Assessment Action Plan of Software Upgrade Project - Case Study Example

Running Head: Assessment Action Plan Assessment Action Plan of Software Upgrade Project for Boardman Management Group/Baderman Island Resort Writer ID #: 19714 Order No. 272120 [Name] [University Name] CMGT/445 - Application Implementation [Instructor] 08 February 2009 Introduction: The purpose of this paper is to present an assessment action plan to choose the most suitable consultant to take end to end accountability of the Software Upgradation project of Boardman Management Group. A Request for Proposal was sent to five consulting organizations that have managed such projects in the past and have shown their interest in taking over end to end accountability of the Baderman Resorts project. The proposals have been received from the consultants and verified to be in the required format and as per the requirements of the Request for Proposal. The next step is to prepare an action plan for evaluation of competencies of these consultants and select the best among them. Initial Assessment Process: To ensure the success of the Software Upgradation Project, it is important to partner with the best consultants in the Industry that have successfully implemented projects pertaining to migration from old versions of Windows to Windows Vista and from old versions of Word to Word 2007. It is understood that any software will never be 100% complete from the perspective of the Business Requirement Specifications and also the Word 2007 Application will serve as the lifeline of the business post implementation the way the current versions of Word are critical to business. The selected consultant is expected to have a sound track record, an experienced implementation & customization team, and a sound Project Management methodology. In order to assess if the consultants have genuinely worked upon such migration projects in the past, the following shall be verified: (a) Does the consultant own the high level project design & strategy documentation pertaining to projects carried out in the past (b) Does the consultant own the low level implementation planning document of the software - Vista and Word 2007 (c) Does the consultant possess adequate documents & records that can be showcased to verify how they have carried out their previous implementation projects (d) Does the consultant possess adequate documents & records that can be showcased to verify the in-house R&D efforts to build internal expertise and competencies The process of verification shall be called the "Desktop Review". Overall such documents and records would be requested for verifications only and then returned back after the convincing exercise is completed. These documents & records are their intellectual properties and hence shall not be retained. The objective is to carry out an in-depth convincing exercise. In addition to verifying these documents about the consultants, we plan to speak to the customer references provided by the consultants using a questionnaire. The consultants are expected to present a clear plan on what requirements are already mapped with their current competencies/track record and how the rest would be fulfilled. It is important to clearly identify the areas where a feasibility of implementation doesn't exist. The project management team of the consultant is expected to have adequate experience in bringing to table these finer details to enable the internal project committee to verify the acceptance by going back to the business requirement specifications and analyze the impacts on business of the infeasibility of certain requirements which cannot be met by the consultants. Detailed Assessment Action Plan: Before a contract is awarded to the final selected consultant, a number of parameters pertaining to the consultant and their competencies shall be evaluated. It is hereby proposed that the Project Committee would list down all parameters that can influence the decision, assign a weighting to each parameter, assign the metrics against which a consultant shall qualify to the weighting, capture adequate details regarding the consultants and then verify which consultant achieves the maximum marks. In the marking however, some parameters shall be made compulsory in which a vendor should qualify with high ratings (say 70%). Parameters Weighting (A) Mapping of the existing competencies of the consultant with Business Requirement Specifications (assessed through initial desktop review) 0.15 (B) Track Record of the consultant in upgradation to Windows Vista and Word 2007 (assessed through initial desktop review) 0.1 (C) Knowledge & Experience of the Project Management Team of the Consultant 0.1 (D) Comments captured from the customers of the consultants 0.05 (E) The consultant would be able to Satisfy the internal Influencing Factors (Political, User coordination, Management expectations, etc.) 0.05 (F) End to end cost to company as per the quotation of the consultants 0.15 (G) Future Scalability projections by the consultants 0.1 (H) Stability of the consultants from the perspective of market share, revenues, capital value, business track record, etc. 0.05 (I) Supportability and Maintainability competencies of the consultants 0.05 (J) Protection offered against Platform Obsolescence (example, existing competencies & commitment to alternate platforms - like Open Office) 0.05 (K) Information Security Controls proposed by the consultants to ensure data protection and proper access controls 0.1 (M) Long Term Commitment of the consultants (Flexibility towards continuous improvements & the corresponding customizations) 0.05 Total Weighting 1.0 Each consultant shall be given a rating against the above parameters in the form of a percentage (0% to 100%). The rating would then be multiplied by the weighting to arrive at the assigned rating of the parameters to the consultant. Example, if a consultant qualifies to 70% in Information Security Controls then the applicable weighting for the consultant will be 0.7 X 0.1 = 0.07. The sum total of all such