Apparel's Network Project Upgrade example essay topic

Project Plan, Titan Apparel (please change this name) University of Phoenix Project Planning and ImplementationCMGT 410 January 11, 2005 Background and Statement of Need The name of this company is Titans Apparel. It is a large clothing manufacturing store with four major branches in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Miami. The amount of the business that they are accumulating is growing fast, and the current network that they use is not enough to keep up with consumer demand. This is costing the company major amounts of money, which, in turn, is making the company slowly fail in its mission. The network is becoming slower due to the demands brought on by the lack of networking update.

If this networking update is completed the company will run faster and smoother to allow better communication and enable the company to communicate easier and faster between localities and through the consumer. This will help the company make money instead of losing money through there networking upgrades. Project Objectives In order to achieve business requirements, several objectives must be realized. We will be looking at the project's objectives in terms of performance, budget, and time frame. First the underlying symptom which deemed this project vital was the unacceptable system speeds. Because of antiquated equipment the infrastructure of Titan Apparel has severely limited its ability to do business effectively.

As a benchmark for system performance, a two second delay to receive data requested is the maximum allowable wait time. This time extends for all intranet terminals, from the point of sale bar-coding system, through to the inventory tracking and shipping aspects of Titan Apparel. In addition, the system must retain its current functionality and redundancy structure while achieving processing delay acceptability. This project concerns itself with the entire upgrade of the infrastructure at a pilot Titan Apparel location.

Management has allocated a budget for this project of two hundred fifty thousand dollars. This includes all project expenditures, including procurement and personnel compensation. The time frame for this project is six months, with final implementation realized by June 12th, 2005. Several milestone deadlines will be established to ensure project completion accountability, and will be detailed in the project plan. Mission and Goals of the Project Our mission and goals we hope to accomplish include the updating of an existing business technology. We have received a Request for Proposal to update the company's already functional network with the latest and most innovative technology available to improve the flow of business and stay competitive in this ever-growing market.

This would involve changing their current hubs for new and more productive switches, upgrading their current servers and computers with more efficient and faster processing power and basically overhauling their old and slow network with a new and much faster network. The tasks involved with creating this new network include, setting up a complete network in parallel to the existing one so that no productivity is lost during the crossover. With the implementation of new servers, computers, switches and cabling if necessary, the new network must be done in a way not to impede the current business processes. Our goal is to update the current network without interrupting the existing network. Project Approach To provide adequate bandwidth and reliability from each Titan department to centrally provided services. This minimum standard should take the form of a link running at a base speed of 100 Mbps full duplex.

Any equipment installed should have an upgrade path to 1 Gbps and have a lifetime lasting for the foreseeable future although in computing this is ever changing. Current priorities will dictate that we ensure each 10 Mbps link is upgraded to run at 100 Mbps. At this stage each department will still maintain control and support of any pre-upgrade network equipment within their department. The method of approach is to purchase the network devices to meet the currently defined minimum standard and install into each departmental network link that at present does not meet the necessary speed requirements for future network developments. Project Organization Titans Apparel CEO, Scott Fonger, will be the main representation of the stakeholders for this project. If there are any changes that need to occur during the project, these changes will be brought in front of the board by the CEO.

Once the company's board votes, Scott Fonger will bring the results to Jason Oyster, the project manager. The in-house project management team will handle the coordination and management of this project. As the Project Manager, Jason Oyster is in a position that can only be influenced by the stock holders themselves. Jeff Gottschalk and Robert Hose are the two Project Coordinators whose job it is to keep the project moving smoothly.

Since this project will involve upgrading major components of the computer network, the Chief Information Officer, Merial Richter, will have a considerable vote in the way the project is handled. She will be responsible for maintaining communication throughout her department. Each Network Administrator at each of the geographic locations will have the responsibility of the majority of information gathering and implementation of the new computer network upgrades. Task / Responsibility Matrix Nick Amanda Sam Jim Merial Jeff SURVEY CURRENT SYSTEMS R A S INTERVIEW USERS A S PRICE NEW SYSTEMS S A R PRICE SOFTWARE R A S MIGRATE DATA A R S UPDATE INFRASTRUCTURE S R A R = RESPONSIBILITY A = ACCOUNTABILITY S = SUPPORT Cost Plan All projects are inherently driven by cost and the realization of return on investment. The upgrading of Titan Apparel's network infrastructure requires resources of time, money and personnel. Inclusion of cost and allocation of resources are focused on hereafter, and encapsulated within the Gantt cost chart included at the end of this section of deliverable's.

