Subject Name : Network Security

Solution Code: 1BBD

Question: Case Study

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Case Background Willow brook School is a small, private school in the Midwest United States. As an independent systems analyst, you work as an IT consultant, specializing in developing IT solutions for small businesses. You have been contacted by the director, Victoria Owens, to discuss the possibility of setting up an information system to handle some of the school’s administrative and financial tasks. You agree to meet with Victoria and the principal, Kathy Gilliard next week to discuss the school’s need for an information system. Victoria explains her role as the executive director of the school. She administers the activities of the school in accordance with the mission, vision, and policies established by the Board of Directors. She supports the educational staff and oversees the financial, payroll, and human resources functions for the school. Susan Brown is the vice principal. She is responsible for the after-care program. Michelle Madrid is the administrative assistant reporting to Victoria. There are six part-time after-care teachers, three for the pre-school/kindergarten group, and three for the primary grades. After-care teachers report to Susan Brown. The following activities are undertaken by the school, Admission, Enrolment, Attendance management, Accounts, Transport Management and the Library Database. The school also supports the local charity by selling artefacts and toys made by the students and maintains an online website where people can buy and look at the new toys and crafts made by the students, which is user friendly and has images of the artefacts, toys and crafts. Willowbrook school being a small private school is looking to expand and develop into one of the niche school with a unique selling proposition of having few number of students per class. Use of technology and providing IPADS to students and eliminate the need of notebooks. Michelle, the administrative assistant, in particular is feeling the strain of the increased workload associated with the rapid growth in the student population. The system that she has been using, of spreadsheets and word processing documents, worked well when enrolments were smaller, but now the amount of time spent copying information from one place to another is daunting, and the possibility of errors is increasing. An information system is necessary to cope with the growing administrative workload. Based on your initial conversation and the work that you prepared, you begin planning to conduct a preliminary investigation. You call Victoria and discuss with her the strategic plan for the school including its mission and vision. You explain to her that planning IT systems and projects requires a similar approach to strategic planning as the school likely took when it initially created its mission, vision, and strategic plan. She begins to ask you questions about the next steps for developing the information system. After discussions it is decided that school would invest $80000.00 and 3 months for developing this system. You have also decided to consider taking inputs on this projects from PWC and Co.PWC and Co have been in the field of administration system for years and have expertise in doing administrative activities for schools and colleges.

Task 1: SWOT ANALSIS

Conduct SWOT analysis giving 5 points each for S, W, O, T as per descriptions below to help project managers. Make a table for SWOT analysis. SWOT Analysis

- Strengths – what the organization currently has the capability to do well.
- Weaknesses – areas in which the organization is not competitive.
- Opportunities – possible things a project team can do for additional success.
- Threats – areas where outside competition may limit effectiveness.
- Each of these provides insight into the possible choices of projects as well as how to structure each to capitalize on strengths and opportunities and to avoid or overcome weaknesses and threats.

Task 2: Prepare Project Charter as per below template

Basic details Including: Title of the project, Nameand email of the Project Manager(yourself), Duration of the project, and High level budget Project Objectives

Clear, concise reasoning for why the project is being performed
Clear, concise definition of what the project’s activities will entail
Brief description of primary deliverable(s)
Clear description of the project’s behefits to the organisation
Recognition and description of any limits that the project will not cover and address

Acceptance Criteria

Identification of specific factors against which the project can be compared to determine success/failure
Identification of specific deliverables not only for class, but for the project as a whole
Agency-specific deliverables
Inclusion of due dates for the deliverables
Clear identification of milestone and milestone exit points
Factors should include a specific metrical comparison

Assumptions and Constraints

Any assumptions made during the course of the project
List of constraints that entail the limitations that are required to be addressed

StakeholderList

Key stakeholder must be 6 peoples (not more & not less).
Complete list of stakeholders including the sponsor, PM, executive members and few important members that are required to contribute to high level decisions

Lessons Learned

Identification of pitfalls to be avoided, based on the student’s past experience
Evidence of thought as to what can and cannot affect the project in terms of how the project will run

Charter Sign off

make sure all the stakeholders have signed off the project charter document making comments on this project.

Task 3: Prepare Communications Plan as per the template given. Communication plan should be of 6 key stakeholders and must make a table for Communication plan given at the end.

Communication Plan Template

Plan purpose– A brief description of why and how the communication plan was developed, and an overview of the overall team communication philosophy.Also states types of communications planned, for lateral, downward, and upward communication.
Identification of stakeholders– The “who” in the project that requires information, (i.e. team members, project sponsor, class professor, etc.) and also the responsible parties to receive and/or communicate information.
Information to be shared– The “what” in terms of project information communication.Describes types of information that the team uses to communicate amongst its own team members, and also to the agency sponsor and the class professor.

