Unit 5 Independent Project Assignment Sample

Task 1: Unit 5 Independent Project Assignment

Identification of Specific Problem

The current manual method of stock control, supply chain, tracking, payments and stocks in the organization has a lot of weaknesses that hamper the operation’s efficiency. These processes involve manual intervention and due to this they take time and contain errors and inconsistency of data entry which affect the credibility of the information. In logistics, inventory tracking that is done often leads to late delivery and improper stock status, which results in stock-out or overstock situations (Kittisak, 2023). The payments and the traceability have major issues regarding transparency and the unnecessary slowdown of the flow of the supply chain. The precise need that needs to be fulfilled by an ICT system in this context is the automation of these processes to improve precision, cost, and timeliness. The ICT system automates the integration of data by individual departments where possible, which means that more accurate decisions will be made based on data availability and resource utilization (Agboola et al., 2023). This system will also enhance traceability in that it will be possible to track products through every stage from production to delivery to make certain that they are compliant with the relevant regulations and to increase customers’ satisfaction.

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Legal and Moral/Ethical Analysis of the Case

The adoption of ICT entails a number of legal, moral and ethical issues, which call for attention to be paid to the matter. From the legal perspective, the system must adhere to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Data Protection Act which regulate the use of personal data. The penalties for non-compliance with these regulations may lead to significant fines besides gravely affecting the organization’s reputation. Also, the necessity for the system to respect the procedures concerning the legal use of software and data under governing licensing agreements may sometimes restrict the appropriate usage of this system (P McCoy Smith, 2022). From a moral and ethical point of view the ICT system should respect the confidentiality and integrity of the data collected means individuals should not be exposed to their data disclosed to third parties without their consent. It should also be transparent in operations meaning that the stakeholders in the system should be able to trust the system because it is free from unethical practices (Levina and Mattern, 2023). Another is the ethical considerations of employees who could be affected by the consequences which include; loss of employment due to automation. Hence, the organization needs to avert these issues through ICT reskilling and communicating the gains of the ICT system to the business organization and its employees.

Analysis of Principles, Theories, and Practices for Planning the ICT Solution

The planning of the ICT solution should also consider some principles, theories, and best practices. PMLC is basic, and it shapes a delightful stratum for systematic project planning, execution or controlling, and closing. Staying consistent with the PMLC results in the proper execution of the project, where each phase is reviewed before moving to the next phase. It is important to set goals in a SMART way that is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound to be focused and to measure the progress (Demestichas and Daskalakis, 2020). These objectives give clear guidelines that have to be achieved to determine the success of the project in light of the organisation’s strategic plans. There are established theoretical models which can be easily implemented in the ICT project, for example, the PMBOK and PRINCE2. Just as in Lesson 1, it helps to return to PMBOK and its abundance of information for project managers, this time taking a look at the structure which is based on the process groups: initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and then finally closing (Lomos, Luyten and Tieck, 2023). Thus, PRINCE2 is more suitable for projects in that it emphasises specific roles and responsibilities, risk management, and quality assurance. Some of the practices include requirement documentation where a detailed project brief is developed and there is also best practice in the development of a project plan (Smith and Lie, 2022). Such practices help to involve all the stakeholders and give them a proper understanding of the project goals, outcome, and timeframes to avoid design creep and keep the project on schedule.

Main Issues Raised in ICT Project Planning

Implementation of ICT projects is subject to consistent challenges that include; project failure, high cost, and delayed time. The lack of planning miscommunication lack of stakeholder involvement or other reasons make the project fail and not meet its laid-down goals and objectives. Time is typically an issue due to delays being in the EDM’s, contractors’ or sub-contractors’ favor which results in cost overruns for several reasons, including resource availability, technical issues or changes in scope, where the expenditure increases (Dr Yustina Liana, Yahya and Hamisi, 2023). Late delivery is another issue often resulting from impracticable schedule constraints, lack of adequate resources, or slow decision-making processes. These problems can actually abort the whole project, drain a lot of time and even cost the organization’s reputation. To manage these risks, particular attention should be paid to risk analysis during the planning phase when the program’s possibilities to overcome these obstacles and activities to prevent them are to be determined (Santos and Sampaio, 2023). The monitoring and control activities should be performed to continuously verify the project’s progress against the stated plan and identify the deviations that may require intervention. Stakeholder management is also important in a way that everyone is on the same page with the project goals and that any issues are immediately addressed.

