Automated Ticketing System For Riverina Agriculture And Lifestyle Show

Project Description

BT & Sons Farming Equipment is an entity that does business primarily in the agricultural sector. The company started organizing an event called RALS or Riverina Agriculture and Lifestyle Show to showcase the modern advancements in the agricultural industry. Throughout the years, RALS has grown to be a large event wherein it sees thousands of visitors every year. For the management and organization of this event, BT & Sons had created a dedicated organization called as Globex. In the recent years, RALS had outgrown itself to a point where it’s highly difficult to sell tickets to the event using the manual system that they had been using since the beginning. As a result, they had planned to develop a comprehensive system that would automate the process as well as add several other features to ease the work of Globex associated with it. The document presented below is an outline for the development of this automated system.

Globex wishes to replace the manual ticketing process for RALs by implementing an intelligent automated system. This new ticketing system would also be capable of capturing, storing and processing information as well as managing and reporting that information. Globex has approached Virtucon for the development of this ticketing system. The entire development of this new system would be handled by Virtucon itself using project management for which the details are embedded below.

Area of Impact

Area	Rank Save Time On Research and Writing Hire a Pro to Write You a 100% Plagiarism-Free Paper. Get My Paper	Impact
Strategy	3	· Increasing the foothold in the market · Enhancing the competitiveness among competitors
Customer	1	· Faster ticketing experience · Better information availability · Streamlined process of ticket booking · Simple and easier process
Financial	5	· Increased ticket sales would follow an increase in the donation · Increased ticket sales would also give rise to increased profits
Organizational	2	· Increased efficiency for management and operations · Decreasing cost because automated system would cut down on operations
Social	4	· Local businesses · Lifestyle products · Agricultural equipment supplier · Farmers

• Better: Overall the services quality as well as satisfaction of customers
• Faster : Operatons processing and activity handling
• Cheaper : Cost of operations owing to automated system implementation
• Do More : Increased donation flow as well as profits due to increased ticket sales and sponsors

Area	Rank	Impact
Strategy	3	· Improvement in the positioning of Brand · Improvement in competitiveness of RALS · Increased visitor flow can be easily handled by volunteers
Customer	1	· Visitors waiting time would be reduced · More time is made available to the event · Access to information is seamless · Faster booking of tickets
Financial	5	· Cost reductions · Improved data processing · Improvements in cash flow as well as control over different costs · An increase in overall revenue and profits
Organizational	2	· Easier allocation of all works · Capacity of volunteer’s are enhanced · Faster and error free planning, evaluation and scheduling
Social	4	· Business development opportunities · Benefit to farmers from all kinds of updated information · Linking of suppliers of agricultural equipment · All of the members from the community can enjoy the show

Elements enumerated above could be fully achieved in a time span of 140 days.

The development of this project would add value for BT & Sons as well as Globex and would achieve better quality of work, greater customer satisfaction, cost-effective operations, simpler transactions and ticket processing and reduced dependency on labor (Miller, 2008).The areas that are going to be impacted by this new project from least to most are financial area, social, strategy, organizational and customer in this order. The projected benefits include a reduction of 25% in costs, an increase of 20% of profits as well as increase of 35% donation received by the sponsors at RALS.

• Capturing of information as well as gathering of all the associated volunteers. This would include capturing of information such as name, contact details, organization details, educational background, availability information, vouchers allocated, their schedule, preferred roles among other things.
• Capturing of information related to roles for volunteers and these include name of the role and its description, selection criteria, required participation and the organization involved with it.
• Management as well as coordination of the volunteer activities include :
  • Sales of tickets at the gates
  • First Aid kit
  • Setting up of the site
  • Cleaning up of RALS event before and after the event
  • Handling of site maps and visitor goodies bags
  • Maintaining a lost and found box

Out of Scope

• Any negotiations with third parties whatsoever in terms of providing equipment’s and tools needed for the project.
• Any activity associated with advertisement and promotion of the project

A variety of project management techniques have already been defined. Among the most standard and widely used is the PMBOK guidelines called as Project Management Body of Knowledge. PMBOK is follows a phase-wise development approach towards the project. Under this, the project lifecycle phases have its own set of strategies and techniques to move ahead. The principal phase in PMBOK strategy is the initiation phase that incorporates the start of the venture. The next stage is the planning part of the project wherein scope definition, partner ID, action arranging, plan estimation, danger appraisal and spending estimation is given. It would then be followed by the execution phase wherein the core part of the project is undertaken that would ultimately lead to the advancement of the project. There could be different problems that show up in this particular phase, however, PMBOK outlines different techniques to deal with them. At the same time, any changes that are added to the project, PMBOk has strict guidelines on how to manage them phase by phase so that it does not end up disrupting the project. These changes are controlled in a structured manner throughout the lifecycle of the project. Towards the end of the project is the closure phase wherein all the outlined requirements are fulfilled. (Bilkent, 2016).