Cost allocation for Titan Apparel is divided into subcategories to enable ease of monitoring as well as accountability for responsible categorical project managers. All cost allocation includes a 10% cushion for unrealized cost occurrences. The first phase of this project is the surveying of the current system, gathering information by interviewing stakeholders and system users. Bobby G. is the responsible manager for this phase and $2851.20 dollars has been allocated to complete all sub tasks of this section. The second phase of this project, pricing new system, deals with the defining of requirements for the business system, exploring solution alternatives, and determining economic and technical feasibility.

Ted Y. is the responsible manager for realization of all tasks and sub tasks; he has been allocated $6098.40 for completion for this phase of the project development. The third phase is focused on the pricing and procurement of software for the foreseen upgraded infrastructure, and includes the requirements definition for the said software, an exploration into solution alternatives, including in-house and outsourcing availability. Economic and technical feasibility is substantiated, with Diane W. being designated as the responsible manager for this phase of Titan Apparel's network project upgrade. For completion of these tasks, she has been allocated $63,368.80.

Fourthly, the migration of data from the old system to the new system is accomplished in the completion of the tasks for this phase of the project. Once again, requirements definition will be conducted, giving all stakeholders input into structure and need for the migration of relevant data. Data integrity and phased migration will be done in parallel to ensure validity of system function ability and system reliability. Jimmy Z. will be the responsible member of the project team for this phase, and to accomplish this set of tasks $18,444.80 has been allocated. The last phase of this project is the updating of the infrastructure for the network at Titan Apparel.

This phase consists of defining the requirements, purchasing, installing and testing and gaining system acceptance for the entire network infrastructure. Fred D. has been given the responsibility for completion of these tasks, and has been allocated $61,652.80 to complete this phase of the project. Thusly, the entire project, from defining to testing and acceptance, including a 10% cushion, amounts to $138,560.00. These numbers indicate the overall budget and include all needed resources for realization of the project business requirements defined in previous deliverable's. This is ultimately what the project will try to accomplish.

To clearly determine if the project will complete on time and be able to deliver improved network response, there will be short-term milestones set along the path to success. The two major performance measurements will be used to mark milestones throughout the project. The first is by measuring the amount of time that each workload takes. There will be weekly status reports from each project member. Each report will contain updates for each task that was assigned to a person. These reports will be able to help the project manager handle each assigned task and plan accordingly if one task lags behind the rest.

The second performance measurement will be ensuring that the projected budget is in line with the actual amount being spent. Because of the short duration of the project, it is important that each week a budget report be generated. The budget report will ensure that each task has the correct amount of manpower and funding to ensure that it will finish on time. While the outcome of the project is to improve the network response time of the company's network backbone, the challenge for the project is to ensure that it finishes on time and on budget. Each weekly report will show indicators that the project will complete when scheduled.

Graphing the projected and actual amount of time and money each task is taking and using this statistical data to graph what the expected completion date will be. Project Termination The method of determining when the project has met its objectives will be through the completion of the project-termination checklists. Included are the closing out project, reassigning personnel and delivering materials purchased under the contract, and proposing follow-up work in order to obtain future business. DATE CLOSE-OUT CHECKLIST x 2/2/2005 17: 00 Survey Current System 3/17/2005 12: 00 Price new systems 4/27/2005 15: 00 Price software 6/23/2005 16: 00 Migrate data 7/25/2005 16: 00 Infrastructure ImplemetnationTime and resources are always the biggest risks, but failure to start any of these projects within the foreseeable future could have serious implications on the future stability of the Titan network.

Resources including materials purchased under contract must be found to ensure that all the projects identified above have the earliest possible start date. Further, and ongoing, training in Network Security is a must. Although you can keep abreast of the latest developments from IT journals and the web, relevant hands-on training, which also provides the opportunity to discuss issues with other professionals in the same field, should be seen as invaluable. Any Cisco relevant courses, and computer networking in general, should be seen as compulsory yearly training for all members of the Network Infrastructure Team. All training and maintenance will be satisfied through personnel reassignment. Lessons Learned The biggest difficulty, specifically for the Project Leader, but also for team members, was time management.

To properly manage a project of any size takes a considerable amount of time that the project leader severely underestimated. The Network Infrastructure Team is now the smallest team within IT Services and it is very much a "hands-on" team. There is a definite clash between a team members requirement to maintain day-to-day services whilst still allocating a proportion of their time to project activities. Future projects will need to learn from these experiences, but it may take a complete re-think of our team organization to achieve a more manageable workload. Ideally someone working in a development role should be shielded from the day-to-day fire-fighting tasks, but whether this is realistically possible within such a big clothing apparel team is another matter.