A&D HIGH TECH (A) MANAGING PROJECTS FOR SUCCESS Case Study #1 Report

A&D HIGH TECH (A) MANAGING PROJECTS FOR SUCCESS Case Study #1 A&D High Tech is in the computer products, accessories, and services business. Their predominant sales channel is retail outlets in sho pping malls and phone orders. A&D requires an online sales channel as their products are reaching commodity status and to remain competitive they need to reduce costs in SG&A expenses. A&D decided to build the online store in-house, which will provide them customization, a competitive edge, and control over the system. The online store requirements include new orders, add-on orders, order amends, order status, and lead capture with additional capabilities. Chris Johnson, Technology Project Manager at A&D High Tech, was been selected by the CEO of A&D, Ted Walter, among other executives at the company to takeover a high priority project with a fixed deadline as the current project manager had to step away from the lead role. Johnson needs to provide a recommendation to the steering committee for the direction of the project containing strong facts and problems identified. Using Microsoft Project, we created a project management plan, visualize the project’s resource usage, and created a project schedule. This revealed the project duration to be 127 days, finishing on November 19 prior to the Christmas deadline. Creation of a risk management plan revealed the project to be high risk and outlined the major issues that could prevent the project from being completed in time. These include the timely and complex infrastructure setup and the heavy reliance on subcontractors. We determined that those issues could be reduced through increasing internal staff for the infrastructure and better scope planning and communication documents for the subcontractors. Recommendations for the steering committee are as followed: Adding more experienced infrastructure support resource to reduce the risk and time required, creating an internal communications plan to reduce risk of underperforming or under-utilised resources, using multiple suppliers to reduce the risk of supplier not meeting expectations and using customer feedback on the prototype to reduce the risk of incorrect scope and changes in scope. By reducing/removing the risks associated with quality and schedule A&D is doing all that they can to respond to the external threat of competitors maintain their position in the market.