Running head: FINAL PROJECT PLAN 1

Final Project Plan

Edmond Labule

CIS 599

Strayer University

Dr. Mark Afolabi

March 13, 2017

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Abstract

Project Scope

According to Kehal and Singh (2006), a scope of a project is the determination and planning of

what a project will entail in accordance with the goals, tasks, deliverables, cost, and closing of

the project. Within the scope is the scope statement that defines the various roles of each member

of their various tasks and responsibilities. For the scope to be in complete order, communication

must flow in a chain-of-command setting from the stakeholder to the project manager until it

reaches the bottom person of the chain. A stakeholder, who is the main source of the project,

must be discreet when creating the scope statement to avoid a scope creep (a situation where

more work may be added to the project due to inaccurate projection). As the CIO of this project,

the scope involves a numerous steps that will guide all anticipated member of the project team

for proper completion of the project. The range includes the goal of accomplishment of the

project, the deliverables, the cost, and the deadline to carry out the project finally. The primary

objective of Brontech Solution Inc. is to redesign a better information system that will be up to

standard according to the client's needs and expectation. Brontech is required to design a system

that will be easy to use. Brontech processes involve gathering all necessary requirements, data

analysis, designing, testing and implementation according to the guidelines and stated schedule.

The project is not to exceed a period of six months.

Project Control Measures

Controlling the scope of this project involves a project management activity to monitor the

progress or outcome of the project by finding out if the deliverables meet the documented
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requirement and managing the changes to the project scope baseline. The scope baseline is the

agreed documented deliverables expected from the project. The scope baseline includes the

scope statement, the work breakdown structure (WBS), and the details in the WBS. To control

the extent of a project is by comparing the current state of the project against the scope baseline

as to find any differences. Depending on whether any difference is found, corrective or

preventive measures goes into action. Any change of the magnitude will require the project

manager and or any stakeholder to decide what preventive or corrective action is necessary

(Nielsen, 2009). The project manager and the stakeholders may a major role in either controlling

the scope because any changes must come from these individuals by increasing workload or

decreasing depending on the condition of the project. All changes of the scope must undergo a

review board that involves the stakeholders, project manager, and other executives that may

affect the project. After these individuals have approved change, then the project manager

initiates the change and pass on the information to the rest of the team for proper execution

(Kehal and Singh, 2006).

Project Goals and Objectives

According to Jarmooz (2012), the planning and implementation of every project must has

goals and objectives, and must be created by the stakeholders, project manager, and or the

project sponsor(s). The goals of a project are the outcomes of the project, while the objectives of

the project represent the activities that will result from the desired outcome (goals). The goals

and objectives may act as the contract between the project manager and the project sponsor. The

goals and objectives keep focus on what is important about the project. As the CIO for an

innovative internet based company, my goal is to initiate a merge of my company with a

multinational company, which may be of equal size to my company. As the CIO, my initiated
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goal of this project is to initiate a project plan successfully that will integrate all systems

strategically to include databases and infrastructures. Given the limitation of time, six months is

required to complete the project. The project currently involves twenty-five employees and there

is a possibility that the number of employees will increase to sixty-five by the end of the project

and beginning of the merger. The five goals of this project are as follows:

1. The project should be completed no later than the scheduled date.

2. The project should complete without exceeding the scheduled budget.

3. The same level of quality must be carried on from initiation to closing.

4. Based on the specified guideline, the project should be completed accordingly.

5. The best should be done with what has been provided.

The objectives are as follows:

1. The project must be able to be conducted according to the time, resources, and scope.

2. The project needs to be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely.

3. The project needs to align with both organizational teams.

4. The purpose of the project should be maintained.

Estimated Cost Analysis of the Entire Project

In coordination of this project, it is important to determine the cost/benefit analysis, which is an

approach to estimate the strength or weakness of a project that satisfy business requirements. For

cost analysis be successful in any project, it must undergo various steps or stages such as

defining the objectives of the business, documenting the current state as-is, collecting and
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documenting cost data for alternatives, be able to identify and document benefits, analyze

benefits, evaluate economic considerations, and finally document project proposal

recommendation (Grochow, 2015). The analysis of cost for this particular project as mentioned

the WBS, elaborates on what the project will benefit, as well as risks associated to the project. In

financial reality, the cost of this entire project will run about two million, one hundred thousand

dollars from initiation to closing phase of the project. Below is an estimated cost analysis that

represents this particular project

Project Cost

Phases Labor cost Supplies Upgrade Total

Initiation $1,000,000 $5,000 $5,000 $1,010,000

Planning $5,000 $300,000 $10,000 $351,000

Executing $500,000 $100,000 $20,000 $620,000

Monitoring and $100,000 $5,000 $5,000 $110,000

Control

Closing $,5000 $2,000 $2,000 $5,000

Total $1,610,000 $410,000 $40,000 $2,100,000

Human Capital
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For proper completion of the project, Brontech Solution Inc. is responsible for hiring qualified

personnel to complete their various tasks in a timely manner. These trained and professional

personnel will include:

