Assignment:
Introduction
The following is the results of the initial team meeting of the IRTC Enterprise legacy system upgrade project the results of that meeting, some of the works involved, and some advantages and disadvantages of using a vendor to perform the upgrades versed using the current in-house staff to develop this new system.
Enterprise Review and Team Members
Interesting as I review assignment and begin analyzing the case study and the employees involved at IRTC Enterprise I began to feel I was literally having a meeting with the team and being introduced to each of these individual people for the first time.
In my mind I took this as an official first meeting where we can all discuss the current legacy system and their thoughts and what are their expectations of this upgrade project. During these discussions I strived to find their position in the enterprise and experience and their ideas or concerns on the upgrade.
Pat is the expert of this current system and expressed his concerns about the current system being underused while Terry is very excited to get started. Robin is also valuable with her experience even though her technical skills may need some help. Jan has some great experience however her time allowed on the project is low and Chris will get a chance to use his newly acquired computer science degree as well as his experience of web programming and software testing.
As the project manager and based on previous projects that I have been lucky enough to manage I have used my expert judgement (PMBOK Guide to Project Management), and can say that this meeting was very informative and productive to be able to extract the information needed from the current leaders who are working on the current legacy system.
This makes mapping the current system easier and to see and to also see where we will need to hire vendors and where we can possibly perform some in-house developments since the team also provides expert judgement in their current positions and technical skill levels.
Roles and Responsibilities of the Enterprise and the Vendor
While researching upgrading existing legacy systems the (Oracle white paper 2007) discussed many important reasons to upgrade with the biggest reason that stood out to me is "times change" and so is it true for technology as we all know technology is changing every year if not monthly and the need to have a legacy system installed that is ready for upgrades will be a goal of the enterprise.
The white paper also expresses the importance of good architecture when designing the new legacy system as older systems are hard to maintain and costly. It is important to design a system that can be ready for upgrades and that will be another goal of the IRTC Enterprise legacy system upgrade.
Using expert judgement again I will move that we begin procurement for a system architect to design, build and deliver this turnkey upgrade to the existing legacy system and that Pat, Terry and Jan will serve as team leaders since they can provide the most experience and hours and will work closely with the new system architecture to map the current system.
Robin and Chris will begin developing and projecting their visions of what the "new web based billing system" will look like and how the "new system" will operate and be ready for presentation to the team before we deliver that aspect of the project to the new system architect.
The team will meet regularly to discuss the progress and the status of the different stages we may be working on so that the team is informed and that I have all the information needed to report on and if there are any issues or concerns.
Advantages Disadvantages
For this project there are no specifics on the age of the current system so it will be better to outsource to provide a "packaged vendor support customer billing system" (Oracle white paper 2007) where the vendor provides packaged integrations that we tie into our current system then design the system to fit the needs of the company.
This process appears to be the best solution to this business problem that can be provided to the enterprise in a timely manner unless the entire existing core of the legacy system needs to be rebuilt. This process will provide all team members to be away from their regular duties less amount of time. This project will also provide valuable experience to the team and allows the team and the enterprise to work in a state of the art billing system that the vendor will provide maintenance to and upgrades periodically as needed and should make the end users very happy especially the customers.
Of course cost will be the main disadvantages of the upgrades and that there will be a cost to operate and will pay either monthly, quarterly an annual charge to the enterprise. Training and cost will also need to be provided and the acceptance from the staff to use the new system is always difficult. There could possibly be some facility adjustments or remodels as well that could also impose more cost.
Closing
There are other advantages and disadvantages and will move to the executives that we proceed with using a vendor for this situation since the team members although there may be additional work for them in the end they will have less to maintain and they will only be responsible for the core portion of the service and will have the vendor as a consultant to assist in any flaws that may exist during the transition. Maintenance and upgrades are also a good reason to go with a vendor provided service and this system can last as long as the enterprise continues to exist.
References:
Oracle (2007), Upgrading a Customer Care and Billing System
PMI A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge Fifth Edition, (2015), Chapter 4, Project Integration, pg. 63, 4.1.2.1 Expert Judgements