FOR PHYLLIS YOUNG

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Case Scenario -- Veterinary Clinic Automation

Your team has been asked to prepare a project plan to install IT in a veterinary clinic that is partnering with UMUC's health care curriculum.  The clinic recently received a monetary grant from UMUC for its first computers and Internet connectivity.  Because of your connection with UMUC, the clinic has selected your company to perform and manage this project.

What we know:  The veterinary clinic consists of 10 vets, 7 animal technicians, and 5 reception and office personnel.  The clinic is housed in a single building with a second/adjacent building for animal boarding and long-term care.  Each vet has his/her own office and there are 8 examination rooms, 3 operating rooms, 3 diagnostic rooms for x-rays and tests. 

The clinic uses paper records and schedules.   

Explanatory Notes and Tips

For those not intimately familiar with veterinary clinics, they are rather similar to medical clinics or doctor's offices -- something that everyone has experienced -- except that they do not have the complex government health care regulatory requirements and privacy requirements to deal with.  So you can consider a veterinary clinic to be like a simplified health care clinic for animals but without the red tape.

Reminder:  The project scenario was purposely designed to leave some things up to you -- for a reason -- so that you can make it whatever inspires you about the clinic and its automation and sounds fun to do.

Other things were omitted in order to both minimize the length of the assignment document so that you don't bite off more than you can chew, and to be realistic In real world project management, it is very typical for the clients to be experts in their own business areas but have little knowledge of IT or especially of projects.  Consequently they have little understanding of what kinds of information are needed to do a project, and especially of what levels of detail are needed.  They also have little knowledge of technical IT details that may be important for an IT project but aren't their field of expertise.  The clients often genuinely don't know what they want or need.  They don't know what IT can and can't do for them, so they don't know what to ask for or what's reasonable or unreasonable to request.  They also speak a different language than the “techies”.  The result is that their requests are often quite vague from the “techie’s”  point of view (even on the occasions that they seem specific from their point of view)

The clinic manager is the major stakeholder and your point of contact for this proposal.  Your instructor will fill the role of the clinic manager and major stakeholder.  So all questions for the client should be directed to your class instructor.

So what happens?  The project team must ask The project team has to spend a lot of time eliciting requirements, assumptions, constraints, business rules, and so forth; especially requirements.  This is usually iterative, takes a lot of time, and continues (though hopefully decreasing) throughout the project.  I'll try to reduce the iterative and incremental nature a bit in order to speed things up a bit for this class.  Nevertheless, we intentionally want the project management experience to be realistic, so there are a lot of open ended things in the project scenario that the teams will simply have to ask about.

Who does the team ask?  The client, of course.  In this ITP class project, the professor serves in the of instructor and also in the roles of the client, project sponsor, and functional business stakeholders.  So when you need more information than you are given -- which will occur, especially during the project charter and WBS phases -- don't guess, please ask!

 

 

Part Two:

In Microsoft Excel, the team is to duplicate the Work Breakdown Structure and the resources. Assign costs (units and extensions) to all resources and then to all tasks.  

Don’t forget to include equipment you might need (copiers, printers, carts to transport equipment), maybe facilities (such as a storage unit for staging equipment), and, of course the people who are doing the work.  If you include a vendor/contractor on a contract or purchase order that has ONE price for the entire effort, you will include ONE contractor@ $xxxxxxx (contract price).  Think about how you will address this contractor in the Resource Sheet – labor or non-labor?  Remember that the contractor is NOT likely to charge by the hour…! You must include EVERYTHING it takes to do every task at every level. 

Details:

·         Enter resources and costs for each task.  Remember that ALL tasks must have resources; major level tasks must have a project team member assigned some small percentage of time to monitor and track the task.

·         For all cost categories provide the unit costs or rates (e.g., for labor costs, supplies, etc.), then for each line item, make sure to include the unit costs (e.g., labor rates, costs per each, etc), and the quantities used (e.g., hours, quantities ordered or used, etc), and the extended costs (rates or unit costs times quantity).  

·         Don’t forget to include expendable materials and supplies (e.g., paint, brushes, construction materials, etc), non-expendable equipment you might need (copiers, printers, carts to transport equipment, computer furniture, etc.), maybe facilities (such as a storage unit for staging equipment), and, of course the people who are doing the work along with their labor rates, hours, and costs per person.  A rough example is below:

Task

Labor

Hours x Rate

Supplies

Unit x cost

Total

4.2.5 Install computers in gymnasium

1 Installer

1 Software tester

20 hrs x $40.00

6 hrs x $20.00

4 computers

4 USB cables

4 each x $1500

4 each x $30.00

 

$7020.00

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

·         If you include a vendor/contractor on a contract or purchase order that has ONE price for the entire effort, you will include ONE contractor@ $xxxxxxx (contract price).  Think about how you will address this contractor in the Resource Sheet – labor or non-labor?  Which makes sense? 

·         You must include EVERYTHING it takes to do every task at every level.  The project sponsor and project manager should be able to see how much EACH task (and lower level tasks) costs individually.

·         Make sure that the spreadsheet includes a clear bottom line total of all project costs so that you and your stakeholders can tell whether your plan is within the project budget or not.  And make sure that all required data are included.  In Excel, there is an expectation that the math will be accomplished by the use of formulas.

·         You may want to determine subtotals by cost type (labor, supplies, equipment, etc); and/or by person if a person is assigned to work on than one task. But you still must show the cost of each major task plus the total cost of the project.

·         The Cover Sheet text document should include the SOURCES of your costs.  For example, if you used a Department of Labor category, the discussion should include why you used this source and the appropriate citations. 

 

  • 9 years ago
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