Project Manager: The project manager will be responsible for the entire project, and will work

in collaboration with Brontech Solution Inc. about all matters arising to the project. The project

manager will form a team to include project leaders, project sponsors, and distribute their various

tasks accordingly.

IT Personnel: Brontech Solution Inc. will hire information technology personnel because they

are responsible for making sure that all task related to databases, infrastructures, cloud

computing, visualization. Consideration of IT personnel such as system analyst, helpdesk

support, network engineer, network designer, software engineer, IT consultants, etc.

Organizations Information Technology Competitive Advantage

The concept of information technology is to gain competitive advantage in order to

receive increasing attention not only from the employees, but from the consumers as well. Most

likely, it is not an information technology that gives an organization competitive advantage, but

how the company uses the information to make a difference. For both organizations to gain

competitive advantages, it has to provide services in such a way that it will have value more than

what other competitors may offer. Brontech Solution Inc. will use creative ways such as

implementing cloud computing and virtualization, building of new infrastructure, tightened

security, and use of relational databases and data warehouse that will hold everyone in the

company. Information technology can provide the organization some competitive advantage if

the company is willing to follow these sets of rules:

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1. Attitude of the CEO towards information technology: The CEO needs to

understand that IT is a powerful weapon, and ensures that the entire team

understands this concept by coming up with creative IT ideas. Most importantly,

the leadership determines competitive advantage with information technology

use.

2. The use of information technology to create a gap between individuals with

technical knowhow and business people: The organization must understand that

to achieve competitive advantage with information technology, each team

member must be willing to work hand on hand with individuals who pose

technical ideas to achieve the goal. Technology is most likely to bring both parties

together and creates a bonding relationship.

3. Using information technology to understand business problems from other

perspectives: It is good to understand the business problems in the perspective of

the end-users. End-users are those individuals that ends up with the product of

most businesses, and with a better integration of information system, the result is

always positive.

4. Using information technology to design creatively: With an IT system

creatively designed, all the problems of the business is solved in a newly and

highly effective way as compared to the ordinary way. The use of information

technology can gain a company competitive advantage to design new concepts,

ideas, methods different from the competitors.

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For example, Google and Bing are two search engines, but Bing is better than Google because it

uses the same technology Google uses, but better because Bing has added extra values to its

glamorous home page especially when making specific project search (Karehka, 2012).

Aspects of Information Technology implementation into the Project Plan

According to Mercer (2013), the implementation plan for this project will describe or entails how

the information system will be deployed, installed, and undergo transitioning into an operational

system. This plan contains the systems overview, a brief description of various tasks to

implement, the resources needed to support the plan, and any other specific requirements. The

implementation plan comes in at the deigning phase, and updates are made during development,

and finally tested to be used as a guidance of the implementation process. For this particular

project, the aspects of information technology implementation into the project plan is as follows:

 Acquisition of new hardware, software, and other equipment for network infrastructure.

 Installation of new server racks in the data center.

 Installation of power supplies to the new racks in data center.

 Install uninterruptable power supply (UPS) and connect to server racks.

 Install new server racks.

 Install storage area network servers in racks.

 Install and configure cloud virtualization software.

 Create baseline virtual machine (VM) images for each specific type of virtual machine.

 Provision VMs for integration and migration of existing systems.

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 Perform system backups in preparation of migration and integration.

 Conduct system migration and integration to new data center.

 Restore and reconfigure as necessary.

 Test remote connectivity.

 Finally, conduct user acceptance testing (UAT).

Solution Providers to Assist in Development and Implementation

A solution provider is a service provider, or a vendor that adds value to a project by providing

needs to the client through the period of installation to support. A solution provider studies the

current infrastructure of the client, with proper evaluation of what the client needs, with a

mixture of required software and hardware, and installation to meet project goals (Rouse, n.d.).

Below are a list of three solution providers the organization will use to assist with the

development and implementation.