Techniques for Identifying and Measuring the Criteria of a Systems Project

System definition and specification is a business requirement-gathering process that also includes activities like stakeholder interviews or questionnaires and fact-finding. Requirements gathering is the first activity where the project team defines what is expected in the system from the user’s side (Pereira, Varajão and Takagi, 2021). Holding interviews, questionnaires, and focus group discussions with the stakeholders, more attention is dedicated to their opinions and standpoints. These requirements should be validated through stakeholder consultations because these establish the mechanism of ensuring that the objectives of the project are aligned with business objectives (Zou, Duan and Deng, 2019). Fact-finding techniques like document reviews, observation and prototyping facilitate the identification of more detailed requirements and come up with clear measurable goals and objectives for the project. They afford the needed protection against the project being completed in possession of the wrong solution, delivered and implemented at the user’s end in an impracticable way to use, unaffordable in terms of time and costs and not within the project’s defined specifications.

Task 2

Key Steps Required for Executing the ICT Project

Vision Creation and Strategy Definition

The first level of strategy implementation for an ICT project is to define the mission that must be consistent with the organizational aims. The vision is a guideline as to what the project intends to accomplish and is useful for demystifying the potential goals of the project (Anantatmula, 2020). Dartmouth College explained that once the vision is in place, the next step is to advance a stable plan that must map out the main activities, resources, time frames, and risks. It is preferable if this strategy is not overly rigid but simultaneously not very vague so that it can be applied to the project more methodically.

Stakeholder Engagement and Objective Alignment

Stakeholder management is important in any project since it involves winning the support of all the people that are involved. This entails a precise definition of the project’s users, supporters, and professional workers and their consistent contact (Varajão et al., 2018). Such forums as updates, feedback and consultation sessions assist in managing expectations as well as getting commitment. Consequential alignment means that each of the project’s activities will have a clear link to the goal. This entails the breakdown of the project vision into tangible and quantifiable activities with targets that are within reach and acceptable to the stakeholders.

Application of Project Management Principles

Formal Structure and Project Sponsor Engagement

Formal project management should be adopted so as to enhance the organization and proper implementation of the project. This usually consists of formal roles and responsibilities, a schedule for the project and a management structure for the project. The last principle is the engagement of the project sponsor because the sponsor is the foundation of the project, facilitating the project by offering support and resources (Volden and Welde, 2022). Through the involvement of the sponsor, the project stays on track in terms of the organization’s strategic plan and any matters that call for the executive’s authorization are attended to promptly.

Clear Goals and Change Management

The notion of understanding the goal is one of the pivotal steps in project management as it helps to avoid situations when the team members act differently and work in different directions. It is ideal that these objectives should be clearly defined, conveyed to the staff and stakeholders, and periodically evaluated about the overall concept of the project (Kumar, 2020). The last, but not less important is change management, especially in information and communication technologies that always undergo various changes, as well as requirements. Change management is a formal process that assists with managing these changes and preventing them from resulting in disruptions and hiccups in the organization; Thus a change management process ensures that any change that is passed through a rigorous approval process before it is implemented.

Assessment of Various Positions in a Project Organization

Project Manager

The overall accountability of project management in a project directly rests on the shoulders of the project manager who is supposed to see that the project is effectively done within the stipulated time, within the planned scope, and costs (Nizma et al., 2024). The specific tasks of this position include planning and managing the implementation of the project, as well as its closure, in conjunction with the project team, resources, and potential threats. The stakeholders communicate mainly with the project manager and he is fully responsible for the successful project completion (Giri, 2019). They bear a lot of responsibilities, especially in the decision-making process of challenges and ensuring the project remains on the right track.

