Project Proposal For Information System Upgradation At Film Drifter - Essay. (70 Characters)

You are to take the role of an external consultancy that supervise and plan the development of a new information system for Film Drifter. For the first part of the assigned project, you must create a project proposal. A project proposal is a document that is used to convince your client that a project needs to be kicked-off to solve a particular problem or opportunity. It describes in depth, how the project is going to be commenced so the client understands what will be involved early.

Your proposal needs to include the following six (6) elements:

1. Project Client and Team Members Include all contact details of the clients and team members involved in the project.

2. Project Description Identify the organization and the problems that the organization faces. Discuss the project background and reach an agreement on the objective and goals. Specify the requirements (functional and nonfunctional) and discuss the constraints, the assumptions and dependencies that may affect the
success of the solution.

3. Project Scope Clearly define the scope, boundaries and Deliverables (or Products) of the project.

4. Project Schedule Provide project start date/end date and the total hours for project completion. Outline the timeline as well as the resources needed to complete the project (e.g., what? Who? When? How long?)

5. Project Risks Identify any key risks that are unique to this project via a risk/impact matrix and explain how these risks will be managed

Part 1. Project Client

Integration of information systems enable business organisations to manage their business locations more efficiently. A centralised information system enable firms to manage the data base more efficiently and apply it in the business more efficiently. The aim of the paper is to form a project proposal to upgrade the information system of Film Drifter. The report would be viewed from the view of Software IS Consulting Organisation (SISCO), the firm which has obtained to information system up gradation project for Film Drifter. The terms owner of the project, client and principle would refer to Film Drifter while the term project management firm would refer to SISCO as per the case study provided.

Contact details of the clients:

Client name: M/s Film Drifter

Type of business: Film retailing

Country of domicile: Australia

Owner(s): Mark Hamill, Paul George and Stephanie White

Contact person: Owner(s) or any person(s) appointed at board meeting along with appropriate POA.

Contact address: Address of M/s Film Drifter as appearing the memorandum of association (refers to as documents)

Team members:

The project team would consist of the following:

1. 1 project manager
2. 1 Assistant manager
3. 5 technical experts
4. 5 project engineers
5. 2 film and media experts.
6. Legal consultants

Note: The finance departments, marketing departments and all the other departments would play supporting role to the project team. The project would commence under supervision of apex management of M/s Software IS Consulting Organisation or SISCO, also referred to as project management Company in the project documents.

The client of the project which SISCO has undertaken would be Film Drifter which is a movie retailing chain. The owners of the firm are Mark Hamill, Paul George and Stephanie White. The unique selling proposition of Film Drifter lies in its way of serving consumers by assisting them to choose from the wide range of films including old and new films. The firm unlike its competitors also provided the service of delivering movies orders and its store staff assisted the customers to choose from the vast array of movies available at the stores. The immense growth of business necessitated the firm to expand its locations into new areas which called for a more efficient management of the expanding business operations.

The main problem of that Film Drifter was that it required to integrate its information system to maintain efficient control of its locations post expansion of business. The management felt the need to integrate the information systems into a centrally managed system which was till then highly decentralised and did not allow the managers to accede to the data directly. The second problem was that the apex management had no direct access to the store data sets. The apex managers are dependent on the store managers to provide them with business data. The third problem which loomed over Film Drifter was that actually the outcome of the previous two problems. The third problem was that the lack of access to store hindered smooth decision making limited the power of the apex management. The fourth problem was that the apex managers become dependent on the middle level managers. This placed more power upon the latter to distort facts to influence decision making.

Part 2. Project Description

The background of the project would be the up gradation of information system of the client M/s Film Drifter based on the contract to carry out the project mention signed between the client and SISCO.  The contract between the principle and the project management firm would rest on the problems faced by the former.

The following are the main objectives or goals of the information system up gradation project:

1.  Integrate the information system of client across its location.
2. Ensure uninterrupted access of apex management to data sets pertaining to specific stores,
3. Make decision making more dynamic.
4. Increase control of apex management over middle level managers.

The functional requirement of the project would be foundation of an integrated management system that would aim to achieve the goals specified above. The non-functional requirement of the project would be monitor the expanding business and also curb unethical practices which might culminate due to undeserved power of the store managers.

