Brief description
Pharmaceutical ltd has been doing business in manufacturing pharmaceutical products and boasts of being able to produce drugs every year. The production of these drugs has endeared Pharmaceutical ltd to many people. In order to effectively handle the increasing purchases, System Developers have been approached to be able to come up with a small-scale purchasing system to enable them to satisfy their needs. This project is being carried out to assess the feasibility and go ahead and commence the development of this proposed system. Pharmaceutical Ltd is a company which has 70 workers in total. There also exist 4 departments within this organization.
However, the department of interest is the purchasing department under which is the purchasing that needs to be computerized. This scenario already qualifies this to be a project of some kind. The project management plan will consist of the following topics: Project overview, Purpose, Scope and Objective, Assumptions Constraints and Risks, Project Deliverable, Schedule and Budget summary, Project Organization, Roles and responsibilities, Managerial Process plan, Risk management plan, Project Close out Plan, Technical process plan, Configuration Management plan and Quality Assurance plan.
Project management has become a vital aspect in any business re-engineering process. A plan of the project management process, therefore, becomes a vital undertaking. The project management plan should in detail cover the core areas of the project and define the deliverables and milestones and the people to be involved in the overall process. The technical and managerial processes should have well laid out plans within this document to ensure its effectiveness. Time constraints may at times limit the quality of the project plan produced. When the stakeholders have not clearly understood and owned the project the plan may elicit incomplete information that may not be fully reliable when proceeding to initiate the project.
This project was initiated after eliciting user requirements. Pharmaceutical ltd has been in operation for many years with considerable expansion being witnessed from their annual turnover records. Due to this fact they have been motivated to computerize their purchasing processing system to effectively meet the user requirements. This plan is all about this process.
Project Purpose, Objectives, and Success Criteria
The purpose of this project plan is to describe the necessary details that must be adhered to ensure a successful project completion based on the project management standards. This has been seen as necessary due to the fact that customers have had delays that have impacted negatively with Pharmaceutical ltd. The main business objective is to satisfy customer requirements in manner of timely purchasing processing and thereby generate profit for Pharmaceutical ltd. The main stakeholders who are the suppliers and customers of Pharmaceutical ltd will be able to benefit from improved service delivery i.e. turnaround time is reduced.
Assumptions, Dependencies, and Constraints
It’s assumed that the project will proceed as planned and the sponsor who is Pharmaceutical ltd will cater for the necessary expenses and requirements fully funding the project to completion. It is expected that the project will run on schedule and be completed within three months. It is assumed that the project staff will be sourced from within Pharmaceutical ltd with only expertise sourced from outside.
External Interfaces and Internal Structure
System Developers have initiated this project and will carry out all the necessary activities to ensure that the resultant system interfaces well with Pharmaceutical ltd. The progress of the project will be reported after stipulated periods of time. The project management team will organize briefings on the progress to the various stake holders as and when required.
System Developers will run this project professionally with a defined project team in place being led by the project manager. He is charged with the responsibility of ensuring that the team works in a coordinated manner and that the deadline is met. Under the project manager are the technical and hardware lead, software lead and quality assurance team,
Roles and Responsibilities
The following are likely to be the typical team members and their roles are as follows:
- Project Manager: In charge of the overall planning of the project
- Technical Lead: Will handle the technical aspects of the project. (Operating system and network)
- Software Lead: Will handle the software aspects of the project.
- Hardware Lead: Will take care of the hardware requirements of the project.
Besides the technical and managerial personnel directly involved with the project, we also have
- Subcontractors who will supply the necessary hardware and software
- Main and sub-contractors must work closely to ensure that the project progresses as required. System Developers will liaise with subcontractors Open Systems Ltd who will deliver the operating system and network management software. They will also liaise with Computer Hardware Suppliers who will supply the needed hardware to run the project
Managerial Process Plans
Estimation Plan-This project is employing the necessary project management requirements as stipulated in the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) (PMI2008)
- The methods, tools, and techniques that will be used to estimate project size, effort, cost, schedule, and critical computer resource requirements will include methods such as Net Present Value, Discounted Cash flows for cost estimates, Project evaluation and Review Techniques (PERT) for schedule planning
- These estimates shall be prepared by the project team and the findings will be well documented to ensure reviews.
Staffing Plan- This is a small scale project and therefore will require quite minimal team of six people 1 project manager, 1 technical lead person, 1 software lead person and 1 hardware lead person. These will work with 1 support staff. The manager must be skilled in practical project management. He is an appointee from the System developers. The technical lead must be vast in knowledge as concerns operating and networking systems.