Team Members and Sponsors

Team members constitute the core of the project as they are the ones tasked to execute the activities needed to meet the project goals. All deliverables stem from individual members’ capacity and knowledge in some way, and thus the contributions of all members need to be well integrated. In contrast, sponsorship is a strategic supply of observation and assets. It is involved in shaping the environment for overcoming barriers, getting sufficient financing, and endorsing critical decisions (Desjardins, Jean and Bredillet, 2022). Communication between the project manager and the sponsors is significant because it influences the project itself, and the availability of necessary support.

Business Analysts

Specialists such as business analysts are able to act as intermediaries between the IT and business facets of the project. Stakeholders include customers, management, employees, vendors, partners, and other relevant persons who contribute a lot towards the requirements-gathering process besides assessing the value that the project will have for the business (Popoola et al., 2024). They are responsible for taking business requirements and converting them to tech requirements with the final product fitting into the planned use. Another major function of business analysts is the testing and verification if the end product with the business requirements and achieves the intended purpose.

Employing Project Management Software

Implementation of Methods and Technologies for Business Intelligence

When it comes to the implementation of the ICT project, the use of project management tools cannot be overemphasized since it aids in planning, monitoring as well as collaboration. Ms. Project, JIRA, or Asana and other similar platforms help in the planning of the tasks and sub-tasks and their proper distribution as well as tracking of the progress (Varajão, Fernandes and Silva, 2020). These platforms offer a real-time view of the status of the project and therefore assist in decision-making. Also, incorporating BI tools like Power BI or Tableau into the PM process also improves the performance analysis to look for trends and signs of possible bottlenecks in the project performance.

The BI technologies used in the management of projects allow for the alteration of this raw data into useful information. For example, current diagrams such as KPIs allow project managers and stakeholders to make quick decisions. This prevents unwanted events resulting in likely delays or the development of negative attributes that would impact the realization of the project’s goals (Wu and Qin, 2024). In addition, BI tools assist in the efficient use of resources since the tools can predict future demands from records. It will be most useful in ICT projects where the demand for resources will be unpredictable and hence, constant changes are expected in the project plan.

Project Plan

1. Project Objectives

2. Scope

3. Timeline

4. Budget

Task 3

Best Practice Development Processes

Thus, it has been pointed out that the BI system implementation requires compliance with standards that allow the effective and efficient development of the system. They underscore one basic practice, which is code simplicity. Thus, developers can keep code simple and clean and, therefore, increase readability, ease the debug process, and the possibility to hold the system maintainable. This approach also reduces the number of mistakes that might be introduced and also easy to make future changes (Knudsen et al., 2023). Another good practice is continued testing, as stated by Nattavudh and his colleagues The authors maintain that constant testing should be conducted to ensure high site performance and to check whether the proposed mechanisms for reducing the impact of cyber-attacks are effective.

Introduction of testing from the development cycle ensures that some features have been tested hence prohibiting the formulation of large problems after the testing lifecycle. Looking at unit testing, integration testing, and user acceptance testing, there must be a set of tests that guarantee the functionality of the system under test in different contexts. Another aspect that should be kept constant is the coding standards and documentation (Blake et al., 2020). Thus, when sets of rules are aligned and followed strictly, it will ensure that all the is developed within the team is standardized and easily understandable by all the members of the designated team.

Planning and Implementation Instruments

It was found that the processes of planning and implementation of a business intelligence system are critical for its successful introduction, which is why instruments to help implement the BI system may be effective. Gantt charts are one of the tools commonly used to illustrate the project timeline and plan’s status at a given period.

