Optimal Work Breakdown Structure For Defense Acquisition

Discuss about the Optimal Work Breakdown Structure for the Defense Acquisition.

1. The project mainly focuses on the development of new information system for the UNICEF childcare organization that mainly engages in providing proper supervision as well caring to the children’s who are under the age limit of thirteen. The organization has a specific scheme according to which the parents of the children pay for the toys, foods as other materials that are required by the children. The organizations utilizes manual system for handing the operation but due to use of manual system number of issues and challenges are occurring in the organization and in order to resolve it, the higher authority wants to implement a new information system.

The objectives of the organization include:

• To develop a new information system for the UNICEF childcare organization
• To include online payment system for the parents
• To have proper system that can store information related with payment
• To automating the ordering of the supply products for the children

As per the requirements of the system, one specific system development method needs to be selected. Thus, in order to identify the system development method it is very much important to analyze the features of the system. For this project, the proposed features are as follows:

 User portal: For initiating online registration of users for making the process of payment online, the organization requires the facility of user portal (Kerzner and Kerzner 2017).  The portal has a login facility in order to provide proper authentication. With the help of this portal, the user can be able to upload the details of the children.

Auto-generated Invoice system: One of the most significant problems that the organization faces is in addressing publication of invoice for the payments that are generally made by the parents of the children’s. Thus, the organization wants to develop a system through an automatic tanking mail will be forwarded to the user after the payment procedure.

Auto order: The main need of the system is to create a system through which can automatically send the order to the seller whenever a new user registers within the portal (Matharu et al. 2015). This feature will be quite helpful in minimizing wastage as well as shortage of both resources and materials

Justification

 Prototyping system development method will be suitable for this project as the this method helps in allowing the developer to develop the system prototype at once and then perform number of test on the system (Fleming and Koppelman 2016). As the system generally requires number of features that follows number of other conventional development methods that will generally consume significant amount of time and cost. The diagram below reflects the prototyping model that will be utilized in the project for the development of new information system.

Functional requirement

The functional requirement of the system includes:

Login/register: Login as well as register facility must be present within the user portal so that the user can provide their details and login into the system for accessing it. The new users can use the register option for making their account (Bahill and Madni 2017).

Online payment: Online facility is present so that the parents of the children’s who are associated with the childcare organization can be able to make the payment online and can be able to get the details of the payment at the end of the year.

Systems Requirements

Auto order functionality: The auto ordering functionality is present so that the order for the requirements can be given automatically whenever a new user registers in the portal by paying money (Mijumbi et al. 2016).

Non-functional requirement

The non-functional requirement of the system includes:

Database servers: The information as well as data that are associated with the users is stored within the database servers so that they can be accessed at any time whenever needed.

System security: The system generally deals with sensitive as well as confidential information like the personal details of the children, payment details and others (Dennis, Wixom and Tegarden, 2015). Thus, it is very much important to have proper security system for securing the information as well as data.

Device support: The system must be developed in such a way that it may be supported by most of the popular devices like iOS, PC as well as android.

The cost benefit analysis is mainly undertaken in order to determine the feasibility of the project (Sanders et al. 2016). For this project, the cost benefit analysis is provided below:

Cost Benefit Analysis for UNICEF Case Study
Hardware	$         70,000.00
Software	$         80,000.00
Development team salaries	$         65,000.00
Training	$         10,000.00
Total Development Cost	$      2,25,000.00
Maintenance	$           6,000.00
Changes	$           3,000.00
Operational Labour	$         50,000.00
Total Operational Cost	$         59,000.00
Approximate salary savings	$         54,000.00
Reduced Food Wastage	$         60,000.00
Total Benefit	$      1,14,000.00
Discount Rate Used	6.00%

Project Cost-Benefit Analysis
Analysis Variables:
Discount Rate Used	6.00%
Annual Benefits	$  1,14,000.00
Annual Operational Costs	$     59,000.00
One-Time Development Cost	$  2,25,000.00
				Year of Project
		0	1	2	3	4	5	TOTALS
Economic Benefit		$0.00	$       1,14,000.00	$       1,14,000.00	$         1,14,000.00	$       1,14,000.00	$     1,14,000.00
Discount Rate		1.0000	0.9434	0.8900	0.8396	0.7921	0.7473
PV of Benefits		$0.00	$1,07,547.17	$1,01,459.59	$95,716.60	$90,298.68	$85,187.43
NPV of all BENEFITS		$0.00	$       1,07,547.17	$       2,09,006.76	$         3,04,723.36	$       3,95,022.04	$     4,80,209.47	$    4,80,209.47
One-Time COSTS		$       (2,25,000.00)
Recurring Costs		$0.00	$         (59,000.00)	$         (59,000.00)	$           (59,000.00)	$         (59,000.00)	$       (59,000.00)
Discount Rate		1.0000	0.9434	0.8900	0.8396	0.7921	0.7473
PV of Recurring Costs		$0.00	$         (55,660.38)	$         (52,509.79)	$           (49,537.54)	$         (46,733.53)	$       (44,088.23)
NPV of all COSTS		$       (2,25,000.00)	$      (2,80,660.38)	$      (3,33,170.17)	$        (3,82,707.71)	$      (4,29,441.23)	$    (4,73,529.46)	$   (4,73,529.46)
Overall NPV								$        6,680.01
Overall ROI
								0.0141

