Automating Grains And Cereals Auctioning Business For Globex

Measurement of Value (MOV)

Globex is engaged in farming business. They are an Australian company and offer their farming products to the local community. They are into the business of auctioning grains and cereals and have been in the business for a long time. They usually handle the entire operations including selling, auctioning, customer management and sales completely using manual techniques. However, over the period of time they realized that this wasn’t the best method to manage and operate their business and they’ve decided to automate and digitize bulk of these process. For the same, they’ve contacted Virtucon who is their long-term and reliable business partner.

Current process of managing the operations for their Grains and Cereals auctioning business suffers from human errors, inefficiencies and bottlenecks. Therefore, the higher management has decided to automate the entire system with the help of Information Technology. The company who has been contacted for the same is Virtucon. As a result, Virtucon will handle the entire project along with system design, system analysis and implementation.

Measurement of Value or MOV is a kind of a tool used by project managers and other professionals to measure the value that a project would bring to the table for the organization. (Kelly, Graham & Male, 2014). It makes use of simple methods, principles and processes.

Area for Impact	Rank Save Time On Research and Writing Hire a Pro to Write You a 100% Plagiarism-Free Paper. Get My Paper	Impact
Strategy to focus	3	· Improvement in business competitiveness for Globex · Improvement in brand positioning in both local and larger market-base. · Heightened capacity so as to manage a greater number of visitors.
Customer	1	· Overall waiting time for customers will be reduced · The customers will get to spend more time in auctioning as a result. · Streamlined method to access the business. · Faster access for schedules and information.
Financial	5	· Reduction in labor cost. · Improvement in process of data. · Improvement in fund flow · More granular control over expenditures and overheads. · Increased revenue resulting from sales.
Organizational	2	· An increase in management of volunteer related activities. · Increase in management of tasks and work. · Improvement in performance and planning as well as evaluations could be faster and easier.
Social	4	· Farmers are going to get benefited from the improved process. · Businesses in the locality will have an increased exposure. · The suppliers of cereals and grains will have easier and larger access to the market.

• Better: The social and local community will have a pleasant experience owing to simplified transactions and additionally will get better revenue and support from their business.
• The customers information could be accessed faster also real-time information regarding volunteers could be achieved.
• Resources being wasted can be reduced and the cost of operations will be improved.
• The improved system will bring in ancillary benefits such as automatic customer identification, customer profiling and so on.

Stakeholder	Expectation	Target
Globex	Improvement in the business revenue.	An expected increase in over 5% of the overall revenue.
Globex	An increase in administrative operations as well as decrease in operational costs.	An increase of over 15% in data entry and information retrieval operations. Decrease in operation for costs.
Community Volunteers (CV)	Improvement in volunteer registration	Overall a 15% increase in registration
Customers	Increase in customer satisfaction	An increase in the fulfillment of customer promises, improvement in the time taken to serve them as well as improvement in customer satisfaction

The benefits being estimated for the project must be realized at the end of the lifecycle.

The IT system project is estimated to bring about a positive change to Globex management and operations. Specifically, it is being targeted to improve cost management, volunteer notification, visitor satisfaction and collection of revenues.

Project Scope

The scope of the project determines overall goals, benefits, timeline, outcomes, costs, functions and tasks among others (Fageha & Aibinu, 2013)

The overall resources which is estimated to bring about the benefits to the Globex operations are enumerated below:

• Overall contribution to the given project comes from Globex staff, Virtucon, the volunteers and other stakeholders.
• The main goal of the project was to improvise upon the operational process for the auctioning system through the use of IT and thereafter help stakeholders in fulfilling the same experience.
• Implementation for system is intended only in the case for the given project of Globex that involves the IT system.
• Management of volunteer as well as information retrieval of customers, capture of critical data, the overall accounting system of the Globex etc. are all set to improvise with the given project.
• The volunteer management, the visitor information retrievals, accounting process, and capture of other critical data are expected to be improved through this project.
• The proposed project needs to be completed within six months from the beginning and at least three months prior to the start of the annual show.  

