7002Ict Project Management Answers | Assessment Answer

Answer:

Identify the problem

a. Problem description

In Dixon Schwabl, there are problems related to human resource activities as well as processes as the company is conducted of human resource functions manually. There are problems related to tracking of compensation, human performance, organisational development, employee's motivation and training. The proposed system is the Human Resource Management System (HRMS). As the current system of this company is a manual process, therefore it takes a lot of time of track of human resources. There are problems with HR reporting as it is difficult to see value into tracking of HR information.

b. System capabilities

The system capabilities of HRMS are employee information database. It can eliminate and reduce the requirement for the hard copy of the employee's files. The system allows the company to keep employee data integrated with the payroll data. It comes to make changes into paying, scheduling and keeping track of the employee’s hours. With this HR modules, the system has capabilities to store as well as evaluate of applications, monitor of claims and also perform of a proper background check.

c. Expected business benefits

The proposed HRM system provides benefits to Dixon Schwabl by combining with the HR functions like storing the data of employee, management of payroll, processes related to recruitment and tracking of attendance records. The system is used to manage people and also workplace culture. The managers can get benefits by digging through paperwork and filling out the appraisals forms into the system. Storing of information into the system can help to improve efficiency into recording as well as the finding of information. HR systems can save of the amounts of time and help to make sure that there are the proper employees. The HR system can help to raise the hiring standards. It is simple to convert of application’s information into employee file once the decisions of hiring are taken place.

2. Quantify project approval factors

a. Breakdown of estimated time for project completion

Chart 1:    Project completion time

From the above chart, it is analysed that the start time of this project is 8^th August, 2018 and the finish time is 18^th January, 2019. The total duration of this task is 120 days. The total estimation of time helps to understand the project progress so that the project manager can understand the required time to complete the work. Schedule of time estimation is needed to complete the action with a scheduled time. Therefore, scheduling is necessary for any project so that there are no such possibilities of delays into the project work. Consequently, it reflects on the actual status of the project tasks with its start as well as finish date.

b. Summary of development costs for the project and system

From the above table, it is analysed that the total development cost of this project work is $50,000. The value is involved with the activities which create as well as improve products along with project processes. The expenditures are to be charged to expense as it is incurred. It is termed a total cost which is incurred from initiation to the project implementation. The development cost for this particular project work is accounted for and depended based on nature of value as well as stages of the project. In this project, the development cost is included in hardware, software, development team salaries and training.

c. Summary of estimated annual operating costs

 From the above table, it is analysed that the total operational cost of this project work is $35,500. The operational cost is such expenses which are associated with hardware, software and operational labour.  It is maintenance as well as administration of the business on a regular basis. It is a component to operate of income as well as reflected in the income statement of the company. This particular cost is a cost per unit of the product and service and also annual cost which is incurred on a regular basis. Operating loss is the key components of operating income calculations. The price is fixed; therefore each of value is being identical from month to month.

d. Undertake of cost/benefit analysis

1. Anticipated benefits from the deployment of a new system

The expected benefits of implementation of the new information system are based on some factors such as improvement of information, strategic advantage, and reduction of technology cost, development of better applications, reduction of travel cost and reduction of workforce cost.

Tangible benefits are:

• Improves productivity of business processes and personnel
• Lowering the product cost as well as services purchased
• Reduction of inventory cost
• Reduction of lead time
• Faster product and automated payment

Intangible benefits are:

• Increasing of organizational transparency
• Proper and faster access to the data
• Improvement over customer responses
• Saving of time as well as effort
• Facilitating of strategic planning

1. Summary of estimated annual benefits

3. Perform risk and feasibility analysis

a.  Determine organizational risks and feasibility

The regulatory risks are caused due to material risks which are required to implement the system. There is a possibility of defective hardware and software products, security vulnerabilities and threats into the system are provided with a higher effect on the organisational reputation (Aven 2016).

Organizational feasibility is focused on corporate as well as a legal structure of a business. It is included of professional background of organisation which is going to implement the system and for what purpose (Phelan et al. 2017). It is conducted to determine whether the proposed business has proper management expertise, competence and resources to implement of a proposed system.

b. Evaluate technological risks and feasibility

There are technical risks to IT systems as well as data such as:

Hardware and software failure: There are power loss as well as the corruption of data.

Malware: The malicious software is designed for disruption of computational operations.

Viruses: The implementation of HRMS contains computer code that can spread from one computer to other and it causes disruption of the computer operations (Olson and Wu 2015).

Human error: There are incorrect processing of data which are caused by the human side.  

Technical feasibility is focused on gaining an understanding of the technical resources working into the project, and there is also the applicability of expected requirements of a proposed information system. There is also an evaluation of hardware as well as software to meet with proposed system requirements if the system is working correctly or not (Phelan et al. 2017). Feasibility is conducted to analyse infrastructure design meet with need specified throughout the development phase. The system requirements of this proposed project work are achievable.  

c. Assess resource risks and feasibility

It causes from outsourcing of the implementation project of information to other company and personnel related issues. Into this project, availability of people itself a risk which is created by the staffs leaving the project permanently and taking of unscheduled leaves from the project work anytime (Grigoreva et al. 2015). Therefore, it creates resource risks, and there is a delay in the project work.