Table 1: Cost-benefit analysis

WBS

 

FIGURE 1: WBS

(Source: Created by Author)

 

FIGURE 2: Gantt chart

(Source: Created by Author)

A work breakdown structure is defined as one of the hierarchical decomposition of project into number of manageable tasks. The WBS is mainly used for defining the scope, estimating resource, allocating resources as well as managing the risks that are associated with project (Fitzpatrick 2016).  However, a Gantt chart is mainly created from the work breakdown structure for tracking the tasks across the estimated timeframe. A Gantt chart is utilized for tracking the project properly so that the entire goals and objectives of the project can be met successfully.

As per the goals, requirements as well as scope of the project that are currently provided it is identified that the schedule of the project is quite reasonable. The project budget that is created suggests that the development of new information system for the organization “UNICEF Childcare” is very much feasible (Gupta et al. 2016).   The developed system will be helpful in resolving the issues as well as challenges that the organization faces due to the utilization of current system.

The stakeholders who are involved within the project are as follows:

• Project manager
• Finance manager
• Technical specialist
• Tester
• System Developer

 The system information requirement investigation technique are as follows:

Monitoring: The technique of monitoring can be utilized in the project in order to monitor as well as for supervising the activities that are required to be done in order to complete the project work within the estimated budget as well as time (Macdonald et al. 2014).

Project Cost Benefit Analysis

Survey: Survey technique is generally utilized in order to gather information about the project from the clients. The survey is utilized for getting feedback from the user so that proper steps can be taken in order to resolve the issues that the client faces due to the utilization of new system.

Analyzing: This technique is mainly used in order to analyze the documents of the project for gathering necessary data as well as information that will be needed within the project. Proper analysis of project documentation is helpful in collecting appropriate information as well as data (Brinkmann 2014).

These techniques are generally selected for this project, as these techniques are very much effective for collecting appropriate information as well as for undertaking proper system investigation. Moreover, the techniques that are utilized do not need any type of additional effort or resources and thus the system is very much feasible

7. Reflections and Conclusions
   From this project, I have gained knowledge in project management techniques that I can utilize in my future for making projects. In addition to this, I have also learnt about different types of system development methodologies that can be quite useful for my future endeavours.

 It can be concluded that the development of new system for the organization would be quite beneficial as it not only helps in resolving the issues that the organization faces due to the utilization of manual system but also helps in handling the system automatically. It is analyzed that the entire project will be completed within 105 days within the budget of around $225,000.

References 

Bahill, A.T. and Madni, A.M., 2017. Discovering system requirements. In Tradeoff Decisions in System Design (pp. 373-457). Springer, Cham.

Brinkmann, S., 2014. Interview. In Encyclopedia of critical psychology (pp. 1008-1010). Springer New York.

Dennis, A., Wixom, B.H. and Tegarden, D., 2015. Systems analysis and design: An object-oriented approach with UML. John wiley & sons.

Fitzpatrick, B.J., 2016. Determining the Optimal Work Breakdown Structure for Defense Acquisition Contracts. Air Force Institute of Technology WPAFB United States.

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

Gupta, S., Dumas, M., McGuffin, M.J. and Kapler, T., 2016, April. MovementSlicer: Better Gantt charts for visualizing behaviors and meetings in movement data. In Pacific Visualization Symposium (PacificVis), 2016 IEEE (pp. 168-175). IEEE.

Kerzner, H. and Kerzner, H.R., 2017. Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

Macdonald, E., Salas, R., Espalin, D., Perez, M., Aguilera, E., Muse, D. and Wicker, R.B., 2014. 3D printing for the rapid prototyping of structural electronics. IEEE Access, 2, pp.234-242.

Matharu, G.S., Mishra, A., Singh, H. and Upadhyay, P., 2015. Empirical study of agile software development methodologies: A comparative analysis. ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, 40(1), pp.1-6.

Mijumbi, R., Serrat, J., Gorricho, J.L., Bouten, N., De Turck, F. and Boutaba, R., 2016. Network function virtualization: State-of-the-art and research challenges. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 18(1), pp.236-262.

Sanders, G.D., Neumann, P.J., Basu, A., Brock, D.W., Feeny, D., Krahn, M., Kuntz, K.M., Meltzer, D.O., Owens, D.K., Prosser, L.A. and Salomon, J.A., 2016. Recommendations for conduct, methodological practices, and reporting of cost-effectiveness analyses: second panel on cost-effectiveness in health and medicine. Jama, 316(10), pp.1093-1103.