Risk Analysis and Mitigation Memo

The final project for this course is the creation of a risk analysis and mitigation memo. We all work on projects whether at work, at school, or around the house. Some projects are small and can be completed quickly; however, some take time, planning, and preparation. How can you make sure that a project is completed once it is started? How do projects in information technology really run behind the scenes? Project management provides a structured method to move through a project from the time it is created until the time it is completed and all the steps in between. In this project, imagine that you are team member for an IT development project. Your team has identified several risks the project faces that could negatively impact its outcome. You have been tasked with selecting one of those risks and analyzing it in order to determine the best solution to mitigate the risk and determine how your solution will affect the overall project. You will write a professional email memo to your project manager, with supporting documentation as attachments. The email will explain your analysis, recommendations, and the impact of those recommendations. Your thorough analysis is critical to the project manager to help him or her make an informed decision about how to move the project forward. Use this reference as an example, to assist you with writing a business memo. In this assignment, you will demonstrate your mastery of the following course outcomes:  Explain the relationship between an information technology project’s scope, budget, and schedule to determine how they impact one another  Develop industry-appropriate messaging for communicating an information technology project’s status and needs to project stakeholders  Determine key information-technology considerations for informing project risk-management response strategies  Examine project management documents for key project data to promote successful information technology projects through development, testing, and production Prompt Your email memo and attachments should be drafted in a Word document with the project charter, RACI chart, and Gantt charts included in an appendix. In your memo, you will describe background information about the project that you are working on, detail information about a specific project risk, and propose a recommended risk mitigation strategy to your leadership team. Your memo will make use of the following project scenario: Regatta University is a leader in both traditional education and career-path development, including in emerging fields. The university prides itself on staying on the leading edge of curriculum and degree programs, learning methodologies and instructional technologies, student services, and demonstrated student success. “The future is here and now,” the university’s president, Martha Yoon, likes to say. Regatta serves approximately 8,000 students at locations including the original campus in Augusta, Maine, and satellite campuses in Ventura, California; Dayton, Ohio; and Hilo, Hawaii. In a typical term, approximately 40% of Regatta’s students take courses at a distance through the university’s online education hub. Enrollment growth has been strong, increasing by 4 to 8% each year for the last decade. You are a key member of the information technology team at Regatta, with a core specialization in student services. You are responsible for providing userfriendly interfaces connecting to a flexible, powerful information structure. Now you have a new project—working with colleagues to create a student degree progress tool that students will use for accurate, instant information on their progress toward program and degree completion. As you may imagine, this tool is eagerly awaited by a variety of stakeholders, including Regatta academic advisors and the Office of Enrollment Management, as tracking and communicating student progress toward degree completion is vital for retention. “We need a tool that will be easy to use but also accurate. No misinformation!” your team manager says. Your memo will analyze and recommend mitigation strategies for one project risk. The risk you choose to focus on must come from the list of project risks in the provided Project Management Documents Excel worksheet. They are located in the tab titled Risk Matrix. Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed in your memo: I. Introduction: Using the Student Degree Progress Project Charter document, the RACI chart in the Project Management Documents workbook, and the Gantt Chart document as guides, provide background information on the project you are working on. A. Describe the purpose of the project and the end objective, including where this information is documented. B. Identify the key stakeholders involved in the project, including an explanation of their roles and responsibilities. C. Describe your own role and responsibilities on the project team, citing specific information from the project’s Gantt chart. D. Explain the triple constraint relationship between the project’s scope, schedule, and budget. Support your response with examples from the project materials and your experience in adding the new element to your project during Milestone Two. II. Project Risk: Select a risk from the list in the Project Management Documents workbook. Using these project management documents as guides, provide detailed information about the specific project risk. A. Explain why this risk requires attention. Support your response with examples from the project management documents. B. Describe any dependencies within the project that may be affected by this risk. Provide specific examples from the project management documentation to support your response. C. Explain the implications for the project within the context of the triple constraint if this risk is not addressed. In this assignment, you will begin your work with the course case scenario involving the student degree progress project. You will begin by examining three key project documents: the project charter, the RACI chart, and the WBS chart. The project charter is in the Student Degree Progress Project Charter document [Regatta University IT Project Charter For