Several resources were required to complete the project. Both material and work resources were required to perform the task.

• Project Manager
• Finance Officer
• Network Engineer
• Tester
• UI expert
• DBA
• Trainer
• Hardware
• Software
• Technical Expert
• Business Analyst
• Developer
• System analyst

• Hardware resources – Database server, application server, production server, network routers, firewalls, and web server.
• Software – Licensed operating system, development IDE, testing application, databases.

• Set-up for meetings with Virtucon team.
• Training space at Globex to train the administrators and UAT for developed system.

(Siami-Irdemoosa, Dindarloo & Sharifzadeh, 2015)

Assumptions

• All resources, both people and material, are 100% committed  throughout the project.
• No resource shall be available for over-time.
• iCorp intends to create a common platform for farmers to sell their grains.
• Globex is the only company who has such an online system for farmers.
• The project scope may change in case Globex comes up with any additional requirements.

As per (Lenfle, 2012), every risk has one or more risks associated with each of the phases of project. Following are likely risks to be occurred in respective project phase:

• Phase 1- Initiation: Target issues  and project requirements are misunderstood.
• Phase 2 – Planning: issues in estimation of budget, schedule and mis-allocation of resources.
• Phase 3 – Execution: Unexpected data flow and errors in implementation.
• Phase 4 – Control: Scope creep.
• Phase 5 – Closure: Resources are not released, documentation of wrong lessons, system not working and users are not trained efficiently.  

As per (Peixoto, J., Tereso, Fernandes & Almeida, 2014), risk assessment is a critical part of risk management plan. With the help of it, project managers are able to identify and analyze the risk in a systematic manner. Risk register is used to define the risks along with impact and probability of risks which will help in identifying whether the occurred concern is to be accepted, mitigated or transferred.

Rank (1 lowest 5 highest)	Risk	Description	Category	Root Cause	Potential Responses	Risk Owner	Probability	Impact	Status
3	Technical risk	Issues in finalizing the technology to be used. Technological incompatibilities, failures, and design/coding errors	Initiation phase	Lack of technical knowledge	Study and research to find required technologies and then finalize one.	Industry expert	Low	Low	Consult industry expert for technological advancements
4	Resource related risk	Unavailability of required knowledgeable resources	Planning phase	Project challenges are under-estimated	Project schedule and budget are required to be revised.	Project manager	Med	High	More resources are allocated
5	Schedule is not met	Delayed completion of in-between smaller tasks	Execution task	Carelessness	Regular follow-ups, responsibilities are reassigned	Project Manager	High	Med	Weekly performance reviews
5	Scope creep – Changes in scope due to amendments in requirements.	New requirement is discovered against the agreed documented needs.	Implementation and control phase	Requirements are not finalized initially	Review business scope and needs	Globex management	Low	High	Weekly management and Virtucon meeting
2	Quality Risks	Coding standards not followed resulting in frequent issues in the new proposed system.	Closure phase	Inaccurate verification and validation checks	Verification and validation techniques are applied at every step of the work completion.	Virtucon team	Med	High	Weekly meetings with quality reports.

(Sanchez, Robert, Bourgault & Pellerin, 2009)

Quality is an important part of project management. The quality of iCorp should be monitored in every phase of its development. The quality should stand at par with the quality statements of Virtucon and it includes proper documentation, validation and verification checklists (Milunovic, Filipovic, 2013). Standards of quality are developed to make sure that system works as per the requirements of Globex and satisfy end user’s expectations.

