Critical Analysis
You have just been hired as the Information Technology
Project Manager of a successful multinational services provider with offices in
cities across the globe. The company specialises in providing services to
individual in logistics aspects such as taxi services, train ticket booking,
air ticket booking etc. They use IT infrastructure to conduct their daily
operations, and charge a fee for their services. !
So far, the company is mainly operating on a web platform,
with a call centre model to meet client needs. However, after careful
deliberations, the board felt that a smartphone based application, using GPS
interface is crucial to sustain in the competitive world.
!
This has prompted the management to carefully review their
IT strategies, workforce capability, workforce capacity, IT infrastructure etc
so that they can offer a seamless service to their clientele across the globe.
The clientele is quite mobile, and often undertake travel between many
countries.
In order for the company to sustain and grow further, the
CEO made you responsible to provide a set of documentations along with a
management report highlighting the smartphone based app to meet the
organisational needs. In order to produce this report, the CEO expects you to
undertake independent research to present a high quality report that covers
various IT project planning elements, as described in the course.
You are required to research the background for a project to
implement and manage smartphone based client management system. You will
consider current organizational aspect, and then recommend a way forward as to
how this can be accomplished, through a management report, to the CEO.
!
As this domain is new to the CEO, he is not able to provide
too many details and expect you to conduct whatever research is required in
arriving at the report.
!
The scope of this assignment is restricted to the following
key aspects:
1. Make necessary assumption about your company and
articulate this into a scoping document
(1 page)
2. Provide a Summary report on existing capability and
capacity assessment, and discuss how these can address the problem on hand (1
page)
3. Provide a summary on expanding your IT unit to meet the
problem on hand (1 page)
4. Provide an initial estimated cost & resource
structure with appropriate justifications (using a project management software)
to meet the organisational needs within the scope of this problem (cost
structure 1 page, resource structure 1 page, justification 1 page)
5. Develop a time sheet with key project aspects such as
milestones, slack etc to indicate how long it will take to deploy the project
(2 pages)
6. Attach the comprehensive report for points 2 and 3 as
appendices (5 pages each)
In addition to the above six key aspects, your submission
should include the following:
1. An executive summary sent to the CEO (1 page)
2. A self confessed document stating the procedure and
outcome of plagiarism check (1 page). Please note that there is no need to
attach the plagiarism check report, the CEO is keen to see how this is
accomplished.
3. List of references used (2 pages)
NOTE: The assignment should be a maximum of 22 pages. Any
page after the first 8 pages of the key submission (the six points) will be
disregarded for reading of content. The appendices will be used to verify
quality of information that you used.
The above components are presented to the CEO, therefore
need to be precise, succinct and meaningful. For the purpose of the assignment,
you can choose an organization of your choice, and provide details of this organization
in the scope (a separate section – not more than 10,000 characters with space),
and then build the assignment.
Please note that there is no need to attach a plagiarism
report. However, the markers will be instructed to verify that the content is
original. If discrepancies are found, your work will be marked with zero, and
you will be referred to the faculty for ‘academic misconduct’. Therefore, you are
encouraged to check your written document for any potential plagiarism or
collusion issues.
Any delays in submission MUST be accompanied with proper
approval documentation, despite the course leader approving this. So please
attach the approval to this assignment as markers may not have access to delay
approvals. If the approval documentation is not found, late penalty, as per
university rules, will be levied.
Assignments MUST be submitted in the link provided. If they
are not submitted via the link, then it is assumed that submission was not
made. If the assignments were submitted in other locations, it is very
difficult to track them, as the course team has no access to other locations.
Assignment 5 (35 % Marks) (Due Date 02 Nov 2015)
The CEO of the organization (as specified in Assignment 3)
read through your submitted document and felt that there is some merit in
pursuing the options suggested by you. Through your report (Assignment 3), the
CEO understood that smartphone based app consists of many issues to consider,
policies to be developed or modified at organizational level, and new
investments to be made to manage data security.
