WBS and Pert for New Email Upgrade, Research Paper Example

The new email system’s up-gradation is this project’s name. The company’s employees are having trouble running the current e-mail system. The main goal behind this project is to create a fast e-mail system for the company. The existing production facilities and activities will be expanded by the management due to this project (Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), 2008).

A systematic and logical breakdown of the project into its component parts is represented by the work breakdown structure. This assists in efficiently planning and executing a project along with exercising project cost control (Gray & Larson, 2008). Avoiding delays, technical difficulties and drawing defects in the production facilities are this project’s objectives. The responsibilities can be divided amongst the employees and the different financial resources needed to achieve these tasks in a timely manner can be allocated with the help of this WBS. This WBS project will allow the technology to be updated and additional accounts to be opened online.

Scope of the Project

The hardware will be updated, old systems will be consolidated, and the time and work losses caused by procedural and technical e-mail communication problems will be greatly diminished due to the project that is proposed. In order for a company to provide service to its’ customers in a timely manner, and to remain relevant and sustainable in the competitive market today, these changes are necessary.

Includes: Along with equipment that will operate the new system, 2500 identified end users from 12 offices and departments will be provided. The employees will be trained on how to use the new system as well as system protocols (Gray & Larson, 2008). The 2500 users will be transitioned into the new system. LAN and remote desktop access will be offered by this new system to its users. The help desk and support infrastructure will set up the system and it will only begin to function after the PC’s are upgraded.
Doesn’t Include: Accounts or training over 2500 aren’t a part of this project’s scope. Other elements of the organization’s information system will not be affected by this project’s efforts as it is only confined to the e-mail system.

The excel sheets further describe all the major tasks and work packages. This sheet will help to understand the complete WBS for the up-gradation of new e-mail system.

WBS Estimates and PERT for the Project

Due to the technical difficulties in the email system, the organization is seeing a decline in its levels of productivity. The technology for the current email system has become obsolete and is causing interruptions (Scenario).The organization should have an updated email system. The 500 users without an account will be given one under the new system. This will, however, need additional investment. The organization needs to be technologically advanced in order to create an effective process of communication. New server, software, training for the employees and protocol will be required by the new system.

The e-mail system project is divided into smaller, logical tasks due to the WBS. Each of these tasks is chosen for scope and size to fit it with the structure of project management so that it can be subjected to efficient planning as well as execution. Forming the team, planning and estimating the project is the first task (Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), 2008).

Replacement and consolidation of the five email Legacy systems into one small system is the second tasks. The five email systems are currently being used across twelve different offices and departments. These email systems will be replaced by one email system. The next tasks includes assessing the system and user requirements, which includes LAN access, cabling installation and remote access (Gray & Larson, 2008).

A hierarchy of systems is represented by this work breakdown structure. The overall project is divided into individual systems and individual systems are broken down into sub-systems. This process is continued until a breakdown occurs in terms of units of work that are manageable for which responsibility can be easily defined. The term “end item” describes the individual elements at the lowest level in the WBS (Work Break Down Structure (WBS), 2008). For this project, the end item is the equipment salvaged and deployment of the e-mail system. These end items’ costs are estimated and progressively accumulated upwards for each individual system and sub-system. The following ways describe how the development of WBS helps:

By breaking down the total project work into manageable elements, the WBS helps with the planning, budgeting and controlling factors.
Helps with the distribution of responsibility to outside agencies as well as project personnel for various work elements.
Aides in developing an effective control and information system in the project organization.

The configuration and content for the specific work packages and WBS is determined by the project’s complexity and size. The number of end item sub division will also be determined by these considerations. These end item sub divisions will be created on the WBS before the major work packages are recognized and responsibility is given to the operating units in the project organization. Old systems will be merged and hardware will be modernized which will in return reduce the time and work losses caused due to troubles with e-mail communication in the project proposed. The revenues will also see a 20% increase per year due to the project.

The work for the project would be divided into different parts and then integrated with its organizational process during the upgradation process for the e-mail system. Then organizational process for the project would be further divided to the project team’s functional groups (Gray & Larson, 2008). The responsibility for the part of work that is specifically assigned to them by the WSB would be given to this project them as well. Organizational breakdown structure, or OBS, is the term given to such a division of the organization. The division and sub-division of the work to the level of work packages would be represented by the WBS in this instance. However, on the other hand, the organization for the project would be divided into groups, individuals, etc. that are responsible for the e-mail system’s up gradation.

As a result, the WBS and OBS would be integrated and their inter-relationship would be identified by using a code structure where the codes of work-packages would be further extended with the code for the responsibility. The breakdown structure’s coding is systematic yet simple. Therefore, the project team’s members as well as the organization would easily understand the coding.

PERT (Project Evaluation and Review Technique) can help the project management team to assess the adequate time to finish each task. It is an outstanding technique to make decisions related to the project. “As, there are numerous activities in a project, under this technique, the management estimates accurate time line for the each activity, which help them to complete task on time” (Mochal, 2007). For this project to estimate the time for the activities, we can use PERT formula which is
[Optimistic Estimate + (4 times Most Likely Estimate) + Pessimistic Estimate] / 6 (Mochal, 2007)

According to total duration and costs of tasks, the project was divided into large number of tasks. The time and costs has been allocated according to their importance to completion of this project. It is very important to consider all these aspects as the success of this project mainly based on the timely and appropriate planning.

First of all, it is anticipated that the completion of project phase, project estimation and creation of the project team can be completed in 4 days and will incur the cost of about $15,000. Now the selection of staff for this project will cost $7000 and the time would take about 7 days. However, to make sure the staff is available the estimated time period would be 5 days and around $1000 would be incurred on this project.

To complete the recognition and allocation of clerical and management costs to the stage by incurring the cost of $7000. A high amount of technical work is involve in the project of substituting and consolidating the 5 e-mail heritage system into one e-mail system which is going to be completed in 38 days and it will incur the expenditure of $18000. To assess users and the requirement for the system, 25 days of period is required with the cost of $6000.

For the final results and achievements of the project the network viability task, test and to change the control processes would confirm to be detrimental. On this task a great amount of focus and emphasis is needed in terms of time as well as money. This task needs 41 days of extended time period and $15,000 of expenditure. For the helpdesk, to develop the support system, the estimation for the time period is 30 days and the sufficient expenditure of $22,000

This project needs extra significant focus from those who are fully involved in the project. To complete the implementation of the task, 10 days would be guaranteed with the total expense of $15,000. In a period of 10 days, the expense of $10,000 would be enough to save the equipments in a time of 10 days. At the cost of $9000 in a time period of 7 days the email system can be deploy.

Conclusion

The design of the project is to take overall and comprehensive approach, in order to finish the upgrading email task. The rough estimation for the total budget needed an expenditure of approximately $10,000. This budget has been presented by providing an individual evaluation of the expense incurred upon the different tasks needed in order to finish the project. Additionally, the estimated time for the project is to complete is around 6 months. Similarly, the preparation of the budget time duration is also needed by every task. At last, it is predicted that the project completion time would depends on the allocation of budget and also within time limits.

References

Gray, C.F. & Larson, E.W. (2008). Project management: The managerial process (4th Edition). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Mochal, T. (2007, June 25). Use PERT technique for more accurate estimates. Retrieved April 23, 2010 from http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/project-management/?p=120

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) (2008). Retrieved April 23, 2010 from http://www.hyperthot.com/pm_wbs.htm