Reference no: EM133315618

Question: Identify what the significant project milestones would be using the scenario below.

Case Study: The Fast Delivery Parts Store

Fast Delivery Parts Store was started five years ago by Jane Bradford, Jim Smith, and Martin Cameron. Jane, Jim, and Martin had expertise in procuring quality automobile parts from different suppliers around the globe at cheaper prices and selling those parts in bulk quantities to their customers, who are primarily automobile companies. In the new business, Jane Bradford focused on operations and sales, while Jim Smith concentrated on information systems and technologies. Jane and Jim hold the Vice-President titles, while Martin is the CEO of the company. One of the early steps Fast Delivery Parts Store implemented was electronic procurement of parts from suppliers and electronic fulfillment of customer orders. Their business was successful and profitable in the first few years, largely due to steady contracts from a number of businesses. As they started adding more customers, Fast Delivery Parts Store became busier.

Not only did the volume of customers grew, but also the variety of parts that different customers needed increased. To deal with the growth, Fast Delivery Parts Store hired more employees.

Despite having information systems in place, Fast Delivery Parts Store has faced quite a few data consistency issues in recent years. Data consistency has become a core problem at Fast Delivery Parts Store. For example, if different suppliers supply the same item, it is highly likely that they will be tagged as different items. Also, there is very little data integration between the sales systems, online customer order systems, and inventory management systems. There is currently no automatic exchange of information between Fast Delivery Parts Store and its suppliers. Any tracking of supplier shipments is done manually. Further, there is fear that hacker attacks have been on the rise at Fast Delivery Parts Store. These issues have been elaborated further below:

Data inconsistency: If Supplier 1 and Supplier 2 supply the same piston ring, the rings will be tagged as different parts in the information system. Someone at Fast Delivery Parts Store needs to manually reconcile this inconsistency.

Information system silos: The sales and customer order systems do not have effective flow of information between them. There is not much connectivity between the two systems; as a result, customers and employees need to reenter the same information in two different systems, which leads to inefficiency and loss of productivity for employees (and frustration for customers). Similarly, there is no automatic exchange of information between suppliers' systems and the information systems of Fast Delivery Parts Store.

Security breaches: Recently there have been security attacks on Fast Delivery Parts Store information systems. For example, on June 15, a malware program accidentally downloaded by an employee disabled the employee's laptop as well as some of the servers. This caused a shutdown of database and web servers as well as several employee computers, causing loss of productivity.

Jane, Jim, and Martin are not pleased with the current state of their information systems. They prioritized that the information systems need to be enhanced to overcome these shortcomings. For the information system enhancement project, they hired you as the project manager. They also spoke with representatives from two of their top suppliers, Shanghai Auto Parts and Rio Parts Company. Jake Chow of Shanghai Auto Parts agreed to be a point person so that, when the Fast Delivery Parts Store systems are enhanced, Shanghai Auto Parts will also make changes to their systems so that automatic exchange of information on parts and orders between Fast Delivery Parts Store and Shanghai Auto Parts will take place in a seamless manner. Similarly, Samantha Spears will be the main contact person at Rio Parts Company so that an automatic exchange of information on parts and orders can take place between Rio Parts Company and Fast Delivery Parts Store. Jane, Jim, and Martin hope that once the project is completed and the systems are built, they can extend the same systems to include other suppliers.

DeAnn Peterson, who oversees inventory management at Fast Delivery Parts Store, also wants the systems enhancement project to include a web-based interface to check on the inventory levels of parts and run inventory reports from anywhere, anytime using a web interface. The parts database and the orders database are running an older version of the Oracle database systems, and Mike Miller, the database administrator, wants to upgrade the database systems to the latest version of the Oracle database.

While you are the project manager, Jane, Jim, and Martin also plan to assign other members to your team. Monica Becker, who has expertise in gathering requirements and change management, has been recently added to your project team. While you are cognizant of the different requirements, you are worried that the project budget and timeline do not permit accommodating all the wishes of all stakeholders involved.