Measurable Organizational Value (MOV)

Role	Organization	Responsibilities	Timeframe/s
Program Sponsor	B T & Sons Farming Equipment	Has the obligation to provide all the requirements as well as specifications for RALS system and the time duration for the project.	Entire duration of the project
Program Manager	Globex	Interacting via meetings or teleconferencing with project team as well as virtucon for approvals and required artifacts together with assistance in project allied activities.	Entire duration of the project
Volunteer Management Associate	Indigenous Community Volunteers (ICV)	Providing the team with a detailed list as well as other information of volunteers that include their age, demographics, qualification and names among others.	Entire duration of the project
Volunteer Management Associate	Other not for profit organizations that will be providing volunteers for RALS	Providing the team with a detailed list as well as other information of volunteers that include their age, demographics, qualification and names among others.	Entire duration of the project
Project Manager	Virtucon	Creating the project plan, submitting it to the stakeholders, allocating responsibilities, keeping a track of resources, reviews and meetings both extern and internal.	Entire duration of the project
Project Leader	Virtucon	Assisting project manager for achieving objectives and completion of all assigned tasks	Entire duration of the project
Technical Consultant	Virtucon	Architecturing the entire information system and preparing a documentation for the same for the project team	Initial part of the project timeline
Resource Groups	Virtucon	Assisting project leader in their project requirements as well as completing of all assigned tasks among other allied activities.	Throughout the project timeline Project

Technological Requirements

• Hardware: Networking hardware and computing hardware that are required for the development and management of the system.
• Software : Required operating systems, development and designing tools, testing tools, database creation and administration tools as well as reporting tools
• Network : Implementing and configuring the network, stress testing the network and security wise hardening of the network

Facilities

• Providing equipment and tools that are needed for the success of the project
• Creating of project requirements which are needed for the project

Assumptions

• Project would be completed based on the schedule outlined
• All the project environments would be setup well in advance so that the initiation and execution of the project goes well.
• The hardware and software requirements would be taken care of well in advance as well as their installation of setting up of the network

Dependencies

• Bandwidth of the network available for Globex
• Project sponsor so as to make the specifications and requirements available for team of the project
• Signoffs and approvals from the sponsor and the manager of the project

Constraints

• The estimated duration of the project would be 140 days and the project would not be altered in any way and under any circumstances whatsoever
• All of the budget associated with procurements of tools and other equipment’s would be chargeable

Risks are identified based on various factors and are present in each and every phase of the project

• Technical risks in Initiation Phase
• Resource risks in Planning Phase
• Schedule and Budget Overrun  in Execution Phase
• Requirements inflation in Control Phase
• Quality risks in Closure Phase

Assessment of the risks is a component of the overall risk management plan that is aimed to analyze the risks that are associated with the project. Identified risks are further classified into acceptable or non-acceptable risks based on their assessed results and the strategy to accept or transfer the risk (Clarizen, 2016).

Risk assessment would be carried out based on qualitative methods so as to understand the ranking and severity of risks.

Quality is an important factor for the project and therefore it would be ensured at each and every single step of the project instead of ensuring at the end of the lifecycle of the project. There would be a series of testing that would be done in order to ensure that the project being undertaken falls well under the acceptable quality standards that have been highlighted earlier. The quality assurance as well as testing of the quality would be undertaken via agile development framework wherein testing activities are carried out in parallel to the project rather than towards the very end of it (Dds, 2016).

Verification activities includes a set of evaluations criterias that are again carried out at each and every step of the project so as to ensure the project strictly follows the requirements. Following set of deliverables would be verified before the project changes hands.