The software lead will take charge of the hardware requirements of the project managing such aspects as configuration management. The hardware lead will liaise with the team to ensure the supply of all the necessary hardware needed to complete the project. The support staff must show mixed skills and will be able to offer support at the hardware, software and technical levels of the project. All these staffs will be sourced from within pharmaceutical ltd apart from the project manager who will come from System Developers.
Resource Acquisition Plan- The details here specify the plan for acquiring the resources other than personnel needed to successfully complete the project. Most of these resources will be bought or acquired from suppliers whom the project manager identifies through some form of competitive bidding. These resources will be required at the design and development phase of the project prior to testing these can be broadly categorized as follows:
- Development resources: the software and hardware tools required to execute the project (number and size of computers, operating systems, databases, software tools needed, network connectivity needed, CM and other support tools)will be acquired from suppliers who will be subcontracted by System Developers.
- The test plan will require at least 3 networked computers running a network operating system preferably windows server 2003 or later version. The normal word-processing software for documentation will also be needed.
- Product resources needed may include memory, disk, optical disks and other resources required by the team to offer offsite backup.
Work Plan
Work Break down structure. (WBS).
The codes (major and minor) used only help to illustrate the sequence of tasks and have no weight whatsoever
Control Plan
The project progress is going to be monitored according to the standards with a proper feedback mechanism to ensure that every phase proceeds according to the time stipulated. The control plan will heavily lean on the communication tracking and report plan.
Data Control Plan- The data control plan will cover a number of areas during this project
- Types of data to be managed which include test data and live data
- Content and format description where pertinent (such as templates to be used) relating to dialogue / form designs.
- Data requirements lists for suppliers which will relate to the file/ database design
- Privacy requirements related to confidentiality of the data and
- Security requirements and procedures
Communication, Tracking, and Reporting Plan
A business communication plan makes sure that the target audience is communicated with the mission, vision and objectives of being in the business. The audience can be internal or external. It gives a more specific approach on how the plan is going to be materialized.
The table below here indicates the communication, tracking and reporting plan for this project
Risk Management Plan
Within this project there may arise a number of risks that must be handled effectively so that the project proceeds on time. Typical this project may have risk like schedule and budget which must be addressed by involving all the stakeholders and keeping them updated. There may also be the risk in achieving customer acceptance of the deliverables. This can be achieved by carrying out an iterative process involving the user at all levels.
Project Close-Out Plan
This project is small scale and therefore it’s been envisaged that the changeover will be direct. The staff used within this project is recruited internally and therefore the learning curve will be greatly reduced. The project team has the collective responsibility of maintaining documentation throughout the project.
Technical Process Plans
This project being small scale will be carried out iteratively to ensure that Pharmaceutical ltd have what they requested. The system must conform to the requirements as elicited at the beginning of the project. Refer to the Gantt chart below
The project will take about 90 days according to the Gantt chart above.
Methods, Tools, and Techniques
Each resource is to be have specific tasks assigned to each of them. The project was divided into six major phases in order to come up with the best system for adoption in our organization.
- Exploration Phase: During this phase, the Business Analyst also was supposed to work with various groups within the organization in making sure that all the proper requirements were documented and built into the process flow diagram.
- Designing Phase: The documentation would also consist of a comparison document highlighting the major changes between the current and the proposed agile methodology. The Business Analyst was also supposed to create a process flow diagram for both methodologies that would be reviewed by all the stakeholders.
- Development Phase: The documentation of the roles, the responsibilities, templates for new processes and a thorough description by phase on how these changes would affect the implementation of projects, training and documentation.
- Testing Phase: During this phase, the project team was to use the testing scenarios provided by the company from the previous phase in order to make sure that the new methodology would adequately accept all the typical and unique implementation circumstances. The functional managers were also to be brought in during Development to review and provide feedbacks concerning the documentation that was being worked on.
- Training Phase: It was a very critical thing for each member of the implementation team to be properly trained to avoid project problems and missteps. The project team used the training documentation that had been created during the Development phase to make sure that each team member was properly trained for the new methodology, and the same methodology that would always be adopted in the company in meeting the customer needs.
- Roll-Out Phase: This was the last phase of the project. During this phase, the project team were to remain intact so that they can be available for the implementation teams should any single questions arise. The project team would be the first level of intensification for any process questions. Every process required necessary improvements, and the actual project was a continuous project in itself, that would in future utilize continuous improvement processes in improving software development.