Student Degree Progress Version 1.0  Table of Contents Document History 3 Executive Summary 4 Project Purpose/Justification 4 Project Description 4 Preliminary Scope Statement 4 Out of Scope 4 Project Objectives and Success Criteria 4 Constraints 4 Assumptions 4 Project Deliverables 5 Project Resource Estimate 5 Summary Milestone Schedule 5 Summary Budget 5 Project Approval Requirements 6 Project Organization 6 Authorization 6 Project Team 6 Directors of Assigned Resources 6 Project Sponsor 6   Document History Document Revision/Release Status Revision Date Description of Changes Author / Editor 0.1 6/29/15 Initial format Jane Smith 1.0 8/31/15 Initial draft John Doe   Executive Summary Students leverage a web portal to access university-related information and resources. Content within it can be targeted to all users or to those within a pre-specified role (e.g., students at a particular campus) or it can be user-specific. As an academic institution, one piece of information critical to students is their current progress in their degree program or programs. The purpose of the student degree progress project is to create an area to display user-specific academic progress. Project Purpose/Justification University leadership requested this project to promote student awareness and provide students easy access to their degree progress. Project Description Preliminary Scope Statement The purpose of this project is to create an area that displays user-specific academic progress within the appropriate roles, leveraging data through a back-end system. This project will include the necessary modifications to the back end to relay this information. More specifically, this project will include the following: • Creating the graphical elements in a web-friendly format • Creating the necessary web view to accommodate the graphical elements • Creating the necessary changes to the back end to prepare data supporting the student information • Creating the necessary web service to securely expose the student’s information to the graphical elements and web view Out of Scope Due to business-specific processes, some students, particularly those who have been pursuing a degree for over four years, may not be able to see their academic progress using the deliverables of this project. Changes to the back end to expand this functionality are out of scope, as are any changes intended to enhance functionality to provide additional data beyond the academic progress already captured in another system. Project Objectives and Success Criteria • The project will provide the functionality described within the preliminary scope statement. • The project will be delivered without incurring any additional expenses. • The project will be delivered free from any significant defects or without causing any down time. • The project will be delivered no later than two weeks from the target time frame defined within the milestone schedule below. Constraints • Additional funding is not available. • The information available to students is derived from data within the back end and is as accurate, timely, and available as the source data and its structuring. Assumptions • No major changes in formatting or scope will be presented during the life of the project. Project Deliverables • Project Charter • Project Management Plan • Design o User Interface Mockup o Architectural Design • Test Plan • Test Scenarios Project Resource Estimate The student degree progress project is estimated to use the following resources: Project Resource Estimate Resource Estimated Work Hours Project Manager 48 Hours Systems Analyst 12 Hours Middleware Applications Developer 44 Hours Backend Systems Analyst 50 Hours Total: 154 Hours Summary Milestone Schedule Summary Milestone Schedule – List key project milestones relative to project start Project Milestone Target Date Project Start September 1 Graphical Component Unit Complete September 23 Web View Unit Complete September 25 Backend Unit Complete October 7 Integration Testing Complete October 14 Submit to Leadership October 26 Leadership Acceptance November 2 Transition to Production November 5 Project Closeout November 13 Summary Budget Fiscal Year Summary Budget – List component project costs Project Component Component Cost Hardware $0 Software and Licensing $0 Vendor N/A Total $0 Project Approval Requirements The project will be completed once all requirements are met and all deliverables have been received and approved by the client. Project Organization Role Name(s) – Department(s) Project Sponsor Jane Smith Project Manager John Doe Core Stakeholder Arthur Bowman Vendor Resources None Project Team Members Shila Cole, Ana Fischer, John Jones Authorization Approval of this project charter provides authorization to move forward in accordance with the information contained in this document. Project Team John Doe, Project Manager Shila Cole, Systems Analyst Ana Fischer, Middleware Application Developer John Jones, Backend Systems Analyst Date: Date: Date: Date: Directors of Assigned Resources Michael Erdmann, Middleware Director Amber McLedon, Applications Director Cynthia Carmom, PMO Director/Acting Student Systems Director Date: Date: Date: Project Sponsor Jane Smith, Project Sponsor Date: ], while the RACI and WBS charts are included in the Project Management Documents Excel workbook . This workbook has multiple tabs. Using this information, you will address the questions and critical elements in the Milestone One Guidelines and Rubric document. You will compose a brief project description that summarizes the student degree progress project, including its purposes, objectives, and how and where to find further information about it. This is the type of communication project that team members typically provide for stakeholders. Your work on this milestone will help you prepare to compose sections of Part I of your final project, which introduces the student degree progress project and discusses roles and responsibilities within the project team. To complete this assignment, review the Milestone One Guidelines and Rubric document. Your submission for Milestone One should address the following critical elements: I. Introduction to the Project: Keep this area as concise as possible (1 to 2 paragraphs) while ensuring you fully accomplish the following:  Explain the purpose of the student degree progress project.  