My Choice: Project Management Software
Overview: Each project team will choose an information technology project that will be developed for a small Information Technology consulting firm that specializes in ERP implementation, training and documentation, software development and staff augmentation projects for client companies in the energy, financial, management, education and other industry sectors. Each project team will research, analyze and evaluate information technology solutions to meet the small business consulting firms information technology infrastructure needs for their new office suite as well as support for their mobile consultants. The small consulting firm has 6 members on their management team including the CEO, CFO, HR Manager, Training Manager, Sales Manager, Project Manager and 25 consultants. The 25 consultants primarily work on client site locations to complete projects. The new office suite has offices for the management team, a conference room, reception area and receptionists desk, 3 training rooms with presentation consoles & laptop docking stations, computer lab with 8 multimedia computers, 2 break rooms, workroom, server room and 5 consultants offices for project work done at the office headquarters. The consulting firm will move its furniture, office computers, 3 servers and other equipment to the new office suite in 6 months. Your project team will present its presentation with results from your proposal research in 2 months. The consulting firm uses Windows 7 Professional desktop computers and laptops, Microsoft Office Suite and other software packages to conduct its business. The new office will have a new CISCO IP Phone system for business use.
Each team member will research one solution related to the information technology project selected for the team, analyze and evaluate the solution for best use by the small consulting firm. This research and analysis will be written up as an Information Technology Proposal.Use the attached Information Technology Proposal Template to assist you in writing your proposal.
Each team will produce a PowerPoint presentation that contains an overview of each team members solution proposal and record a narrated presentation in Blackboard Collaborate. The small consulting firms management team will review the recording and meet with your consulting team to discuss adoption of solutions for the firm, project times, as well as modifications or changes to the solutions they would like to implement.
The Team Project group process and teamwork responsibilities are covered later in these assignment instructions.
Project Topics: The small consulting firm has provided a list of projects that require solutions to set up their new office space and expand services for their current and future clients. Potential projects are itemized in context with their department.
For example: Suppose a Project Group chose the Operations Department and the collaboration system topic category. The collaboration systems topic category would be divided into 5 (6 if there are 6 team members) collaboration system products or solutions that may be a potential solution for the small consulting firm client. Team members could do some brainstorming to identify potential collaboration systems solutions by do a web search and/or reading articles about small business collaborations systems that are being used in small businesses. The team did a web search and came across the article “The Best Collaboration Tools for Small Groups and Teams” by Alan Henry located at this link:.com/the-best-collaboration-tools-for-small-groups-and-teams-1477548590″>http://lifehacker.com/the-best-collaboration-tools-for-small-groups-and-teams-1477548590 The articles review several potential products. Upon reviewing the article, the team discovers that the tools in the article are not built to serve 50 users so they will need to look further to another publication and identify more robust tools. The article,.capterra.com/web-collaboration-software”>”Top Web Collaboration Software Products”discusses several projects that serve 50 or more users. Several potential projects are profiled on the web page and require a little more research to determine whether they are solutions that will need the client needs. After more research and evaluation the team identifies 5 potential solutions to research for the Client IT Project Proposal…… Now the team will need to focus on what product solutions each team member wants to research for their IT Project Proposal. This is just a very brief example of the brainstorming process to select a Category and subdivide the category into individual product solutions that each team member can research.
Human Resource Department
Training Department
Sales Department
Operations Department
Human Resource Management System
Online Learning Systems (LMS)
Sales Force Mobile Device Management
Project Management System
Recruitment System
Online Polling System
Customer Relationship Management System
Storage and Backup Systems
Time Management System
Online Survey Tool
Marketing System using Social Media
Project Billing System
Leave Management System
Meeting Scheduler System
Media Development and Sales Promotions
Office Products Purchasing System
Performance Review System
Training Vendor and Training resource Catalog System
Web conferencing System
Collaboration System
Research Sources: Your research sources for your Individual Project Proposal should include a minimum of 5 sources and no more than 10 sources. One of your sources can be your textbook. Your research sources must be credible, scholarly sources. The UHD library contains a large number of good, scholarly sources for information technology proposal. These sources are also available online in digital article, journal and book references. Sources used from the Internet must also be scholarly sources and pass the credibility test. To evaluate an Internet source for scholarly merit and credibility use the CARS Checklist found at:.uhd.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-933477-dt-content-rid-6762125_1/xid-6762125_1″>http://www.andyspinks.com/researchhelp/web/CARS.pdfThe McGraw-Hill web site discusses the use of the.uhd.edu/courses/1/20151010134_cross_listed/content/_933477_1/embedded/CARS.pdf”>CARS.pdf Checklist as well.
