Project Overview

The given project is an arrangement between Globex Corporation and Virtucon Corporation. Globex corporation needs to develop an online farm based auction system to converge buyers and sellers together on platform and for the same, they have contacted Virtucon as they’ve been their trusted developer for over several years. The newer system will be replacing the traditional system which is at place so the various manual processes contained therein can be handled automatically from the i-Crop platform itself. Ultimately, their collective belief is that the project would help streamline, automate and improve the entire process resulting in increased revenue and profits.

Globex Corporation is into primary sector of business and makes use of manual methods for their operations. These operations include their customers booking, auction and bidding; managing the payment as well as buying grains etc. In order to improve their overall efficiency, Globex decided to approach Virtucon to develop a system that would automate a lot of these inefficient manual process. As a result, the bookings, the overall management of the current system and the bidding and booking processes could all be automated and streamlined. The system is also supposed to add an online payment interface which would accept payment from multiple sources and can also work on mobile based devices. Apart from that, the system needs to be able to generate and output reports in pre-defined formats for the Globex corporation.

The core aim of the project i-Crop system is to make use of the bidding and auctioning system accurately as well as more reliably. As the project starts performing well and integrates well into the overall operation of business, the business processes would end up being more optimized and faster which would help in reducing overheads while increasing profits. The table given below denotes the MOV and discusses major areas which will have the most effect after the system has been deployed:

Impact of the System	Value derived from the system Save Time On Research and Writing Hire a Pro to Write You a 100% Plagiarism-Free Paper. Get My Paper	Matrices	Duration
Operational impacts	· Overall system effectiveness will be increased · Reduction in customer complaints and also enquiries · Improvement in scheduling · Increase in grain purchases	· Service request would be able to be handled in less than 24 hours · Customers call would be reduced by over half. · Reduction in the overall scheduling of orders from 5 hours to 2 hours · The system is 24×7 active	· 6 Months · 2 Months · 2 Months · 6 Months
Impact on Financial aspects	· Overheads such as Phone bills and Labour expenses shall be reduced. · Increase in revenue owing to transactions carried out online	· Reduction in administrative costs. · Reduction in manpower by over 30%	· 6 Months · 12 Months
Impact on the Customers of the organization	· Improved response time. · Increase in service availability · Reduction in the overall queue · Secure payment facilities	· Decrease of the waiting time by a total of 2 hours. · Increase in probability of the given purchasers by 40%. · Reduction in overall charges attributed to scheduling by 30%.	· 12 Months
Social impacts of the system	· Increase in the partners of the community	· Increase in overall partners of the community by over 30%	· 18 Months

• Better

Globex is aiming to use the i-Crop system in order to increase their sales and thereby increase their revenue.

• Faster
  Globex is also aiming to increase the overall expected response time for customers with respect to payments and bookings that would help in increasing the organizational growth.

Globex Corp would be having over 99% accuracy in terms of booking and the streamlined and secure online payment system would mean that each of the bookings are closed faster.

Once the project has been implemented, Virtucon the developer behind the system that the MOV would ultimately be achieved within 6 months.

Globex Corporation is expected to be increasingly affected by the i-Crop system in a positive manner. The system is to be delivered by the Virtucon Consultancy and the new system is meant to eliminate the errors and inefficiencies of the previous system. The overall operations would be completed in a much faster, resulting in reduced overheads, increased customers satisfactions and revenues.

• With an increase in the newer online system, Globex would able to process customer needs faster thereby increasing the response time.
• The administrators associated with Globex would be reduced.
• The overall revenue that is generated at the end of the year will increase.
• The local community would ultimately be benefited thereby increasing in the finance for the organization.
• The resulting increase in revenue and operational efficiency will make Globex popular and also increasing the market presence in the process.
• The newer system is also set to deliver an enhance accuracy rate.
• The newer system is also set to improve the availability rate.

Project Description

The project scope for the i-Crop system focuses on the overall boundaries framed by the managers and the deliverables that needs to be done in order to realize the MOV listed above (Marchewka, 2014). Scope essentially means that all of the tasks associated right from requirement analysis to completion of the project. Following are the scope for the i-Crop project:

• Collecting requirements of the key stakeholders.
• Data processing
• Discussion of the rules of the business as well as the documentation.
• Detailing the requirement of the system, it’s analysis as well as the evaluation thereof.
• Additional design and analysis required for the system.
• Preparation of the test cases for evaluation of the system.
• Using of relevant checklists to verify the scope.
• Reviewing of the project in order to include the feedback within the system.
• Getting signoffs from respective stakeholders and sponsors.
• Documentation of the overall procedure.

The Scope Management Plan denotes the foundational level of scope and also includes the main scope statement, the Work Breakdown Structure Dictionary and the WBS itself (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017).

The scope for the project can be seen below

• Replacement of the current system that is in place by the newer i-Crop system that is much faster and efficient.
• Ensuring that the bookings, biddings and payments must support multiple platforms and interfaces.
• The system should be able to generate the required reports such as the sales reports, expenses reports, details of the purchases etc.

The scope is expected to be managed by all of the project team members working for the project at Virtucon Consulting. They are expected to have been worked before on a similar system. Also, the main purpose of the project as well as the MOV has already been chosen. The scope mentioned for the project, would also need to be approved by the project team members who are working on this project at Virtucon Consultancy. Apart from them, the scope would also need to be accepted and signed by the stakeholders of the Globex Corporation. Once these has been done, the team members are expected to begin working on developing the system.