The CEO appreciated the contents of the report (Assignment
3) and made a number of suggestions to improving the report so that it aligns
with his organization. Your markers will give this in the feedback form. You
need to provide a one-page document stating how the feedback was addressed in
this assignment report. See point 1 below under ‘Submission Components’.
The CEO wanted you to explore the options provided by you in
depth so that ‘Smartphone app’ can be managed in his organisation as an IT
project, initially as a pilot project. The CIO provided a time total limit of 9
months (in the form of a pilot project) to explore the suggestions provided by
you in Assignment 2, and asked you to provide an implementation strategy within
30 days. The 9 months include the 30 days.
The CEO is very interested in three specific aspects, namely
– Information technology infrastructure required to implement the pilot
project, a comprehensive project plan and project tracking strategies. Some of
these aspects are covered in the course, and you are expected to conduct
independent research on other aspects.
In this assignment component, you are required to research a
solution path for:
1. An IT project implementation strategy for the project as
a pilot;
2. A comprehensive analysis of information technology
infrastructure required to conduct the pilot project;
3. Strategies to tracking project progress for the pilot
project;
4. Key measurement criteria to provide evidence to achieving
on time & on budget project completion; and
5. How Smartphone based IT projects can be managed in the
future so that the organization can develop appropriate strategies for
expansion.
The scope of this assignment is restricted to the following
submission components:
1. Provide a report as how you addressed the feedback
provided for your initial report (Assignment 3) – 1 page
2. With this refinement (as in point 1 immediately above),
analyse and discuss your solution path for the 5 points stated above (2 pages)
3. Provide a infrastructure, resource and cost analysis to
implement the pilot project. The cost analysis will have at least three cost
models (best, medium, worst case scenarios)
4. Provide a detailed justification to the costs considered
in the cost models and state why you chose those cost elements, and how they
align with your solution path for the pilot project (2 pages)
5. Provide a report of not more than five pages covering the
5 points in the above section. This report should have been thoroughly
researched, articulated and presented at an acceptable level (3 pages).
!
The above components are presented to the CEO, therefore
need to be precise, succinct and meaningful. The CEO also asked for your
initial report and the feedback packaged as an appendix and attached so that
s/he can recollect the salient points of the report you submitted and the
feedback given to you. This should be in the appendix, in pdf format.
The assignment should be thoroughly researched, with
evidence provided through references. The CEO is keen to see a well-argued
case, highlighting insights as to the key aspects, and would like to see strong
points arguing your case as to the infrastructure requirements and strategies
for project tracking.
The report is provided to the CIO of the organization and
needs to be top class in presentation. You have absolute freedom in all other
aspects. Please note that there is no need to attach a plagiarism report.
However, the markers will be instructed to verify that the content is original.
If discrepancies are found, your work will be marked with zero, and you will be
referred to the faculty for ‘academic misconduct’. Therefore, you are
encouraged to check your written document for any potential plagiarism or
collusion issues.
Any delays in submission MUST be accompanied with proper
approval documentation, despite the course leader approving this. So please
attach the approval to this assignment as markers may not have access to delay
approvals. If the approval documentation is not found, late penalty, as per
university rules, will be levied.
Assignments MUST be submitted via the link provided. If they
are not submitted via the link, then it is assumed that submission was not
made. If the assignments were submitted in other locations, it is very
difficult to track them, as the course team has no access to other locations,
and the course team can’t assume responsibility.
NOTE:
You are not required to submit the plagiarism report for the
journal. However, you are strongly recommended to check the journals using a
plagiarism application (this can be any application that detects plagiarism)
and keep the report safely. If the report is found to contain ‘similarities’
then you will be awarded with a ‘zero’ and automatically referred to the
Faculty for further action.
Special Instructions
•! You need to upload your essay in pdf file through the
link available on the course web site.
•! Remember, you need to do TWO reviews, mark the work of
other students submitted through peer review system, once you have submitted
your own assessment item.
•! There is no need to submit this through TURNITIN, but you
are still required to have your assessment plagiarism and collusion free.
Marking criteria for Assignment 3 & 5
0 comments:
Post a Comment