1. Cetrom Information technology Inc.: Cetrom is a service provider that provides cost

effective cloud computing by performing a cost/benefit analysis with comparison of the

cost of cloud computing and an onsite premise solution. With Cetrom cloud computing

solution, the organization will have the following benefits;

 No server will be needed.

 The cloud will help extend the life of the organizations computers.

 There will be no need for the organization to have or hire an in-house IT staff since

everything is hosted in the cloud.

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 Cetrom is proactively monitor, maintain, and upgrade its programs frequently, which will

in return minimizes downtime and ensures applications will be available upon demand.

 The organizations critical data will be safe since Cetrom uses state of the art encrypted

solutions, backup recovery, firewalls and redundancy (Cetrom.net, 2017).

2. Artha Solutions: Artha Solutions is a company that specializes in the development of

data warehousing design, and assist businesses with an intelligent analysis and decision-

making process of constructing a data warehouse. Artha uses critical information about

the organization such as the employees, customer behavior, and productivity from raw

data and provides this to business community. With Artha Solutions, the organization

will benefits from the following;

 The use of proven methodologies and best practices to design data warehouse solutions.

 Develop a cost effective road map to implant data warehouse solution.

 Provide data cleansing to cleanse and standardize data in the data warehouse.

 Provide support in the developmental cycle of data warehouse (Hallberg, 2010).

3. Nutmeg Technologies: This vendor specializes in solutions such as network security and

management, switching, wireless networking (WLAN), etc. Nutmeg Technologies

partners with solution leaders such as Cisco, Avaya to help its customers take control of

their network, as well as to gain increase in performance at lower cost for high value

return. The organization will be able to cost-effectively benefit using Nutmeg

Technology because of the following reasons;

 Will conduct free network assessments.

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 Identify weaknesses and gaps in the organizations current IT infrastructure.

 As, part of the signed contract, it will provide free onsite security surveillance of all

offices.

 IT support staffs available on a 24/h timeframe to solve any issues (Kouvatsos, 2009).

Section 2: Revised Business Requirement Document

Document Control

Change Record

Date Author Version Change Reference

January 12, 2017 Project Manager 1.1.1 Identifying project

team.

January 20, 2017 Project Manager 2.1.1 Prepare team contract

February 27, 2017 Project Manager 3.1.1 Conduct user survey

and document results.

September 7, 2017 Administrative 4.1.1 Document change

Support request

October 13, 2017 Project 5.1.6 Get project sponsor

Manager/Project final project approval

Sponsor

Reviewers
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Name Position

Edmond Labule CIO

Mark Daniels CFO

Donald Sprints CEO

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References

Beckham, J. (2011, October 4). Cloud Computing vs. Virtualization: The Differences and

Benefits. Retrieved from http://blogs.cisco.com/smallbusiness/cloud-computing-vs-

virtualization-the-differences-and-benefits

Cetrom.net. (2017, March 2). Cetrom information Technology, Inc.: How is Cloud Computing

Cost Effective? Retrieved from http://cetrom.net/uncategorized/how-is-cloud-computing-

cost-effective/

Grochow, J. (2015, January 26). IT Infrastructure Projects: A Framework for Analysis. Retrieved

from http://er.educause.edu/articles/2015/1/it-infrastructure-projects-a-framework-for-

analysis

Hallberg, O. (2010, June). Artha Solutions Services: Data Warehouse, Big Data, MDM, Data

Integration, Data Quality Services. Retrieved from

http://thinkartha.com/services/data_warehouse

Harwood, M. (2016). Internet Security: How to Defend Against Attackers on the Web. Jones

and Bartlett Learning, Burlington MA

Jarmooz, N. (2012, September 16). Project Management: Project Goals and Objectives.

Retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net/njarmooz/project-goals-and-objectives

Karehka, R. (2012, October 15). Technology Use: Use of Information Technology in

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Competitive Advantage. Retrieved from http://www.useoftechnology.com/information-

technology-competitive-advantage/

Kouvatsos, D. (2009). Enterprise Networking Solutions: Performance Modeling and Cost

Analysis of Network Infrastructures. Retrieved from https://nutmegtech.com/enterprise-network-

management

Mercer, E. (2013). Chron.com: Technology Implementation Plans for Businesses. Retrieved

from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/technology-implementation-plans-businesses-

57879.html

Nielsen, D. (2009, December 12). Project Smart: Controlling Project Scope. Retrieved from

https://www.projectsmart.co.uk/controlling-project-scope.php

Rouse, M. (n.d.). TechTarget: What is Solution Provider? Retrieved from

http://searchitchannel.techtarget.com/definition/solution-provider
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