Homework answers / question archive / School of Information Management INFO231: Management of IT Projects (2021) Assignment: Case Study Due: 10am, Thursday, 13 May 2021 (please note new due date) Value: 35 marks (making up 35% of total course assessment) Berhampore High School – Student Management System Berhampore High School (BHS) is a Wellington secondary school with a roll that has increased rapidly in size (now around 900 students) in recent years

School of Information Management INFO231: Management of IT Projects (2021) Assignment: Case Study Due: 10am, Thursday, 13 May 2021 (please note new due date) Value: 35 marks (making up 35% of total course assessment) Berhampore High School – Student Management System Berhampore High School (BHS) is a Wellington secondary school with a roll that has increased rapidly in size (now around 900 students) in recent years

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School of Information Management INFO231: Management of IT Projects (2021) Assignment: Case Study Due: 10am, Thursday, 13 May 2021 (please note new due date) Value: 35 marks (making up 35% of total course assessment) Berhampore High School – Student Management System Berhampore High School (BHS) is a Wellington secondary school with a roll that has increased rapidly in size (now around 900 students) in recent years. The school’s Principal, Aroha, has become increasingly frustrated with the computer-based system used to maintain student records – it is almost 11 years old, and it hasn’t coped well with the dramatic increase in student numbers. For example: it is very slow; some of the reports it produces still contain errors; it doesn’t integrate well with the School’s website and other computer systems; and its interfaces are very user-unfriendly. The school employs two IT professionals who are responsible for maintaining the school’s IT infrastructure spanning both administrative and teaching requirements. Mohammed is the school’s IT Manager and he has been in the IT industry as a developer and business analyst for 14 years. Gwen is Mohammed’s assistant, and this is her first job since gaining her BCom in Information Systems. Mohammed is also very keen to replace the old system. Aroha has decided to propose a new system for processing student records to the school’s Board of Trustees (BoT)1. She has experience with putting together business cases for school projects but proposing an IT project is a new experience for her. Therefore, she seeks to work closely with Mohammed on the proposal. The BoT keeps a careful watch on the school’s financial position, so Aroha and Mohammed know they will need to present a convincing proposal. All NZ schools have such boards, which are comprised of local community representatives – many of whom have (or have had) children that attend the school. The Board of Trustees is responsible for governance and oversight of the school, including its budget. 1 The Proposal for the Student Management System (SMS) First, they identified the key features that would support the argument for the SMS. The new system would: • Help Administration staff by making it easier to collect student enrolment information, as well as better organise and track teachers, students and classrooms; • Provide information that would enable the school to comply with the new reporting requirements from the Ministry of Education; • Provide both the Principal and the BoT with reports that would enable them to better plan for the long term; and • Enable parents and students to, via the Internet, access information on, and sign up for, various outside class school activities (e.g. sports, parent-teacher evenings, book clubs). They know they would have to move quickly, as there are time constraints. The critical requirements of the SMS include: R1. Maintain (look up, add, change, delete) student, teacher and classroom information; R2. Maintain allocations of students, teachers and classrooms so that there are no clashes and classrooms are used efficiently; and R3. Produce reports that specifically meet the reporting requirements from the Ministry of Education. Less urgent SMS requirements include additional functionality such as: R4. Produce reports that look at trends and make predictions about student numbers, teaching resources, classroom resources, and other facilities. R5. Produce online reports and application systems that both students and their parents can access. Requirements R1 and R2 above must be fully operational by 1st February, shortly before the school year begins. Requirement R3 must be ready before 31st March, as that is the Ministry’s reporting deadline. Time is less of a constraint with requirements R4 and R5, as additional functionality can be provided once the main requirements have been met. The business case was put together by Aroha, Mohammed and Jack (the Senior Administrator for the school). Jack agreed to be the Project Sponsor. The business case was presented to the BoT, and after some discussion around budget and timeframe, they agreed to support the project and make the budget available. Setting up the project A Project Board, made up of three people, was set up to provide oversight of the project. As well as project governance, the Project Board also had to make the following decisions: • Should the SMS be developed in-house, outsourced to a software development company, or based on a student management software package? • Who should be the Project Manager? What roles should Mohammed and Gwen have? Mohammed argued strongly that he and Gwen could develop the system themselves. Outsourcing was regarded as too risky and too expensive. In the end, the Project Board decided on an educational software vendor who would, with Mohammed’s and Gwen’s help, modify the Vendor’s software student enrolment package to suit the specific needs of the school. The Vendor provided a very experienced senior developer, Jian, to work with Mohammed and Gwen to configure the Vendor’s software to meet the school’s requirements, and ensure it is well-integrated with their other systems. Jian recommended that the school split the SMS project into