Project Management Hypothetical Company.

Project Management Plan Final

N. Paul Rimmer

Southern New Hampshire University

Project Scope Statement: Project Initiation

Project Initiation and Description

According to our case study, “and services to offer its diverse client base of banks,

Mutual fund complexes and insurance companies. In addition, Hightower's Executive

Leadership was pursuing an aggressive acquisition strategy, buying small companies and further expanding the product portfolio” (MindEdge, 2014). In addition to providing quality earnings to stakeholders, senior leadership would also enable their global sales force to be able to be familiar with new products and detail the ever changing product gallery. “As a result, both new and experienced sales associates were struggling to get up to speed on all of the Hightower offerings, and sales leadership was concerned that they were missing opportunities to pitch new products to clients.” (MindEdge, 2014). Peter McKenzie, the director of Sales, Marketing and Budgeting for Hightower desires to have an internet training platform that features blended training for onsite and remote learners in its sales force. “Due to the breadth and diversity of the company's product offerings…there was immense pressure on everyone in the sales organization to become experts on as many products and services as possible in order to meet aggressive sales targets. (MindEdge, 2014). McKenzie had the funds necessary for this undertaking, but he did not have the time nor the skill to launch such an endeavor. Recently, the company had parted ways with Tony DiBello. Tony was a great sales man and an animated, engaging storyteller, but was not capable of multimodal communication that was critical to keep tabs on the multigenerational global sales force. Tony would be excellent as a SME for developing the detail product data for the sales training videos, but would not be able to handle being a project manager for an IT project. He was pretty good with general computing skills but was not familiar with IT architecture or web security. On a previous IT project that was fairly complicated, Hightower had out-sourced to the development team at Dewey, Scrum and Howe and had favorable results. The project was completed on time, but the cost was more than the original budget. After contacting Tony to see if he would accept this opportunity, McKenzie would contract the marketing rep at DS&H, and find out if they would be interested in proposing a credentialed project management professional that could harness Tony DiBello’s talent and lead Hightowers’s project team to create HighLEARN as he envisioned it.

Alignment of Strategic Goals: Critical Success Factors

From Tony DiBello’s perspective, he was as confused as usual with the mercurial Mr. McKenzie. He knew that he was falling behind the times on connecting with the newer sales reps, but not to the point that he would be out of the company. His margins were always good, and made sure that the sales folks showed their clients a good time and convinced the clients to buy the financial products that helped them to get the best return (and a high commission). Now his old pal “Pete” wanted him to develop an internet learning platform that would make the sales force increase gross sales by 10% per year going forward. Tony thought that with most of the new people that he had been mentoring it would have to be as engaging as a role playing video game with the way these recent college grads kept constantly staring at their phones during sales calls. From the information that he was sent the budget was a healthy million and a half, but as usual with McKenzie, he wanted it by the end of the year. The project team that was selected was fairly talented and Monica and Johnathan worked pretty well together (when they were not arguing like brother and sister). Tony remembered that the developer’s and project managers that had created Hightower’s sales and ordering system had created an awesome interphase for sales and production. Tony found HighORDERS to be easy to use, product orders were filled quickly and billing/ invoicing was a snap. The team from Dewey had really knocked it out of the park and rolled the product out on time. They did demand a premium price, but the new system quickly paid for itself as customers’ orders were filled in half the time of the previous system. He was sure that McKensie would make the deal with DS&H, if they would agree to meet the aggressive timeline that had been promised to CEO Carol Bailey. Tony knew she tolerated McKenzie’s mercurial style of leadership because he did deliver global sales goals. He hoped that if he was able to make HighLEARN meet expectations, that he would be recast in a new role. His children were still in college, and he needed the income.

Project Charter

See Appendix A

Project Planning: Deliverables

According to our MindTools case study, The HighLEARN system was to be “ a custom intranet where Hightower sales associates across the globe could log on to get comprehensive product information and presentations, access webinars and videos with product specialists, and share tips and feedback through blogs, forums and social features.” (MindEdge, 2014). HighLEARN, as McKenzie saw it in his mind’s eye as a combination of Facebook, LinkedIn and BlackBoard. He had hopes that young sales reps would be able to learn the products and be engaged by the social media feel of the training device. In a way, the sales force would see their progress as compared to other users and the mastery of the product knowledge at which their successful use of the product would affect the company’s bottom line and their own commissions. McKenzie was impressed at the speed at which Dewey, Scrum & Howe had sent him the scope and invoice information. He forwarded it on to Carol Bailey for her review. He thought it was standard for the size of the project, but noted that there were steep pricing cost for acceleration or overtime. The same project manager from the previous successful project was proposed as a co-project manager to work with Tony DiBello. McKenzie remembered Brian Knowles from the HighORDERS project. Brian was very profession, but could keep it light; he also became agitated when a stakeholder was trying to stretch the requirements. He would do his best to keep everyone, including McKenzie, inline.

High Level Schedule:

1. Project initiation.
2. Portal Development
3. Infrastructure and Security
4. Content Creation and Editing
5. Project Documentation Creation

           6)  Complete end user training.

        7)  Project Closing. 

For complete schedule as work breakdown schedule, see Appendix B

Subject Matter Experts and Project Team

Brian Knowles and Tony DiBello Co-Project Managers

Richardo Contin, Director of Learning and Development

Steve Quan, Hightower IT Operations Specialist

Shannon Valley, Hightower IT Systems and Security

Monica Ianucci, Systems/Content Specialist

Jonathan Brant, Content Specialist

Project Support

From the information provided tin the case study, the project is fully supported internally in the organization. It has a committed budget of 1.5 million dollars. The project sponsor is a senior executive of the company and success of the project will directly affect his bottom line. The project also has the support of the CEO of the company. Hightower has also signed a support services agreement with a third party to ensure that the project progresses on time and on budget.