You work for South West Health – a community health service comprising four health clinics distributed throughout South Western Victoria. The organisation is keen for all of its staff to undergo Workplace training, including modules such as: Privacy and Information Management, Employment and Equal Opportunity, and Occupational Health and Safety.
For this reason, SW Health is looking to incorporate these modules into its already existing Learning Management System (LMS) and has thus begun the LMS Upgrade Project. Note however, that two of these sites are earmarked for closure due to a lack of demand for health services in those locations; hence the scope of this project only extends to two sites.
The Chief Information Officer wants complete oversight of this high-profile project and thus wants to keep abreast of the project outline. This will require you to give him a time line and estimate of costs, including a Project Schedule using MS Project. The CIO will then be able to secure new funding for this project from the Executive Committee via a Capital Expenditure injection into the ICT Budget.
This is the first time that you’re developing a multi-project plan/schedule. Recently, you have learnt a great deal in using MS Project and are eager to use your skills on this project. You liaise with SW Health’s Project Management Office for guidance, and they happily provide templates and policies which will enable you to make a start with this immediately.
The schedule for one site is outlined below:
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Assessment details (continued)
Brief
Guide to Standard Rates: You may change if you wish
You think of two apparent ways of doing the job:
1. Deploy this only for one site, with a view to minimising potential problems at both sites at the same time; however, this will greatly increase the time to deliver the overall project, and neither the executive team nor your boss would be happy about it.
2. Deploy this to both sites concurrently, but it would possibly increase the risk by impacting on both client sites at once.
You conclude that you need to work on a mixed strategy. You will deploy these modules on a separate instance of the Learning Management System, with a link from the main LMS so that all staff can continue to access the main system in case of a catastrophic failure with the new modules. If the new system fails, it is still quarantined from the production system allowing access to the existing modules.
You also find out that one of the clinics have out of date hardware, which can’t access the new modules. Where they cannot gain access, you advise your boss to upgrade/purchase newer hardware, but that will obviously cost more.
After some trials you are ready to present your Master Plan (Project file that contains the deployment strategy). Along with your Master Plan you write a project report that highlights:
A. How have you optimised the time and the resources?
B. What is the duration and cost of the whole project and what is the critical path and what are the critical activities?
C. What are the resources required and their numbers for this project according to your plan?
Your boss appreciates your work and is successful in gaining the Capital Expenditure funding required to proceed with this project. The duration and cost that you’ve estimated becomes the baseline, and the budget forecast for the project includes a 10% contingency.
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Assessment details (continued)
Brief
The project gets underway.
Unfortunately, the developer leaves the organisation just a day before the project is going to start. It takes your boss a week to arrange a new developer. As she is new to the organisation, it takes her at least 2 days longer than planned to finish the job.
While the field support technicians are checking to ensure that existing hardware at both sites is patched and ready to access the new system, it comes to light that popup blockers installed as a safety measure on all machines at SW Health, interfere with these new training modules. You stop the project for that day, while the Desktop Virtualization team deploys a different version of the blocker overnight from head office, and so you complete the rest of the job the next day.
You also find out that the new popup blocker requires an alternative login method to access the modules, so documenting this process and training users takes at least 3 days more than what you have planned for. You constantly update the project to monitor the changes. When the project is approximately half way through, your boss asks you to develop a formal progress report so that it can be sent to the Executive Team. This report presents the progress of the project and contains the following:
1. Current status of the project
2. Tracking Gantt Chart
3. Variances tables for time and cost.
Assume:
• Project Start Date;
• Working time as 8hrs/day from 8:30am -5:30pm with one-hour break;
• Any missing data such as Public holidays, Xmas Period and state this upfront in your Planning Report.
Referencing guidelines
You must acknowledge all the courses of information you have used in your assessments.
Refer to the RMIT Easy Cite referencing tool to see examples and tips on how to reference in the appropriated style. You can also refer to the library referencing page for more tools such as EndNote, referencing tutorials and referencing guides for printing.
Use RMIT Harvard referencing style for this assessment.
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Submission format
Upload as one single folder via the Assignments submission page within Canvas.
Academic integrity and plagiarism
Academic integrity is about honest presentation of your academic work. It means acknowledging the work of others while developing your own insights, knowledge and ideas.
You should take extreme care that you have:
Acknowledged words, data, diagrams, models, frameworks and/or ideas of others you have quoted (i.e. directly copied), summarised, paraphrased, discussed or mentioned in your
assessment through the appropriate referencing methods,
Provided a reference list of the publication details so your reader can locate the source if
necessary. This includes material taken from Internet sites.
If you do not acknowledge the sources of your material, you may be accused of plagiarism because you have passed off the work and ideas of another person without appropriate
referencing, as if they were your own.
RMIT University treats plagiarism as a very serious offence constituting misconduct.
Plagiarism covers a variety of inappropriate behaviours, including:
Failure to properly document a source
Copyright material from the internet or databases
Collusion between students.
For further information on our policies and procedures, please refer to the University website.
Assessment declaration
When you submit work electronically, you agree to the Assessment declaration.
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Criteria Ratings Points HD D C P N
General sections
General sections of the report include the title page, executive summary, table of contents, and an introduction to the report.
Make sure you include all these sections in your report.
The table of contents should include all contents and indicate the page numbers. The executive summary should provide a snapshot of the results of each section of the report. Your reader should get a good understanding of the result of your planning by reading the executive summary. The introduction section is an introduction to the report. Use this space to introduce the report to the reader. By reading this section, the reader should be able to gain a good understanding of what the report is about.
Outstanding.
The
document includes all the outlined information in this
criterion.
Excellent.
The
document
includes most the outlined
information in this criterion.
Very good.
The
document
includes some of the outlined
information in this criterion.
Good.
The
document
includes few of the outlined information in this criterion.
Poor.
The
document includes none of the
outlined information in this criterion.
2 to >1.59 1.59 to >1.39 1.39 to >1.19 1.19 to >0.99 0.99 to >0 2 pts
Planning report Outstanding.
Excellent.
Very good.
Good.
Poor.
The first part of the report is the planning of the time, cost, and resources. Planning report should clearly explain how you have optimised time and resources for this project. It should demonstrate the calculation and the result for the project duration and cost. The critical path and critical activities should be clearly reported. The type and the number of resources should also be tabulated in the report. Make sure your project plan includes this information: • Optimisation of Time and Resources • Project Time and cost • Critical Path and Activities • List of resources required and their numbers • Printed Gantt Chart • Printed Activity Network.
The
document includes all the outlined information in this
criterion.
The
document
includes most the outlined information in this criterion.
The
document
includes some of the outlined
information in this criterion.
The
document
includes few of the outlined
information in this criterion.
The
document includes none of the
outlined
information in this criterion.
10 to >7.99 7.99 to >6.99 6.99 to >5.99 5.99 to >4.99 4.99 to >0 10 pts
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MS Project Master plan file
The project plan report should be accompanied by a MS Project that shows how you implemented the planning. The Master plan file should demonstrate correct implementation of the following points: • Calendar set up • Relationships logic • Resourcing appropriate • Over-allocation removed • Critical Path highlighted.
Outstanding.
The
document
includes all the outlined information in this criterion.
Excellent.
The document includes most the outlined information in this criterion.
Very good.
The document includes some of the outlined
