Project Management Course: Facility, Equipment, and Business System Upgrade of a Call Center

Project Scenario

In this course, you are introduced to a complex project scenario as follows:

You have been assigned to be the project manager for the facility, equipment, and business system upgrade of a call center. This requires moving all existing call center stations to a newer, larger facility; installing and testing a high-speed, high-capacity Wi-Fi network in the new facility; upgrading workstations so that they include wireless capability; installing a new call center management software; and converting a legacy proprietary business system with a customer relationship management (CRM) application to a new business system. In this project scenario, time is of the essence.

The project sponsor requires that the project take no longer than 6 months to complete. Further, the budget is constrained so that the number of people assigned to the project is very limited and includes the following:

2 Project manager:

1 Business system project lead:

1 Business system implementation team:

3 Wireless system project lead:

1 Wireless system implementation team:

3 Relocation project lead:

1 Relocation team:

2 Workstation project lead:

1 Workstation upgrade team:

2 Outside contractors: Up to five multidisciplinary contractors are allowed in the budget.

Note: The wireless system project lead and the workstation project lead are the same person. Two of the three-member wireless system implementation team overlap with the workstation team. This means that only four resources are available for the wireless system implementation and workstation upgrade (not counting the possible use of contractors). The total resources available to the project include 14 people plus 5 contractors. In this assignment, you will use this scenario to identify the project requirements, define the project scope using a work breakdown structure (WBS), and define the activities required to produce project deliverables.

MobileGo is a small company that sells prepaid mobile phones in selected markets. Its primary sales and service channel is carried out over the internet and by phone. Sales and service has been supported with a team of 36 customer service representatives in a small building. Customers, accounts, and all business functions have traditionally been managed by a proprietary software application using in-house servers that was contracted out early in the founding of the company. All workstations currently connect to the internet and the internal servers supporting the legacy business system and office applications. This is a problem because the company had to move workstations to different parts of the building as the company has grown (thereby making network wiring out of control). The company has grown 150% over the last 5 years and as a result, the systems, the building, and the overall infrastructure have become outgrown.

The company has therefore recognized the need to move to a new location and upgrade workstations and systems. The immediate need is to expand from 36 stations to 50 with the plan to triple that number within the next 3 years. The immediate challenges are little funding and few people to spare for this set of initiatives. With multiple activities occurring at once and severe constraints on schedule and resources, it is acknowledged that this is a highly complex project. The Assignment You have been assigned as the overall project manager for this important initiative. Your supporting team consists of 14 members (not counting contractors), including two outside consultants supporting the business system and wireless upgrade. Now that you have been given this important assignment, here are your next steps. Identify what you deem to be the client requirements.

Using the requirements list, create a work breakdown structure (WBS) that identifies all project deliverables. Identify the activities (tasks) required to produce each project deliverable. When identifying project activities, highlight each that may be expected to require the same resources to be carried out in parallel. These highlights will be your first clue that the management of the project can be expected to require some complex maneuvering.