Identifying the Area of Impact

Verificaiton activities ensure that project components are executing the requirements of the system. Following are few verification activities:

• Project charter verification
• Requirement specification review
• Review of system design
• Code review
• Test implementation
• Mock testing

Once the project is developed, it is cross-checked against the requirements to ensure that same  system is developed as per the requirements specification. Following activities are executed to validate the system:

• System validation
• Source code validation
• Feedback validation

Marshall, D., & Priestner, A. (2016). Snapshot project report. Available at https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/263794

The mentioned resource presents a case study where the research has been conducted on the students studying in education institute of United Kingdom – Cambridge university. The students are doing research in their respective subject. The students are studying in natural settings. Hence a special technique was used to study their behavior called cultural probe. The study finds how the researchers access the required data, what paths and routines they follow, how do they conclude that specific resource can provide required information and how do they communicate and deduce new information found with their peers. The resource provides guidance in the assigned proposed iCorp online cash marketplace system where in behavior of stakeholders of iCorp system interact and pass on information with management or among themselves.

Lehmann, U., & Prabhakar, G. (2009). A Post-Mortem Evaluation of an IT project a Case Study of a Process Enhancement IT-Project in a Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul Company. International Journal Of Business And Management, 3(6). doi: 10.5539/ijbm.v3n6p57

In the mentioned resource, the authors have studied an SAP based IT project to come up with best practices which the team can follow while evaluating the project. The study had used Critical success factors along with qualitative approach for project evaluation. The authors had done research in two phases. In the first phase, a thorough analysis of project is done and in second phase in-depth analysis of project is done. The authors proposed a 5-stage project evaluation process. These phases are – Before project, In-progress, project completion and after project stages. It is a usual notion among people that evaluation is a critical activity of the project and it should be conducted from beginning till end. As per the authors, critical success factors selected for project evaluation may also change during the course of project execution i.e. from beginning till end. The case study has facilitated the understanding of users but authors should have used more graphical elements in the resource.

Ifrc, (2016). Project/programme monitoring and evaluation (M&E) guide. [online] Available at: https://www.ifrc.org/Global/Publications/monitoring/IFRC-ME-Guide-8-2011.pdf

The mentioned resource depicts the project monitoring and evaluation techniques. The author discusses about the asset which is created by IFRC. It has been done to check and assess the activities of the project. The evaluation technique consists of an arrangement of steps which are required for the observation of work done along with assessment forms. The author had used compact style of writing and can easily co-relate with the theme under study. The evaluation steps include steps which should be performed throughout the project and at the end of each phase. Until the evaluation is over, the next phase should not be started. IFRC evaluation process depicts that evaluation is a critical thing and asset under its evaluation shows that evaluation is should be conducted in step-by-step manner so that no process is left out.

Following closure checklist will be followed:

• WBS tasks completed
• Project charter objectives reached
• Feedback integration
• Verification and validation processed
• Project cost have been paid

As per this outline, developed MOV shall fulfill the goals of Globex within the given timeframe. In the first month of Go-Live, it will attract new customers from far off places and in second month it will start on providing ROI to Globex corp. End users shall start using the system from 2^nd month.

References

Fageha, M., & Aibinu, A. (2013). Managing Project Scope Definition to Improve Stakeholders’ Participation and Enhance Project Outcome. Procedia – Social And Behavioral Sciences, 74, 154-164. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.03.038

Lenfle, S. (2012). Exploration, project evaluation and design theory: a rereading of the Manhattan case. International Journal Of Managing Projects In Business, 5(3), 486-507. doi: 10.1108/17538371211235335

Milunovic, S., & Filipovic, J. (2013). Methodology for quality management of projects in manufacturing industries. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 24(1-2), 91-107. doi: 10.1080/14783363.2012.728851

Peixoto, J., Tereso, A., Fernandes, G., & Almeida, R. (2014). Project Risk Management Methodology: A Case Study of an Electric Energy Organization. Procedia Technology, 16, 1096-1105. doi: 10.1016/j.protcy.2014.10.124

Sanchez, H., Robert, B., Bourgault, M., & Pellerin, R. (2009). Risk management applied to projects, programs, and portfolios. International Journal Of Managing Projects In Business, 2(1), 14-35. doi: 10.1108/17538370910930491

Siami-Irdemoosa, E., Dindarloo, S., & Sharifzadeh, M. (2015). Work breakdown structure (WBS) development for underground construction. Automation In Construction, 58, 85-94. doi: 10.1016/j.autcon.2015.07.016