two separate projects, one project (referred to as the SMS-A project) dealing with Requirements R1 – R3, and the other project (SMS-B) dealing with requirements R4 – R5. The Project Board agreed to this. It was further agreed that Jian would be the Project Manager for the SMS-A project, but would return to the Vendor after that, leaving Mohammed to be the Project Manager for SMS-B. Two user groups were identified for the SMS projects: The Principal’s Office (represented for the project by Aroha, the BHS Principal) and the Administration Office (represented by Jack, the Senior Administrator). Project planning First, Jian had to create the work breakdown structure (WBS) for the SMS-A project. This included identifying the tasks involved, as well as allocating who would perform the tasks and estimating how long each task would take. Although still in draft form, a segment of the WBS he created appears below, in the form of an Activity Table, which includes estimated times to complete the tasks, and the people that need to be involved to complete them. The table is not complete, however, because he needs to determine mandatory dependencies among the tasks identified. Generally, Jian has organised the tasks in Phase 1 (Analysis & software configuration) and Phase 2 (Testing) in the Activity Table to be completed in sequential order (from 1.1 – 2.6), but there are exceptions. These are outlined as follows. • • • • • • • Both tasks 1.2 and 1.3 involve interviewing different user groups, and so can be conducted at the same time. The data models and process models require a complete set of user requirements from both user groups. Software testing, starting with integration testing (2.3) cannot begin until the software has been fully configured. However, the testing plan can be developed (2.1) immediately after the data & process models have been completed (1.4). The testing environment can be set up (2.2) after the test plan is complete but configuring the software (1.6) cannot be done until the testing environment is ready. User testing of the administration functionality (2.4) can be done independently of the user testing of the principal’s office functionality (2.5). Acceptance testing (2.6) is done only when all user testing has finished. Segment of the Draft Work Breakdown Structure for the SMS-A Project Task Description Estimated Duration Predecessor Who (days) 1. 2. Analysis & Software Configuration 1.1 Organise user interviews 1 Jian 1.2 Gather user requirements (Administration) 5 Mohammed, Jack 1.3 Gather user requirements (Principal) 2 Gwen, Aroha 1.4 Create data and process models from reqs. 5 Mohammed, Gwen 1.5 Perform gap analysis 6 Mohammed, Jian 1.6 Configure vendor software to meet reqs. 8 Mohammed, Jian, Gwen 2.1 Create testing plan 2 Jian 2.2 Create testing environment 3 Mohammed, Gwen 2.3 Perform integration testing 6 Mohammed, Gwen 2.4 Perform user testing (Administration) 8 Mohammed, Jack 2.5 Perform user testing (Principal) 4 Gwen, Aroha 2.6 Perform acceptance testing 6 Aroha, Jack Testing QUESTIONS: Please answer the following questions, clearly indicating the question number for each question. The answers should be submitted as a Word file using standard fonts (e.g. Calibri) and font size 12. The file should be submitted through a Turnitin link on Blackboard, under the Assessments tab. Project Set up 1. Identify the major stakeholders for the SMS-A project (either individuals or groups) and whether they are: project stakeholders, product stakeholders, or both. Place your answers in a table. [3 Marks] 2. Who are the three individuals you think would be best placed to be on the Project Board governing the SMS projects? Briefly explain your selection. [3 Marks] 3. Why do you think the Project Board agreed to Jian’s suggestion to break the SMS project up into two separate projects? [2 Marks] Project planning 4. Complete the Activity Table presented in the Case Description by identifying the task precedents in the appropriate column (just copy and paste the table into your solution document to save time). [2 Marks] a. What would be an important milestone in Phase 2, and where would you place it among the listed tasks? [1 Mark] 5. Ignoring any resource constraints, create a Precedence Diagram (these simple diagrams can be created using Powerpoint, Visio, Word or any drawing package). [3 Marks] a. Identify the critical path. [2 Marks] b. What is the critical path length? [1 Mark] 6. Redraw the Precedence Diagram, taking resource constraints into account. [3 Marks] a. Identify the critical path. [2 Marks] b. What is the critical path length? [1 Mark] 7. What if Gwen left the school for a new job just as the project was about to begin, and Mohammed had to take on all her work as well (assuming there wasn’t time to get a new developer). Briefly explain how this would affect the critical path length. [2 Marks] Project execution 8. When the project team was about to conduct interviews to gather user requirements for the SMS-A project, Aroha noted that the same people would need to be interviewed to collect requirements for the SMS-B project as well. She suggested to Jian that it could save time overall if the project team conducted interviews for both projects at the same time. Jian said this would be a bad idea. Briefly explain the problem with Aroha’s idea. [2 Marks] 9. The project team started well, though Gwen felt she was struggling a bit. Because Mohammed always seemed busy, Gwen felt increasingly isolated. About halfway through, despite working extra hours, the project team started to fall behind, and Jian had to step in to help. Jian could have adopted one of several different possible leadership styles. Which one should he adopt at this point? Briefly explain why. [2 Marks] 10. Given the timeframe set at the start of the SMS-A project was always going to be tight, use the rating matrix presented in class to evaluate the risk that the project will not meet its deadline? [2 Marks] a. Which of the six risk strategies presented in class would you use? Briefly explain. [2 Marks] b. What would be an appropriate risk response? Briefly explain. [2 Marks]