WBS and project scope statements
You are a consultant specializing in systems project management for Getronics Consultancy and your client, Australian Eagle, has a problem/opportunity that they need your help with. Their problem/opportunity is described below in the Project Brief.
To help your client you must develop:
1. Project Scope Statement
2. Initial Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) for their project.
You have determined that the project delivery approach for the two main systems, POS and Back Office Systems (Stock Management, General Ledger, Accounts Receivable and Payable systems), is as follows:
• POS – an Agile approach will be adopted in order to both speed up the systems development process but to also develop the most effective and efficient process to complete a retail transaction.
• Back Office systems – a more traditional waterfall approach will be adopted where by requirements will be determined then they will be used to go to market to select the best packages to suit. It is expected that none of the back office systems will need to be custom-built as the business requirements for these are quite common in terms of their system functionality demands.
Allocation of Marks:
This assignment is 10% of your total assessment and marks are allocated as follows: • 4 marks for the scope statement
• 1 marks for WBS consistency with the scope statement • 1 marks for consistency of approach in WBS (ie Product based or phase based or Hybrid – either on Phase/Product or Product/Activity). • 2 marks for WBS to level 3 consistently across whole project (Level 0 – name of project, Level 1, Level 2, Level 3) • 2 marks for clear use of both the agile approach (sprints) and traditional SDLC shown on WBS.
Project Title: Australian Eagle Systems Replacement Project Date: 9 Feb 2015 Prepared by: Fiona B Terry, Project Manager Australian Eagle (fterry@australianeagle.com.au)
The Business Situation Australian Eagle is a successful company that offers high-quality and trendy clothing at reasonable prices. The company targets 25 to 40 year old male and female with around 7 stores in NSW and Victoria.
The business was started 5 years ago in typical start-up fashion – ie in a hurry, with a small budget, and with little time to establish systems to suit the larger company it has grown into. Australian Eagle started small with just two staff but today has nearly 30 staff and turns over $6m in sales per annum.
Australian Eagle plans to develop an online ordering system so that customers can purchase its products online. The system will allow an order to be taken without time and geographical constraints.
The systems that Australian Eagle uses to run its business are struggling to keep up with Australian Eagles growth. They are hard to change and are struggling with the transaction volumes that the business has today. The Australian Eagles systems comprise: 1. A POS (initially built by one of the owner’s nephews and today held together by a young university graduate) 2. A Stock Management system that was supplied by a small local systems supplier 3. A General Ledger, Accounts Receivable and Payable system (a small package supplied locally). 4. A Payroll system (bought off the internet and is unsupported in Australia).
The POS and accounts receivable module are fully integrated but the stock management system is only updated nightly via a manual batch process.
Australian Eagle realizes that they must upgrade their systems to remain competitive and to mitigate the risk of system failure arising from so many non-related systems supported by various people (or no support at all as is the case with the Accounts Receivable system). Additionally Australian Eagle need to keep the costs of managing the systems under control and currently the systems support costs are rising due to the number of different support providers and increasing demands the business is placing on the ageing systems.
Project Justification
Lucy Alexander, CEO of Australian Eagle, requested this project as Australian Eagle would like to replace their systems by implementing a replacement POS and Back Office systems that are full integrated.
Note they are happy with the payroll system and as their business model is to gain efficiencies via these new systems they do not expect their staff levels to rise much more in the next 5 years. So the current payroll system is expected to remain viable and does not need to be replaced.
Australian Eagle think that for their business this project needs to be done for no
more than $550,000.
What Australian Eagle don’t know is what is involved in such an exercise in terms of the various activities that need to take place, the demands it will make on their business, how long the implementation will take and how much it will all cost.
Ongoing operational expenses are expected to be $25,000 per year. The anticipated benefits are of the order of $150,000 p.a. in saving on staff time and annual support costs. There is also expected to be some savings via better management of stock levels.
Summary of Project Deliverables
Project Management-related Deliverables Updated Business Case, Scope statement (this document), Project Management Plan, WBS, Gantt chart, Cost baseline, Status reports, Sprint reports, Risk Management plan.
Product-related Deliverables
Note your decision above to adopt an agile approach for the POS and waterfall approach for the Back Office Systems. • For the POS a series of ‘sprints’ as follows:
o Sprint 1 – Define requirements, design, develop and test the Sales, Returns and Exchanges functions
o Sprint 2 – Define requirements, design, develop and test the Discounts and Coupon Validation functions
o Sprint 3 – Define requirements, design, develop and test the Payment Processing function
o Sprint 4 – Define requirements, design, develop and test the User Interface
• For the Back Office Systems:
o Define requirements for the Stock Management module
o Define requirements for the General Ledger module
o Define requirements for the Accounts Payable module
o Define requirements for the Accounts Receivable module o Issue RFQ to a select list of providers (vendors) of Back Office System Packages
o Vendor evaluation report and recommendation o Vendor Contract developed and executed with preferred vendor
o User Validation workshops minutes
o Configuration Specifications o Configure Back Office Systems o Unit Test Reports
o System Test Reports
• Integration Test Plan
• Integration Test reports
• Support for User Acceptance Testing.
Out of Scope The project is not responsible for:
• Provision of hardware.
Project Success Criteria Our goal is to complete this project within 7 months for not more than $550,000.