Managing Network Projects: Planning for Opening New Branches

Introduction

Scope:

A company is planning to extend it is work with a plan to open four new branches, one over each of the next four years. The offices will conform to a standard plan. Each branch will be of three floors with one router serving as a switch on each floor; in turn, each switch will have 15 terminal stations connected. 14 of the terminal stations will have wiring setting up for a terminal and a VoIP phone and 1 terminal station for the printer.

You are required to provide the following:

A standard project plan for the fitting of a branch, a standard budget plan to accomplish the installation with demonstrative data to show variance management, A detailed risk assessment and risk management plans for the project. Based on the received request many facts are missing.  You need to make assumptions to fill these gaps, but you must state those assumptions.

Assumptions

An assumption is a belief of what is assumed to be true in the future. Making assumptions based on knowledge, experience and other available information.

(PM Study Circle, 2012)

Listed below are some of the assumptions that have been prepared about the project:

• Power Implementation and Site Suitability
• Offices have been furnished
• Networking Solutions have been explored and selected
• Employees have already been hired
• £100,000 has been allocated as a suitable budget per branch

Constraints & Hindrances

With all projects are limitations and risks that need to be considered and explored to ensure the project’s success. The three primary constraints that project managers should be familiar with are time, scope and cost. These are frequently known as the triple constraints or the project management triangle.  Time can often hinder the progression of projects, usually having a lack of and setting unrealistic deadlines, many constraints may arise throughout which can have minimal or major impact on the project completion, all depending on what occurs. Cost is a must in all projects and often a project may fall through due to not holding enough finances, otherwise not allocating enough.

(Wrike Project Management Guide, 2019)

Each constraint is connected to the other two; so, for example, increasing the scope of the project will likely require more time and money, while speeding up the timeline for the project may cut costs, but also diminish the scope.

Standard Project Plan

A project holds a unique purpose which is to work towards an outcome, the purpose of project planning is to ensure that the result is completed on time, within budget, and exhibits quality whilst remaining a temporary duration. A project is developed using progressive elaboration and requires resources, often from various areas. Projects should always hold a primary customer or sponsor and quite often a project involves uncertainty, therefore making it vital to have a suitable plan, mitigating any potential issues and uncertain outcomes.

In almost all projects the following steps are followed and used to guide the project along:

Scope – understanding the problem and the work that must be done

A bounded description of the data and control, function, performance, constraints, interfaces and reliability, enough to determine project feasibility and create an initial plan.

Estimation – how much effort? how much time?

In order to establish project requirements and how many people are required it is important to look at it from all aspects including how much ‘man-power’, time and money will be required in order to fund the whole project’.

Risk – what can go wrong? how can we avoid it? what can we do about it?

It is important to mitigate issues before they happen, especially from a risk management point of view, if not suitably mitigated this could cause the project to go astray.

During the project the customer may alter their requirements, development technologies, target computers, and other entities which may affect timeliness and success; therefore, it is important to create a risk management document in order to combat events should they occur.

Schedule – how do we allocate resources along the timeline? what are the milestones?

It is important to hold a timescale for both individual tasks and the whole project, by using a timeline you can pin point individual milestones in order to work towards your desired goal. Projects can quite often overrun and be late due to a number of reasons, an unrealistic deadline is a common factor, whether set by outsiders or by means of a change of customer requirements, this can hold a large impact on the overall project. Technical difficulties and Human resources can also massively contribute, be it technical damage / failure or simply not having the human resource or person(s) to complete tasks within a set time frame.

(University of Suffolk, 2019)

Control Strategy – how do we control quality? how do we control change?

Control strategies are in place to compare overall project performance against the planned project. The purpose of project control strategy is to evaluate and analyse the project situation, generation of forecasts, and definition of actions to be implemented in the whole project process.

Ensuring the final product meets the quality, completion and budget expectations of the project manager. Project control process can be divided into three major areas: the control of cost, time, and quality during the design phases; the control of cost, time, and quality during the tendering phases; and the control of cost, time, and quality during the construction phases of the project.

(Professional Project Management, Blog Spot, 2019)

Seen Above is my project plan, showing a detailed but simplistic list of tasking’s, required to meet project completion. My project plan firstly details the planning phase, from viewing invoices, holding stake holder meetings, initial cost planning as well as the surveyance of the site. This details what stage or step needs to be completed before the next stage can commence.

Standard Budget Plan

Created in order to sufficiently track each transaction whilst also holding a total budgeting figure. It is important for the equipment to come directly from the manufacturer in order to ensure hardware and warranty quality is of a high standard.

Each router and switch is manufactured and purchased from Cisco, a reputable networking company providing a set of reliable, high quality and cost effective equipment. Purchasing directly from the vendor itself allows for any maintenance or repairs to be conducted by a sufficiently trained and skilled individual, along with purchasing direct it also allows for suitable SLA’s to be in place, a preventative measure in case of any hardware or software issues. Any issues caused by the engineer can hold the company liable directly. 

Seen below is a table consisting of all the pricings required for the project in line with the company’s equipment requirements. I have made the selection of hardware based on a series of comparisons within the market. The requirements for the project are as follows; A singular switch on each floor, each of which will inter-connect a printer, 14 computers and 14 VoIP telephones, therefore establishing that a 24 port switch will be sufficient.

My project plan can be seen attached below also. When creating my project plan I drew upon many resources and methodologies in order to construct the plan to meet the demands of the project and able to deliver competently to the customers.

Risk Assessment & Management

Definition of Risk:

‘A situation involving exposure to danger.’ [Oxford Dictionaries, 2018]

Mitigation

It’s always best to hold a contingency plan in the event that a risk occurs, with hardware it may prove best practice to hold backup resilient pieces of hardware, this could prove effective in cases of both failure and damage.

It is important to mitigate issues before they happen, if not risks are not suitably mitigated this could cause the project to go overrun or crash. The customer may amend their requirements, timeline, equipment choice and other plans which may affect the overall result.

Management

It is important not to add limitations in the initial planning stage, I have therefore allocated additional  time in the event of unforeseen circumstances in which may arise. An example of these unforeseen circumstances may be the damage, failure or corruption of hardware and/or software, this would mean an engineer would therefore be required to attend and repair the fault, otherwise it may mean ordering the equipment again.

Bibliography

• BlogSpot (11th Feb 2011) Professional Project Management, Blog Spot, 2019 http://professionalprojectmanagement.blogspot.com/2011/02/owners-project-control-strategy.html
• Definition of Risk. (2018) Retrieved from:
• https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/risk (Accessed 20th March 2019)
• (Managing Network Projects Week 2, University of Suffolk, 2019)
• https://brightspace.uos.ac.uk/d2l/le/content/16584/viewContent/206044/View
• (Accessed 21st March 2019)
• (Wrike Project Management Guide, 2019)
• https://www.wrike.com/project-management-guide/faq/what-are-constraints-in-project-management/
• (Accessed 21st March 2019)
• PM Study Circle, 2012 Retrieved from:
• https://pmstudycircle.com/2012/10/assumptions-and-constraints-in-project-management/
• (Accessed 21st March 2019)