Resource feasibility is focused on how much time is required to implement the new system in the company, whether the system interferes with the normal business operations and amount of the resources needed to achieve the proposed method.

d. Identify schedule risks and feasibility

Schedule risks are caused when there is no proper planning of implementation of the proposed system. Due to lack of resources and financial items, there is the possibility of schedule delay and the project work is not able to complete its plan within the scheduled date (Lam 2014).

The project will fail when it takes a long time to complete before it is useful. Schedule feasibility is done to estimate how long the system will take to implement, and if it can able to finish in provided time. This feasibility is done to measure how reasonable the project timetable is to be. The project is considered feasible as it meets with its schedule requirements.

4. Establish of project environment of HRMS

a. Outline information will capture during system development, tools and software 

b. Work environment

HRM system keeps records of leaves which are taken by the employees. Both employers along with employee can able to access to data, and they are working towards better planning and allocating of future leaves. The system can also plan and keep track of monetary assets. The system is provided with comprehensive information concerning ease of decisions making. The payroll system can help to track the salaries of employees and payments (Stark 2015). The employee can also be able to follow their details while the employer can keep the employees in check. This efficiency system can also save costs in the long run. It provides with easier reference to the employee grading that could be the basis to provide incentives to the employees. Therefore, this proposed system is helpful to manage and track human resources.

c. Processes and procedures that will be used

HRMS is used to manage employee data. The system will use for better record keeping, improvement of the quality of HR reporting, incorporating the functions related to HR processes and improving the operational efficiency of human resource functions. The methods and procedures used to implement of the proposed system are as follows:

• The system is configured with the company's operations and policies associated with payroll and pay increased as well as training (Vithani and Kumar 2014).
• The data is interfaced with another system, also, to convert the company's historical information into the new proposed system (Abdelrazek et al.2017). Sometimes, it is better to roll the system to a small test to get feedback.
• The system is to be prepared with budgeting time as well as money to implement, train as well as communicate.

5. Schedule the work

a. Work breakdown structure (WBS)

Figure 1: Work breakdown structure

(Source: Created by author)

Work breakdown structure (WBS) is the project deliverable which organised the work of the team into manageable sections. It is a deliverable-oriented hierarchical decomposition of work which is being executed by the project team. From the above figure, it is analysed that there are main eight main activities of this project plan, among which each of the sub-activities is described. It defines the scope of the proposed HRM system into manageable chunks that the project team can able to understand. It started with a project as an essential deliverable and decomposed with sub-deliverables. The side of the project creates of WBS by identification of functional deliverables and also sub-divide the deliverables into smaller systems. Specific work packages are required to produce of sub-deliverable recognised in addition to group together.  It is represented by a list of tasks for the building of a particular unit of work.

Gantt chart is a way to show of the project activities or tasks displayed against the time. From the above chart, it is analysed that the start time of this project is 8^th August 2018 and the finish time is 18^th January 2019. The total duration required to finish the project is 120 days. Each of the project activity is being represented by a bar, which is a length of bar reflects the start date and duration and end date of this activity. This chart is used to track schedule. It shows additional information about project phases and progress date of each project activities. Gantt chart provides the project status, and it shows the task dependencies. Therefore, it reflects on the actual state of the project tasks with its start as well as finish date.

References

Abdelrazek, M.A., El-Sheikh, A.T., Zayan, M. and Elhady, A.M., 2017. Systems Engineering Management Using Transdisciplinary Quality System Development Lifecycle Model. World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, International Journal of Mechanical, Aerospace, Industrial, Mechatronic and Manufacturing Engineering, 11(1), pp.115-125.

Aven, T., 2016. Risk assessment and risk management: Review of recent advances on their foundation. European Journal of Operational Research, 253(1), pp.1-13.

Grigoreva, D., Bobojonov, I., Aw-Hassan, A., Biradar, C. and Nurbekov, A., 2015. The feasibility of index-based insurance as a risk management tool in Central Asia. In 55th Annual Conference, Giessen, Germany, September 23-25, 2015 (No. 209228). German Association of Agricultural Economists (GEWISOLA).

Kramer, M., 2018. Best Practices in Systems Development Lifecycle: An Analyses Based on the Waterfall Model.

Lam, J., 2014. Enterprise risk management: from incentives to controls. John Wiley & Sons.

Olson, D.L. and Wu, D.D., 2015. Enterprise risk management(Vol. 3). World Scientific Publishing Company.

Phelan, E.A., Pence, M., Williams, B. and MacCornack, F.A., 2017. Telephone Care Management of Fall Risk:: A Feasibility Study. American journal of preventive medicine, 52(3), pp.S290-S294.

Stark, J., 2015. Product lifecycle management. In Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 1) (pp. 1-29). Springer, Cham.

Vithani, T. and Kumar, A., 2014. Modeling the mobile application development lifecycle. In Proceedings of the International MultiConference of Engineers and Computer Scientists (Vol. 1, pp. 596-600).