Successful Completion of the Project - Essay Example

Phase 2 Discussion Board Introduction Although most of the activities that are needed to run a project successfully are carried out by the employeesof the organization, but there might be certain situations in which internal employees may not be qualified enough to handle them. And even if the internal employees do manage to carry out the activity, the quality of the results may not be as good as what is required. This would decrease the efficiency of whatever is developed. These activities usually require technical skills which are not common to all. Discussion The project team in our case will handle most of the management activities of the project that is being worked upon. However, upgrading of the new web-based version of the system requires certain skills that no one from the project team may possess. A specialist who has had experience of implementing such upgrades will be required. This specialist will be the vendor therefore this will largely be the role that will be carried out by him. However, since the project team is given a limited budget that can be spent on vendor resources, not everything may be assigned to them. Therefore a choice will have to be made regarding what roles to assign to the vendors and what internal skills should be made use of for the project. Since we know for certain that the vendors would be more experienced with implemented such a major upgrade, we have to make sure that the most critical and important roles are assigned to them. The roles that will be assigned to the vendors are as following. Consulting The first role that needs to be fulfilled by the vendor would be the role of a consultant of a business analyst. This role must be assigned to the vendor as he will provide the company with the best suggestions of how to get the results that they want in their budget. The organization may contact the vendor before the project starts to consult the present situation of the billing system. The vendor would analyze the situation very carefully and by applying their expertise and experience, they will help the organization develop a plan of how to go about and carry out the project. This role is of critical importance because this will either make or break the project success. Programming The next role that may be assigned to the vendor would be programming. Programming must be handled by a professional because the success of the software fully depends on the program. The vendor would have the knowledge of effective programming and would use techniques that will make the software more easy to use and would give better results. If this role is assigned to someone from inside the organization, there would be a chance that the programming of the software may not be good enough which would result in many complications in future. Once the programming has been done, the testing process may be carried out the IT staff of the organization itself. Technical Architecture Another important role that will be needed to be filled by vendors would be technical architects. The vendor would be assigned to design the architecture of the new web-based version of the system. This is important and beneficial because once the framework has been developed by a professional, the internal employees will have a basic idea of what is required in order to implement the upgrade perfectly. They will use this design as a guideline and will carry out the implementation accordingly. Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Vendors There are many advantages and disadvantages of using vendors in the roles that are mentioned above. We will start by discussing the advantages. The first advantage is that these roles cover the most important aspects of the project therefore they need special attention. Since the vendors have experience with similar projects in the past and specialize in that particular field, they have the familiarity and expertise needed to carry out the upgrade successfully (Reference for Businesses). For example, the vendor would be better when developing the architecture of the software for the system because of the expertise and experience that the vendor has. The second advantage is that the vendors would also have the knowledge of the technology that is being used by the competitors. This knowledge is of importance to an organization because it must sure that the technology that it is using should be at par with its competitors so that they do not have a competitive advantage against them. The next advantage is that once the vendor is assigned a role, the project team members would be able to concentrate on other important aspects of the project and other roles such as designing the architecture and programming would be the vendor’s responsibility (Tesler, B). However, before a decision can be made, it is very important that the disadvantages are also considered. There may be some possible disadvantages of using the vendor in these roles for this project. First of all is of course the cost that is involved in hiring a vendor. If the same work is done by someone from within the organization, it would cost the company a lot less than what it would have to pay to the vendor. Besides this, since the vendor is not a part of the organization, he may not be familiar with the policy that the company follows and the strategy that it uses. Therefore, the way it carries out the function may not be exactly how the organization would carry it out. Lastly, the process of hiring vendors and deciding on which one is most suitable for the job is very time consuming. This therefore becomes of drawback for outsourcing to external vendors (Reference for Businesses). Conclusion In conclusion, I would like to mention that outsourcing certain functions or roles to external vendors is very important. However, there are many factors that must be considered by our organization before it out sources certain functions and roles to external companies. These factors include the budget that is allotted to them and the advantages and disadvantages of hiring vendors etc. References 1. Reference for Businesses (2007) Outsourcing. Retrieved 21 August 2000 from Reference for Businesses. Web site: http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/encyclopedia/Oli-Per/Outsourcing.html 2. Tesler, B (2005) Outsourcing IT Development: Advantages and Disadvantages. Retrieved 21 August 2000 from Web Space Station. 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