Project Stage 1: Project Initiation (Executive Support Presentation) The aim of this project stage/presentation is to secure Executive sponsorship for your project. In Week 5 you will have the...

Project Stage 1: Project Initiation (Executive Support Presentation) The aim of this project stage/presentation is to secure Executive sponsorship for your project. In Week 5 you will have the opportunity to make a presentation of your findings to key decisionmakers (e.g. Project Sponsor, IT Manager etc). The project sponsor will determine whether your project gets the go-ahead or not. In this presentation you should discuss who is on the team and their unique skills and what ERP is about. You will also need to show how this product can be successfully delivered with the limited budget. Additional, you will need to clearly explain which system you have selected and why it is your preferred choice. To do this presentation well you should get to know your team, and come up with a short pitch for how your proposed solution can benefit Branston ATVs. The main project artefacts for this phase will include the project guidelines, stakeholder analysis and business case (including a basic budget). - 5 - Project Stage 2: Requirements Phase (Requirements Presentation & Updated Work Plan) Stage 2 represents a more detailed planning phase of the project. Here is where you will make a plan for getting things done (i.e. making choices and assumptions, identifying resources and possible risks). For this stage, you will gather and prioritise requirements from Branston ATVs. You will learn more about their business processes, define key success criteria for the project, and examine expected outcomes. Since you are buying an existing system and (perhaps) making modifications, you will prepare a gap analysis rather than a development specification. These gaps represent requirements that you may not be able to do given the scope of the project, or time, cost and/or functional constraints (e.g. Branston ATVs may require a function that the system currently does not do, or to include it will require more time or money). You may therefore have to make some tough decisions (and/or do some tough negotiations) about project scope, time, cost, etc. You should be very clear at this point about what is in and out of scope! Once you assign tasks identified in your work plan to team members and determine when they are to be done you will have produced a baseline project plan. You will also need to prepare a risk analysis identifying the top THREE risks you want the business owners and project sponsor to be aware of, and saying how your project plans to address these risks. At the end of this project stage, you will present the more detailed requirements, project scope and an overall work plan at a project kick-off meeting where the project will be explained to all interested stakeholders. You will also have to tell us (i.e. company management and other stakeholders) who is invited to the kick-off meeting. Stage 3: Planning Phase (Detailed Project Plan Presentation) & Performance Review Stage 3 is part of the planning phase of the CRM project. By the time you get to Stage 3, the business users have had a chance to look at some of your preliminary work and may have requested changes. How well did you handle those changes? You will also be given a list of things that have happened on your project so far. This is where your initial planning (in the Discovery Phase) will pay off. How well did you anticipate some of the things that went wrong? For Stage 3 you are expected to update the project plan (including the project scope, cost, deliver times etc.) and determine your chances to deliver what you promised. The project sponsor and steering committee have asked you to prepare a status report. At the end of this phase you will make a progress presentation to the project sponsor and other stakeholders and present your detailed project plan (by tasks) for final approval, as well as address any other aspects of the project that may be needed at this stage. This will give the project sponsor and other stakeholders an indication of how you’re doing and will allow you to ask for changes. You will also incorporate in this milestone a performance review presentation to your manager. In this part of the presentation you will address issues such as: "What did you learn? What would you do differently next time?” in addition to reporting the progress and work done so far. This is a tough task, but honesty does count!