Format and Research Citation Requirements: You will write up your research in the form of an Information Technology Proposal and the proposal will be graded using a grading rubric. This Information Technology Proposal grading rubric is associated with this assignment and available for review using the link below or you can view the rubric from My Grades.
Each person will research their IT Project Proposal content from information technology publications. You will find a sampling of Information Technology Publications in a list provided for you in the Collaborate Sessions section of the course. You can access articles from paid publications through the library’s online publication databases.
Your Information Technology Proposal will document your sources with parenthetical or in text citations within the proposal and list your cited references in a references page using APA citation style. Refer to the APA citation resources that are contained in an APA Citation folder in the Collaborate Sessions section of the Blackboard course. Collaborate Sessions resources can be accessed using the course menu. The Collaborate Sessions area contains links to helpful tutorials and handouts that will help you correctly format your in-text and reference citations in APA citation style. You can test your knowledge of APA formatting style and how it compares to the MLA style that you have used before by using handouts on this topic that are contained in the Collaborate Sessions area. Son of Citation Machine, an online citation generation tool will help you format in-text and reference page citations. Use this link to learn about this tool:Son of Citation Machine.citationmachine.net/index2.php”>http://old.citationmachine.net/index2.php
You can also earn extra credit points by taking the APA versus MLA formatting style quiz that is linked in the Assessments area of the course.
Format Requirements: The Information Technology Proposal Layout and Page Length: Your Information Technology Proposal will contain a cover page and a references page plus 8 pages of the written paper for a total of 10 pages. The sections in your proposal will follow the layout, headings, spacing and content shown in the Information Technology Proposal Template (See Attachment).
Project Team and Team Member Responsibilities and Requirements: Your Individual Project Proposal assignment will be coordinated with the Team Project Presentation as discussed earlier in this assignment. You will work with your team to prepare a presentation that discusses the highlights of each team member’s Individual Information Technology Proposal. All the members of the team will be presenting the results of their Individual Information Technology Proposal.
Group Project Planning Reporting and Communications Requirements: Each project team will prepare a Team Charter which represents their industry and company topic selections as well as their ground rules and team procedures for completing the project. Each team member will be responsible for and required to submit 2 Individual Status Reports that report on their research and teamwork activities and research progress related to completing their Individual Project Proposals. Refer to the Team Charter and Individual Status Report forms for details on content required for these documents. These documents are listed as assignments in the course schedule and syllabus. Finally, each team member will complete and submit a peer evaluation form to report on their own contribution, other team members contributions and their overall assessment of the quality of teamwork related to the group project. Per the syllabus and course schedule each team member will earn points from submitting their Individual Status Reports, peer evaluation form and from participation in development of the Team Charter. Each team member in a team will be expected to share contact information and schedule with fellow team members as part of the Team Charter as well as inclusion in the group work area. In addition, each team member will be expected to communicate with fellow team members in a timely and consistent manner which includes responding to team communications within a 24 48 hour time frame and during the peak project completion period on a daily basis when project work requires it.
Group Work Area Documentation and Communication Requirements: Each team will use the Group work area set up by the professor to document their teamwork, communications and project development. All team communications, team documents and individual documents and reports must be kept in this group area to allow each team member to work efficiently and to show status of development of the group project. If team members use texting outside of the group area, then each team memberwill be required to provide a logor screen shots of text communications and results so each team member can easily tell what has been done, what needs to be done, who is taking responsibility for the task and determine how the team is doing in completing the project on time given the project timeline. The communications and completion log can be documented on a discussion forum within the group work area or a Microsoft Word file kept in the group work area. Each team can decide what format works best for them. The main thing is to be consistent and document frequent and timely communications between team members.Each team should keep a copy of the Team Charter in the group work area for team coordination purposes. Each team member should keep a copy of their Individual Status Reports in the group area to assist in coordinating team activities and reporting progress to fellow team members.
The Peer Evaluation form will be turned in by each team member to the professor to earn points. The Team Evaluation Form prepared by each team member will not be posted in the group work area.