The higher management at QU has been dissatisfied with the level of technical expertise of the ITS department. Although ITS has development skills, they've been outsourcing more and more of their integration work to a third party company. At one of the strategic management meetings, it was decided that Moodle (the Open-sourcelearning platform) must be adopted so that the ITS department gain some technical experience in integrating software. So Dean Dr. Nitham Hindidecided to put in place project manager (Denis Rodman) that will oversee the process as of March 16 2014. Denis is in charge of planning and scheduling the project as well as monitoring its progress. He's also asked to report to higher management on a bi-weekly basis. The project manager sees the project as follows:
- Train4 developers on PHP and Moodle
o Training on Moodle (5 days) - all developers
o Training on PHP (5 days) - all developers
- Assign 2 business analysts to confirm feasibility of using Moodle
o Learn Moodle features (5 days) - all business analysts
o Write a report describing feasibility (3 man-days)
- Define requirements
o Update blackboard to include "course status" for online courses (10 man-days)
o Integrate courses on blackboard with Moodle (only if they're of status online) (5 man-days)
o Define requirements related to change Moodle language to Arabic (40 man-days).
- Identify any new requirements
o Meet with professors (3 man-days)
o Meet with department heads (2 man-days)
o Survey professors to validate the completeness of the new requirements (5 man-days)
- Design solution
o Design the new GUI interfaces (18 man-days)
o Rework the existing Moodle GUI interfaces (20 man-days)
o Update the Moodle database (7 man-days)
o Update the Moodle software components (25 man-days)
- Develop the new software components
o Develop the new GUI interfaces (10 man-days)
o Update Moodle GUI interfaces (20 man-days)
o Update the Moodle database (10 man-days)
o Update the Moodle software components (30 man-days)
- Manage risk
o Throw a social event to please unhappy professors (1 man-day)
o Verify that the solution meets all requirements (2 man-day)
o Verify that the software meets design (2 man-day)
o Test the software after integration (2 man-day)
o Test team to make sure they got trained well (0.5 man-day - all developers)
o Give an extra 2 days buffer after every milestone (important phase)
o Add 20 days to project time just in case.
- integrate Moodle components, new components, and with QU's blackboard (15 man-days)
- Configure software (10 man-days)
- Train users (professors)
As a project manager, Denis is also asked to define the project plan and schedule using MS project. Help Denis write a project plan that includes a brief description of the project and the project WBS and Gantt. Your document should be able to show the overall time needed for the project and the critical path. You are advised to use the international standard template (IEEE 1058) shown on the following page. You do not have to complete all sections but the ones highlighted in red are the important ones to consider.