• Verification of the entire source code
• Project plan documentation verification
• Verifying the project closure report
• Verifying the charter document of the project (Francis & Horine, 2016)
• Verifying the communication plan of the project
• System design verification
• Verifying the implementation plan of the project

The activities that are utilized for verification of the above-mentioned components include the following

• Walkthroughs
• Reviews
• Inspections

Actual system that has been developed would be validated against a set of requirements so as to ensure the project to be developed follows the specifications outlined by the organization. To ensure the same, a series of project testing needs to be done. These testing are varied and different from one another. These testing includes the following:

• Sanity Testing
• Performance Testing
• System Testing
• Regression Testing

Checklist would be created for the closure stages of the project that lists all kinds of activities that are needed for the project before the entire project is marked as completed. This would help the project manager as well as the project team to remember if they are completed.

Project Name:  RALS Rostering system development

Project Description: A rostering system needs to be developed so as to manage tickets and volunteering activities for the event. 

1. Project Implementation and Acceptance

Mark (x) if completed
	1. Below mentioned deliverables should be duly accepted and completed:
	· SOW or Statement of Work
	· Overall plan of the project
	· Change Management Plan
	· Project Budget
	2. System’s functional requirement
	3. System’s technical requirement
	4. System testing
	5. Security testing
	6. Allied systems integration
	7. Migration of data
	8. Backup of data
	9. Recovery plan
	10. Licenses
	11. Procedure management
	12. Installed applications
	13. Artefacts documents for the project
	14. Project acceptance test

1. Final Documentation

Mark (x) if completed
	1. Documents that have been archived includes:
	· Project Requirements
	· Project Charter
	· Scope of Work
	· Project sign-off
	· Acceptance
	2. Repository is required for storing all kinds of records

1. Personnel Plan

Mark (x) if completed
	1. Personnel
	· Transfer of Knowledge
	· Project completion updates communicated to team members and customers
	· Team members realization
	· Access modified or revoked for all team members of the project
	2. Training
	· Skills identified
	· Training provided
	3. Feedback
	· Team member’s feedback documentation
	· Team members performance documented
	· Feedback given to supervisors

1. Lessons Learned

Mark (x) if completed
	1. Compilation of results
	2. Closure meeting complete
	3. Completion of closure report

Allen, Judy (2009) Event Planning: The Ultimate guide to Successful Meetings, Corporate Events, Fundraising Galas, Conferences, Conventions, Incentives and Other Special Events. John Wiley & Sons.

Author Judy covers interesting theories on event management and different processes that are used in the event management and planning. A good hands-on exposure has been conveyed in the book and elements like team selection, formation, location selection, procurement considerations, program development, stakeholder management and even performance evaluation has been covered in the book.

This journal article by David explores the aspects of risk management for SME based organizations. It provides indicators, checklists, tools and templates that are used for 5 different real-life based projects. David also goes into details about risk identification, analysis and evaluation which an important part of the risk management plan.

Introduction to project management by Kathy Schwalbe is an important book when it comes to understanding PMBOK principles. The book provides techniques and tools that helps explain 10 different areas for PMBOK. It covers different project management stages that includes planning, initiating, monitoring as well as controlling and closing. This would be useful while selecting a correct project management methodology as well as creation of project charter.  

References

Bilkent, (2016). Retrieved 20 September 2016, from https://www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/~cagatay/cs413/PMBOK.pdf

Brandeis,. (2016). Common Challenges in the Project Life Cycle | Brandeis University. Projectmgmt.brandeis.edu. Retrieved 20 September 2016, from https://projectmgmt.brandeis.edu/resources/articles/common-challenges-in-the-project-life-cycle/

Clarizen,. (2013). Risk Management – Lifecycle. Clarizen Success. Retrieved 20 September 2016, from https://success.clarizen.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/203996078-Risk-Management-Lifecycle

Dds,. (2016). Retrieved 20 September 2016, from https://www.dds.ca.gov/ConsumerCorner/MakeComplexintoSimple/AdaptationSamplesMeetingRulespg9-16.pdf

Francis, D. & Horine, G. (2016). The Purpose of the Project Charter | PMP Exam Cram: Project Initiation | Pearson IT Certification. Pearsonitcertification.com. Retrieved 20 September 2016, from https://www.pearsonitcertification.com/articles/article.aspx?p=102300&seqNum=2

Miller, S. (2008). Overview of Measurable Organizational Value (MOV) – Sheep Guarding Llama. [online] Sheepguardingllama.com. Retrieved 20 September 2016, from https://www.sheepguardingllama.com/2008/01/overview-of-measureable-organizational-value-mov/comment-page-1/