The constraints which the project would be facing are scarcity of financial resources and scarcity of authentic data from the side of the client. This is because that apex management of M/s Film Drifter has no direct access to the business information at the individual stores which operated under supervision of the store managers. The store managers might feel intimidated due to the project of integrating information system. They might distort important data including financial data. This would make incorrect amount financial resources available with the principle company. Thus, scarcity of authentic data and financial resources might prove to be constraints.

It would be assumed by the project management company that the data and resources made available by the principle would be considered authentic. The project would consider only those information which would be furnished along with the contract between the principle and the project management company. However, it must be pointed out that the quality of the data provided would have serious implications on the success of the project.

The project scope would include integration of the information systems of various locations of M/s Film Drifter. It would incorporate the entire customer billing system of all the locations of the client and enable the central accounts department to record the purchases on real time basis.

The boundaries would be project would be limited to the integration of the business data of all the outlets of the client for accounting purpose. It would however include other significant functions of Film Drifter mentioned in the case study namely human resource management and marketing.

Deliverables or products of the project:

The deliverables of the project would making available to the client an integrated information system spanning across all its branches. The information system to be delivered should be linked and made available to the central accounts department and apex managers.

The tentative start date of the project would be November 01, 2018 and the end date would be September 11, 2019. The total hours of work considering 8 hours a day would be 1800 hours for 225 days. It must also be noted that total hours mentioned above would change due to delays.

The resources would contain human resources, technological resources, material resources and capital resources. The human resources have already been mentioned in the project team while for the other resources, the project team should get approval of the client.

Figure 1. Risk matrix

(Source: Qazi et al. 2016)

Risk	Impact	Management of risks
Data theft	Loss of confidential business data	The management of Film Drifter should take care to acquire all possible data from the stores
Compliance risks	Attraction of penal actions from government due to incomplete account due to unavailability of entire data.	The management of Film Drifter should take care to acquire all possible data from the stores
Financial risks	:Loss of sales data and lower revenue recovered	The apex management should take initiative to retrieve as much financial data as possible.
Human resource risks	Some senior managers may not cooperate with the apex management	Mentoring and training of managers

Note: The respective colours in the above table correspond to specific blocks of the risk matrix (figure 1)

Conclusion:

It can be concluded from the discussion that the information systems up gradation in itself might seem to be very prudent. However, in reality it is not sufficient to meet the entire business needs of the client’s business expansion. Thus, can be recommended that the management of Flim Drifters should plan more projects to link its information systems with other functions like marketing and HRM.

Deresky, H., 2017. International management: Managing across borders and cultures. Pearson Education India.

Eriksson, P.E., 2015. Partnering in engineering projects: Four dimensions of supply chain integration. Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, 21(1), pp.38-50.

Fleming, Q.W. and Koppelman, J.M., 2016, December. Earned value project management. Project Management Institute.

Garbutt, M. and Schuler, J., 2016. Towards an understanding of the integrative relationship between Business Process Management and Enterprise Resource Planning Systems. In CONF-IRM (p. 3).

Heagney, J., 2016. Fundamentals of project management. Amacom.

Hornstein, H.A., 2015. The integration of project management and organizational change management is now a necessity. International Journal of Project Management, 33(2), pp.291-298.

Horowitz, K.A., Ding, F., Mather, B.A., Palmintier, B.S. and Denholm, P.L., 2018. Overview of NREL Distribution Grid Integration Cost Projects (No. NREL/PR-6A20-70556). National Renewable Energy Lab.(NREL), Golden, CO (United States).

Hu, Q., Zhang, Y. and Yao, J., 2018. Family Involvement in Middle Management and Its Impact on the Labor Productivity of Family Firms. Management and Organization Review, pp.1-26.

Marchewka, J.T., 2014. Information technology project management. John Wiley & Sons.

Qazi, A., Quigley, J., Dickson, A. and Kirytopoulos, K., 2016. Project Complexity and Risk Management (ProCRiM): Towards modelling project complexity driven risk paths in construction projects. International Journal of Project Management, 34(7), pp.1183-1198.

Walker, A., 2015. Project management in construction. John Wiley & Sons.