Frequency of information exchange– The “when” describes how often communications will be held (i.e. daily, weekly, monthly, as needed, etc.)

Location of information exchange– The “where” states the location of the meeting or other interactions

Purpose of communication– The “why” description assures that communications are held effectively.

Mechanism for communication– The “how” describes the media for communication (i.e. physical meeting, email, phone, message group, etc.)

Change management– Description on how the team will handle changes in the project, whether it is in terms of project scope, schedule, or resources.This includes how the team plans to communicate changes as well as how the team plans to make decisions about changes.

Meeting agenda– Gives a brief overview of what the team plans to accomplish in each of its meetings, how it documents goals and objectives for meetings, and defines and assigns actions for the team to accomplish project objectives.

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Solution:

Task 1 – SWOT Analysis

It will focus on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the project. It will help in improving the project in accordance with the threats and weaknesses and grab the new opportunities using its strengths. The SWOT analysis of Willow Brook School is as below:

Strengths (S):	Weaknesses (W) :
Clarity in roles and responsibilities of staff Supports local charity and thereby enjoys goodwill Very clear vision and mission and these are also helping school in providing the right direction Sufficient number of staff in accordance with the capacity of the school No duplicity in functions due to unity of direction and command	Inefficiency in performing major functions Lack of infrastructure to cater to the needs of students No technological intervention to perform tasks. Use of conventional methods to perform major functions More time and chances of errors in the performance of tasks
Opportunities (O) :	Threats (T):
To expand the school using potential of staff Use of modern technology to perform the functions of the school Increase the number of students and thereby increasing the profit Unique selling proposition to develop the school and become competitive Adopting an information system to manage human resource, library resources, transport, accounts and finance, etc. and attaining success thereby.	The new technology may fail and due to that the school may fall down The school will have to deal with immense competition The huge capital investment may not bring return as desired by the school. Market technology upgrade may also affect the new project. The rapid technological changes may be rejected by stakeholders.

Task 2: Project charter

The project charter may also be termed as the blueprint of a project. It includes all the relevant details such as objectives of the project, acceptance criteria of the project, milestones of the project, major stakeholders of the project, lessons learned, etc. In this way a project charter helps in understanding the relevance of a project along with every minute detail of it (Archibald, 2010).

Basic details : Title of the project – Developing IT solution for Willow Brook school Name and email of the project Manager - Duration of the project – 4 months High level budget - $80000.00

Project objectives:

The major objective behind the performance of the project is to install the IT solution in Willow Brook School so as to enable them to perform the functions in an effective manner. It also aims to develop the IT solution in such a way that all the activities that were being performed using conventional mode will now be performed using technology. Thus, the new system will make it easier to perform the functions of the school
The project activities will entail that the functions of the school are performed in such a manner that there are chances of errors and at the same time the current infrastructure is not able to cater the needs of the school. The admissions in school are increasing and old method of data entering using Excel is not sufficient.
The primary deliverables of the project include an updated system that will be able to handle extended demand. It will also help the system to become error – free and processing information in an effective manner. All the information related to accounts, human resource, library, etc will be stored and retrieved easily with the new system.
There will be a number of benefits of the project to the organisation. The foremost benefit is that the school will become competitive with the advanced technology. The school will also be able to create a niche as it desires. It will also help the school to work in accordance with the vision and mission. Hence the school will have an increased productivity after installing this project. At the same time it will save resources as well as the time of the school.
There is a limitation to the project as well. The major limitation of this project is its time constraint. Due to less time, all the functions will have to be performed speedily.

Acceptance criteria

The specific factors against which the project can be compared to determine success/failure include its user interface. The new installed technology shall be user friendly. Another factor is that it should be error-free. The errors that are occurring in the current system shall not occur in the new system. The success of new system will be decided on the basis of the fact that it will be able save to the time and resources of the school.
Identification of specific deliverables for the project as a whole will be done on the basis of two factors. Factor one is saving time and factor two is saving resources.
Agency-specific deliverables are automatic data storage, retrieval of data, electronic database, etc.
Inclusion of due dates for the deliverables

Deliverables	Due time
Automatic data storage	15 days
Data retrieval	10 days
Creating electronic data base	10 days
Training staff	20 days
Getting platform ready for iPads	20 days

