Baseline Project Plan
Date: 01/25/13
Introduction: Executive Summary: The scope of the project includes an analysis of all student-related,
most faculty-related, and a few administration-related interactions on the Simmons Connections
system. The project should include at least one work complete work-flow, data-flow decomposition,
identifying the boundaries of this integrated system.
Recommendation: some of the administrative activities are specifically excluded from this project’s
scope, such as official registration, Moodle and eLearning and similar systems. The recommendation
for the project should be an otherwise enterprise-wide data flow analysis and data stores. The
recommendation should be used primarily to enable administrative and staff discussions about future
systems planning.2.0 System Description
System Design: to date, only the highest level functions have been identified for discussion. Any
system must recognize security issues and operate as an functionally independent system that ingests
and outputs data for other official systems.
A preliminary System Description will be added.
Feasibility Assessment:
A cost-analysis of systems operation performed by the consulting firm KPM forms part of the
College’s Strategic Initiative. That analysis concludes there is an economic benefit for a smaller
technical footprint and technical staff requirements. Since the proposed system only models potentials
in light of current investments, the cost-benefit is for discussion only.
The proposed system should address the data and interaction concerns of the various
stakeholders (current students, faculty, staff, administrators). We plan a build-or-buy analysis to
estimate the cost of analyzing, building, implementing, and maintaining a new information system.
Upon completion of the initial analysis, we will propose a contract for services.
Managers and administrators will work with the project liaison to gather data about end-user
concerns, candidate data models and work flows.
The project will be expressed, too, as a Gantt chart with milestones so managers can schedule
meetings.
Management Issues: all communication between the project team and client will be exclusively
through the liaison and recorded as part of the project development. Reports will be reviewed and
approved by the client/manager. Upon acceptance of the reports, the analyst team will proceed to the
next phase. Upon completion of the project - needs analysis, data models, work flow, implementation,
and management plans - the client will receive final copy of the documentation, source code if any,
training materials and a management plan.
Jan 30, 2013; file name: demo-BaselineProjectPlan