In order to complete the project, the below mentioned resources would be needed for the same:

1. Project Manager
2. A team of two architects.
3. A team of two system programmers.
4. A team of two testers
5. A team of two web designers
6. A team of two quality analysts
7. Lead trainer
8. Two quality analysts
9. Development lead
10. System analyst

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The technologies needed for system development is set of Workstations for all the team members, a pre-configured IDE, a fibre-optic based Internet connection, a secure Lan connection, hardware firewall and good antivirus protection along with a testing, hosting and backup server.

All of the above-mentioned team members would be working onsite for the project. However, a separate room would be set aside for the developers and this room would be dedicated for these project team members only.

All of the traveling that is to be done, would be done between the Globex and Virtucon headquarters in order to gather information that would otherwise be ineffective via remote sessions. Apart from the traveling, training would be provided at Globex premises itself.

The Work Breakdown Structure depicts a complete logical breakdown for the work that has been proposed. These have been distributed in smaller chunks called as modules (Haugan, 2001). All of the Milestones are represented by the red-colored symbol.

WBS	Task Name
0	iCorp
1	Prepare MOV
1.1	Set objectives
1.2	Finalize area of impact
1.3	Finalize desired value
1.4	Define Metric
2	Scope
2.1	Define scope
2.2	Prepare scope management plan
2.3	Define requirements
2.4	End-user interview
2.5	Gather resource information
3	New system requirements
3.1	Define testable requirements
3.2	Draft preliminary system
3.3	Review system
3.4	Get Feedback
3.5	Define delivery method
3.6	Get approval
3.7	Finalize analysis
4	Design
4.1	Review system requirements
4.2	Create prototype model
4.3	Review client feedback
4.4	Accommodate changes
4.5	Prepare design document
5	Development
5.1	Review system requirements
5.2	Creates modules
5.3	Assign tasks to team
5.4	Develop business logic
6	Testing
6.1	Unit testing
6.2	System Testing
7	Training
7.1	Prepare training plan
7.2	Conduct training

Gantt chart

Budget

• All of the costs associated with the project have been done with respect to employee’s designation and the workload they have in the project.
• The cost for training has also been included.

• The system proposed would provide 24 x 7 support.
• The system would be functional on all mobile devices.
• The user interface will work for all customers.
• No other system has been developed by any competitor
• Budget could exceed over and above what is mentioned.
• Scope change can also occur

Risk should be identified from earlier stages and there could be a time where the project is abandoned due to the criticality of the risks (Kendrick, 2015).

Risk ID	Phases	Description	Occurrence Rate	Impact on a scale of 1 to 10	Rank of the risk	Response method	Opportunity or Threat
1	Initialization	Change in the scope	30	10	3	Gather all required information the best possible way	Opportunity
2	During the planning phase	Wrong programming method selected	20	6	1.2	Reduction in problem that it would create	Threat
3	During development	Bad initial system design	40	5	2	Accept risk and try to prevent errors	Threat
4	During execution of the project	Too many ideas and the resulting conflicts	20	4	0.8	Mitigate the given risks	Threat
5	Monitoring phase	Inappropriate testing method	30	3	0.6	Mitigate the given risk	Threat

Measurable Organizational Value

• Project manager needs to gather the requirements during the initial phase.
• The development team of the project needs to analyse the best programming method.
• Quality assurance team needs to select an appropriate testing method.
• Developer needs to guide the trainers on how to use the system.
• Leading and directing the team members by the Project Manager.

The overall quality of the project is directly related to how well the requirements was understood earlier, the use of appropriate software development method, the understanding of programmers and the project managers job of managing the project. A robust quality assurance team needs to be deployed and the code should be checked for bugs regularly. The project needs to be monitored for its budget and time and made sure that mechanisms are in place so that it does not go overboard. Verification and Validation shall be done for the project.

• Walk-through and Inspection
• Work of the team members are thoroughly inspected.
• Requirement specification review
• Requirements of the project are thoroughly analysed and a requirement specification document is prepared and shared with Globex.
• Code Review

The code prepared thereafter is reviewed for its quality, bugs and it’s robustness.

Additionally, the following validation activities are needed to be executed:

System Validation

• Validation of the Code
• The source code is validated to ensure there is no redundant parts and that the system is expected to perform as per the needs of the client.
• Validation of the Feedback
• The overall validation of the feedbacks as and when they are received.

Dowson, R., & Bassett, D. (2015) Event Planning and Management: A Practical Handbook for PR and Events Professionals. Kogan Page Publishers.

In this particular research, Author tries to explore the management process and and additionally explores theories and models that relate to management. Specifically, It focuses on aspects such as procurement management, stakeholder management, team building and program creation among others. The researcher used the research to create a project charter.

Marcelino-Sádaba, S., Pérez-Ezcurdia, A., Lazcano, A. M. E., & Villanueva, P. (2014). Project risk management methodology for small firms. International Journal of Project Management, 32(2), 327-340.

This particular journal article was authored by Marcelino and it specifies the risk management methodologies for smaller organizations. It provides templates, indicators, checklists and recommend certain actions for risk management. This helps in understanding of how the risk management works and why is it important for a project of this calibre.

Schwalbe, K. (2015). Information technology project management. Cengage Learning.

This a book and it was authored by Schwalbe and it depicts the principle of IT related project management. It provides techniques and tools for the management of project given that ten areas of project management via PMBOK. These includes planning, controlling, designing, executing and closing among others. This helped in choosing of the methodology for project management.

References

Haugan, G. T. (2001). Effective work breakdown structures. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.  

Heagney, J. (2016). Fundamentals of project management. AMACOM Div American MgmtAssn.

Kendrick, T. (2015). Identifying and managing project risk: essential tools for failure-proofing your project. AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn.

Kerzner, H., & Kerzner, H. R. (2017). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

Marchewka, J. T. (2014). Information technology project management. Wiley.
Rowe, S. R. (2015). Project management for small projects. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.