Activity Wk 4 – Business Technology
Your company needs a better stock control system. It has decided to acquire the Stock-in package and amend this to meet its requirements. It has set up a project board and you have been appointed project manager. You will need to assemble and manage a joint team of internal company staff and external technical specialists for the various aspects of this project. It is the first such IT project that your company has undertaken.
The stock department manager has nominated three members of the department. They will help with the design and testing of the new system. An outside agency will supply four technical staff to help with programming and analysis work. These technical staff will become available at various times over the next few weeks, once they have completed their current assignments.
In addition a technical consultant from the Stock-in package suppliers will be based in your office for two weeks immediately after the design phase has been completed. This consultant will help install the amended package onto your system.
You have been allocated a small basement office, designed for just four people, near the canteen. It is a long way from the company’s warehouse and stock control office.
a) Does this project satisfy all the characteristics of a project? If so, how?
b) What are some of the team issues that you would expect to deal with during the early stages of the project?
c) Define what is meant by a ‘project stakeholder’. List at least SIX different individuals or groups of people who might be stakeholders in this project. Some, but not all, of these may have been mentioned above.
d) Select THREE from the list of stakeholder types that you have listed in part (b) and explain briefly their roles (position/ title), priority, placement and interests to determine their forms of engagement.