Describe the end objectives or project outcomes.  Explain where this information is documented in the artifacts you are using and provide an attachment of the specific documentation you used to obtain this information. Remember, your email memo will want to refer your reader very specifically to key areas in the attachments you provide so that your leadership team can dig into it as needed. II. Key Stakeholders and Roles: In this area, you will describe all of the project roles in a detailed paragraph. These descriptions of each team member’s role are important and are often used for stakeholder audiences. For instance, this information may be used when the project work structure is presented to department management for comment and approval. You may organize this area as you wish; as a rule of thumb, you will likely need a complete paragraph to fully address the following for each role:  List the team members identified in the project documentation and their project roles accurately.  Describe the relevant function or general behavior of each role specific to this project.  Explain the significance of each role specific to the phases of the project that the role is involved in.  List the assigned tasks for each role. In Milestone Two, you have the opportunity to practice this rich mix of skills while digging deeper into the student degree progress project and the work of the project team, aligned with a carefully integrated schedule. You will take on one of the three technical roles on the project team. Using the Gantt chart, you will first describe the work assigned to your role. You will also list work performed by others that must be done prior to the tasks assigned to your role. In this milestone, you will also consider the implications for the project restraints with the addition of a new project component that you will create. To complete Milestone Two, you will need access to Microsoft Project. This will allow you to read and modify the Gantt chart in this milestone. MS Project is free for use by SNHU students and can be accessed via Microsoft Azure Dev Tools for Teaching [https://azureforeducation(dot)microsoft(dot)com/devtools]. Microsoft Project resources are provided in the optional resources for this module. The Microsoft Project Tutorial document [http://snhu-media(dot)snhu(dot)edu/files/course_repository/undergraduate/it/it328/it328_microsoft_project_tutorial.pdf] provides specific guidance on the use of MS Project to complete this milestone. To complete this assignment, review the Milestone Two Guidelines and Rubric document. Prompt: The project charter and RACI chart have been approved by the Regatta University administration. Using the project Gantt chart, your team has started working on the project schedule based on these documents. The team needs to make sure that each member understands his or her responsibilities based on the schedule. There are three technical roles for this project:  Systems analyst—Shila Cole  Application developer—Ana Fischer  Backend systems analyst—John Jones First, select one of the above roles as your own. Next, consider that you and your team have been thrown a curveball and were informed of the following by your manager: The team has one more item it needs your help to complete. The project has been given an extra $10,000 to add a new element that enhances the project to the student degree progress widget. With this $10,000 comes an additional week of time added to the schedule. (The distribution of tasks among the team during that week does not impact the budget.) Based on your understanding of the Gantt chart and how to read it, your submission for Milestone Two should address the following critical elements: I. Your Technical Role in the Project Schedule: This section should be approximately 2 paragraphs in length. In this area, you will discuss your selected role, responsibilities, and important predecessor tasks:  Select and identify a technical role from the approved list.  Summarize the responsibilities of this role.  Using specific information from the project’s Gantt chart, list where in the project schedule these responsibilities are assigned.  Explain why it is important that predecessor tasks are completed before your tasks are performed, citing specific information from the project’s Gantt chart to support your explanation. II. The Triple Constraint Matrix: This section should be approximately 2 to 3 paragraphs in length. In this area, you will refer to the new directive you have been given by your manager. Provide a brief explanation of the new project element that you want to implement. Examples include live animation on the progress bar or a callout box that opens when students hover on a hot spot and that provides more detailed information to the students. You will use this experience to inform your understanding of the triple-constraint relationship between the project’s scope, schedule, and budget.  Clearly describe the additional element you propose, including how your feature alters the project timeline. For instance, will this addition to the project add more testing time or increase development time?  Use the Gantt chart and the Microsoft Project Tutorial document to appropriately place the new tasks for your feature. These additional tasks should be inserted during the execution process steps (such as close to the development tasks or increasing the testing time). Be sure to update any predecessors that may have changed with the newest addition and to assign each new task to the appropriate team member. In the Gantt chart, highlight the task that you have added to make it easy for your instructor to find. Refer to the tutorials and resources provided to you in this module to help you with this task. You will submit this element as a separate Microsoft Project file.  Explain how the addition of this new element may alter the project timeline.  Explain how a change in the triple constraint of schedule, cost, and scope allows for this project addition to occur based on your experience in this activity.