware is due to the wrong ledger posting of the staff members. It is the fact that employees were unaware while performing the activity and they coded in the wrong way that led to overspending within the project (Schoonwinkel, & Fourie, 2016). The suitable changes that could be performed to bring the project back on the track are to rectify the losses and the wrong ledger posting within the system.
It is also essential for the project team to check thoroughly about their every step within the system on a daily basis so that the project can be on track. The agency staff along with the other staff members associated with the project have to perform the paperwork thoroughly (Winch, & Leiringer, 2016). The project manager also needs to maintain a regular check on the activities conducted by the team members. After the analysis of the scenario, it is recommended that the project need not be stopped as the problem can be rectified and also the project can be on track.
The DIY chain with the implementation plan of customer self-service checkout in the various stores allows the retail sector to maintain the customers and the financial service within the field. The system will be managed most effectively and suitably where the customers will have the chance to set their order and also look for the available stock within the store (Bertazzi, Bosco, & Laganà, 2015). The system is eventually associated with the stock control and ordering IT system for providing a clear and effective self-checkout system to the customers. They have also appointed the full-time staff for maintaining and check out if it is working properly.
The three statements financial model is considered to be the best for the firm to maintain the financial activity and the procurement of the retail store. In this model, there is three primary statement that is Income statement, Balance sheet and Cashflow statement (He, Huang, & Yuan, 2016). This system helps to check the stock and the financial activity and even the information system activity within the firm for the betterment of the service. The firm can adopt this for maintaining the activity and also for the self-checkout system in the field.
The quality of any product is the vital phase that helps the firm to maintain their market position. In the scenario, the expected quality for the project product is of high quality, and for that, the project management performs various actions like integrating advanced system then the XML transaction and the management standard in the market (Sanz-Calcedo et al., 2015). The maintenance of quality regarding the project product allows them to develop their working function within the market. The system effectively maintains the activity within the firm and provide a valuable activity for the development of the process in the project management.
The standard and process that are highly required for achieving the quality is the process of PRINCE2 which is the project management standard. This is used for the development of quality standard within the project and also for the improvement of the system (O’Neill, Sohal, & Teng, 2016). Then the process of ITIL standard is also utilised which is considered as the service management standard. These are effectively used within the project management so that the standard quality has been maintained within the project product. It is highly essential for the improvement of project activity for maintaining product quality. For maintaining the standard it is also suggested utilise the process of ISO 9001:2015. It help the firm to get specific requirement for the improvement of quality system when the firm needs to demonstrate the suitability of maintaining consistency in the product and also they have the aim for the enhancement of the customer satisfaction. This system is suitable for providing the valuable understanding of the quality standard in the firm.
Login
Pages: 4
Words: 890