Development of Solution

A business intelligence system is a complex solution that consists of many important components: technical perspective, user needs, and functional processes. From a technical perspective, the system must effectively and appropriately manage big data and work within an organization’s infrastructure. This includes choosing proper technologies, building big systems solutions and considering data confidentiality and protection issues. Meeting the respective users’ needs is also crucial. From a user’s perspective, a good system should be responsive to the needs and expectations of the user, an area that calls for proper requirements definition and specifications (Nataša et al., 2023). Involving the stakeholders at this stage is crucial so that the system adopted is of value to all and they assist in identifying the requirements of the justice system. Functional implementation can be described as bringing into operation the overall design and the user needs to create the functional system.

Communication Plan

To ensure that a BI system is functional in a business implementing it, there has to be a proper communication plan in place. Structural communication is important because it involves a way of communicating with the stakeholders in order to address their fears and facilitate the management of their expectations. Stakeholders’ engagement means that they are kept informed at all the stages of a given project, and this is done by constantly updating them. Consequently, the distribution of technical information should be done systematically to ensure that complex items are well passed on to the public (Prausnitz et al., 2023). This may include entries such as documentation, reports, and/or face-to-face presentations and training, to guarantee the engagement of all actors, with zero high-tech proficiency, within the system, and to understand the functions and added values of that system. Communication methods that are to be employed should depend on the targeted audiences and the kind of information to be passed.

Task 4

Test Plan Based on User Requirements

The Procedures in testing the ICT project will be well formulated to meet the needs of the users in the aspect of evaluation of the solution. The description of the test will include the types of the test to be conducted functional tests, performance tests and usability tests for the business intelligence system (Panda, 2021). Every test will be given a reference number so that they can be easily distinguished when handling and returning them. the area of concern will therefore encompass the integration of the system, the accuracy of the data processed and the ease of operation of the user interface (Mustafa et al., 2021). Testing resources include personnel, which in this case are the QA specialists; the testing environments; as well as hardware and software facilities that are needed during testing. Acceptance test cases in this category will be derived from the user’s requirements to ensure that all functions meet test criteria.

Successful Testing of the Solution

Issues of testing such as mistakes realized and procedures that will be used to correct them will also be recorded. Over the following semester, mistakes will be divided into two classes, A and B, and necessary corrective action will be made so that system functionality will be disrupted as much as possible (García and Pinzón, 2017). The users’ comments will be then used to enhance the system, the emphasis will be made on the usability aspects and possible problems. Positive feedback is useful for verifying the efficacy of the proposed solution, negative feedback, on the contrary, will help improve the work in practice.

Implementation of Changes from User Testing

Returned feedback will be analysed to see which areas need modification and this could be the improvements in the graphical user interface, data presentation or function optimization (Abdeen, Chen and Unterkalmsteiner, 2022). The modifications will have to be made based on the need and dependency of different aspects of the systems on the users as well as the influence of the changes towards the users. The improvements that should be put in practice will be checked whose main goal is to determine if they can solve the problems that have been pointed out and to meet the user expectations.

Evaluation of Strategic Planning for Business Intelligence Implementation

This paper seeks to establish the importance of strategic planning in the implementation of a business intelligence system about factors that can enhance the efficiency of a business. Having a good plan in place ensures that the system meets the organizational objectives and enhances the use of knowledge in decision-making while producing useful information. It encompasses evaluating business requirements, choosing the right technologies, and identifying goals for a system’s implementation (Adiguzel, 2020). Problematic areas that may be encountered in data integration and the adoption of the developed planning tools are managed by implementing sound processes and acquiring the required resources for their implementation.

Task 5

The assessment of the impact of the ICT project shows that the objectives were achieved with slight variations from the predicted plans and schedule. As expected, the project provided the necessary fully functional BI system that overall enhanced business operations with regard to efficiency, accuracy and audibility. Some of the possible lessons learned are: The first is the necessity of collecting detailed user feedback data at the beginning of the development process to diminish usability difficulties; the second is the necessity to be more strict in managing change to overcome possible scope unpredictability. In general, the described project might be considered as an example of proper strategic planning and management to achieve significant objectives.

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