The milestones of the project are

Key milestones	Start date	End date
Project kick-off	20/03/2016	20/06/2016
Start off	21/03/2016	21/04/2016
Implementation	30/04/2016	15/05/2016
Control	15/05/2016	30/05/2016
Stakeholders meeting	1/06/2016	05/06/2016
Improvement	06/06/2016	20/06/2016

Assumptions and constraints of the project also play an important role in implementation of a project(Mustaro, 2008). The major assumption of this project is that all the staff will get involved in the activity in an effective manner. It is also based on the assumption that new technology will be easily accessible to all the stakeholders. The major constraints of the project include lack of time, non-availability of skilled trainers, cost and scope of the project. These constraints will act as a limitation to the project and it is very necessary to address them. Without addressing these constraints the project will not be successful.

Stakeholders list : The six major stakeholders of the project are sponsor, vice principle, director, staff, IT consultant and board of directors.

Lessons learned : The lessons of a project are usually based on previous experience. It helps in addressing the pitfalls of the project. The previous experience suggests that at the time of launching projects related to information technology it is very important to provide effective training to the staff and also to manage the change creatively. There were instances when staff was not able to manage the new systems and this has affected the performance of the organisations to a very great extent. Thus, the first lesson is to introduce the new technology to everyone and make them acquainted to use that. In this way lack of knowledge about the new technology among staff can affect the project.

Charter sign-off : All the stakeholders need to sign the project after going through the project charter and the stakeholders are also free to comment on this.

Task 3: Communication plan

The communication plan refers to all the essential activities that are required to be communicated to the stakeholders. Thus, it deals with who, what, when, where, why and how of a project. It is a systematic plan that enables every stakeholder to be aware of the project activities(Holmes, 2014).

Who	What	When	Where	Why	How
Sponsor	Information about the expenses of the project	Every week	Board office in school	The objective of this meeting is to give quotations to the sponsors and then getting their feedback on that. It will enable the availability of resources and capital to implement the project.	Physical meeting
Vice Principle	Information about how after-care program will get improved with new technology	Every week	Meeting room in school	This meeting will stress on after –care program. It will help in designing the activity efficiently so that all the after-care staff will report the vice-principle electronically and it will save time as well as the resources.	Physical meeting
Director	Discussion on school’s administrative and financial tasks	Twice a week	Director’s room in school	This communication aims at discussing the financial and administrative tasks.	Physical meeting
Staff	Discussion on all the functions such as library, finance, Human resource, admission, enrolment, attendance , etc.	Daily	Conference hall in school	It will enable all the staff members to know about their respective tasks and duties and the changes in their functioning. This is the most important meeting as it will make clear the entire situation of the project to the staff members.	Physical meeting
IT consultant	Discussion on key resources and available infrastructure	Daily	Meeting room in school	It aims at making it clear the resources that are available and the infrastructure that will be required to make the project implementation successful.	Physical meeting
Board of directors	Communicating the plan on new project	Twice a month	Board room in school	Each and every detail of the project shall be communicated to the board of directors and their feedback will be taken on all the aspects.	Physical meeting

Change Management and communication of changes

Change is a vital element of any project. A number of changes take place at the time of implementation of a project (Treher, 2008).It is very necessary to determine these changes and then communicate them to the stakeholders. The changes in a project can be in terms of schedule, scope, resources, etc. (Nguyen & Fussell, 2013). Hence communication plan on change management includes change decisions and communicating them to stakeholders(Lohikoski, 2016). The probable changes in the project include change in schedule and scope of the project. The communication plan for managing change is as below:

Nature of change	Change decision	Stakeholder affected	Communication mode
Scope of the project	The project may be limited to only a few functions in an initial level. Some functions such as Human resource and after-care program may not be included in the project due to the lack of resources.	Vice Principle and Staff	Sending email
Schedule of the project	The schedule of the project may get changed due to unforeseen circumstances or non-completion of any prior activity.	All the stakeholders	Physical meeting

Meeting agenda

Meeting	Goals and objectives	Documenting Goals and objectives	Assigning actions
Meeting 1	To determine the functions of the school	Analysis of all the activities performed in the school	All the staff shall be required to submit a report on it
Meeting 2	To prioritize the functions to be included in the project	Comparison of functions on the basis of their utility	Board of directors will be consulted for this.
Meeting 3	Finalizing the project charter	Collection of every minute detail	All the stakeholders shall be assigned some task for project charter.
Meeting 4	Implementation	Resource allocation	Feedback
Meeting 5	Review and control	Improvement in the project	Lessons learned

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