weighting calculations shall result in final ratings of the customers. It is hereby proposed that the committee will not accept less than 70% rating against some parameters even if the consultant qualifies with higher overall ratings. These parameters shall be concluded by the project committee after discussions and approval by the management. A brief about the decision criteria against parameters mentioned in the decision matrix is presented below: (A): The mapping shall be done in such a way that the maximum compliance is focused pertaining to the mandatory requirements. The selectors would not get confused between must have requirements and cosmetic requirements and hence shall be very focused on the primary business objectives of upgrading the software environment. (B): The selectors shall verify the competencies and track record of the consultants from their project documentation (desktop review), references and trusted industrial sources. (C): The capabilities of the proposed Project Management Team from the consultant's end shall be verified in-depth. Gaps in the capabilities of the project management team can lead to serious bottlenecks at the critical path of the project implementation cycle. (D) The inputs from the customers of consultants shall be recorded in the form of free text and analyzed in-depth by the Project Committee members. (E): This is a very tricky evaluation of the consultant. There can be many critical influencing factors within the organization that might be affecting the selection of the consultant. Inputs from the top management and share holders should be sought pertaining to their preference towards any specific consultant that might be popular in their own business or social circle. Other politically influencing factors may be pertaining to fear against transparency, Information Security threats, protection of personal data (example, a concern can be - what will happen to the data that only I am supposed to know), shift of power center, reduction of privileges, etc. (F): The costs that would be taken into account for comparisons are: (a) All Capital Costs - cost of hardware, software and networking components (b) All Recurring Costs - annual recurring costs of WAN links, Manpower, Consultancy services, on-call support services, subscription & upgrade services, etc. (c) All petty cash expenses - costs of transportation, food, stay in hotel, per diem, over time, print, stationery, etc. (G): Although the scalability recommendations would be more or less in line with the Microsoft standards, we shall verify the consultant's perspective of scalability to verify if there are value additions by virtue of past experience over and above the standards recommended by Microsoft. (H) The long term stability of the consultant shall be verified by virtue of their financial track record and customer base. In order to mitigate the risks to the Boardman Management Group against acquisition by a company, merger with a new company, change of board of directors, change of management or addition of new members in the overall governance framework of the organization pertaining to the selected Consultant, special contractual agreements should be signed that shall carry forward (legally) to the new power centers or owners of the consultancy company. (I): The support and maintenance framework of the consultants should be very carefully examined in terms of: (a) Do they have a helpdesk tool (b) How many people are there in the helpdesk (c) What is the mode of operandi of their helpdesk (d) How many people are their in the entry level, medium level and specialist level helpdesk teams (e) What is their attrition rate (f) From which country/region the support is extended (J): The strategy of the consultant against platform obsolescence should be analyzed very carefully. Special emphasis should be given to understand their R&D efforts on new technology platforms in order to protect the business systems of their customers from the risk of platform obsolescence. (K): The security controls proposed by the consultants shall be verified by the IT Management from the perspective of protection against malicious software and malicious activities by internal employees or external parties possessing malicious intent against the organization. (L): In the capacity of a long term end user, the Boardman Management Group shall be keen to establish a long term relationship with the consultant. But it should also be judged how keen the consultant is to establish a long term relationship with the organization. This analysis is required to protect the organization against the consultants who believe in a "sell and run" policy. Based on the outcome of this decision matrix, the contract shall finally be awarded to the best qualifying Consultant. After following such an in-depth and structured selection criteria, the probability of success of the Software Upgradation Project is quite high. [Kratz, Allen C. 2002; Mochal, Tom. 2007; Demand Metric, 2008] Conclusion: This paper presented a comprehensive assessment action plan to select the most suitable migration consultant that is capable to undertake the entire project with end to end accountability. The methodology proposed herewith is metrics based analysis using a decision matrix. The selection criteria shall involve assignment of numbers leading to near accurate analysis and selection of the most appropriate consultant. Reference List: Kratz, Allen C. (2002). Four Steps to Vendor Evaluation. CBS Interactive Inc. Retrieved on 8 February 2009. Available at http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1045162.html. Mochal, Tom. (2007). Use this simple process for Package or vendor selection. CBS Interactive Inc. Retrieved on 8 February 2009. Available at http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-6178456.htmltag=rbxccnbtr1. Selecting the right consultant. Demand Metric (2008). Retrieved on 8 February 2009. Available at http://www.demandmetric.com/content/executive-summaries/selecting-right-consultant. End of Document Read More