GA3 Group Assignment #1: Project Plan & Status Reporting

Group4

Nov 5 2017

North America facility wireless

infrastructure lifecycle refresh and design
Introduction
Sample Corporation sells and repairs mobile electronic device. The sample corporation has a global
operation that employees over 50,000 staff and has facilities in the United States, Mexico, Canada,
England, France, Israel, China, Japan, Australia and the Philippines. Sample corporation is privately listed
and has annual revenue of 50 million USD. Sample corporation has an enterprise class datacenter in each
geographic region, these include North America, Europe and Asia Pacific region.

The local facilities in each country vary in size and function as well and profitability. The local facility has
an IT infrastructure that included workstations, servers, data storage, and telephony. Local users are
provided with company paid mobile phones and wireless access is provided for employees and also guest
wireless access.

Due the pace of growth, staffing resources, and product lifecycle, many of these facilities are now in need
for a technology refresh. The refresh project may include a redesign of the implementation of different
technology solutions, hardware refresh with similar models, or expanding existing solutions to meet the
current scope.

The refresh project will require additional resources from vendors and technology professional services
in conjunction with staffed engineer resources.

Statement of Need
In order for each facility to meet their business goals, operate with budget, and meet other business
requirements, it must have the appropriate technology solutions. Over time, previously implemented
technology solutions will start to either fail to meet the businesses needs or not maintain pace with the
companys completion. This can lead to a loss of revenue; market share or other opportunity costs.
There is an expected product LifeCycle for technology replacement that balances capital and operational
expenses while relatively keeping pace with advantages allowed by newer technology.

The majority of the facilities have expanded beyond their original footprint and require additional
resources to continue to provide business critical IT services to staff. The pre-existing resources have not
been updated are frequently as recommended. Additionally, some of the existing technology solutions,
while not requiring replacement as yet, have not been properly designed or implemented so a design
review is also required.
Each facility requires an evaluation of the current situation and issues so a proper solution and
corresponding cost estimate can be created

Project Definition
A project overview document describes the project. It is also called a project concept document. It
should outline the project goals.

Project description describes the project. It should be clearly documented and outline the characteristics
of the product service. This to consider are
Organizations strategic plan
Project selection criteria
Historical information
The project to redesign and refresh the technology infrastructure required involvement of dozens of
engineers, project managers, leadership, vendors and other stakeholders. The project itself will take
several months to complete once initiated. However, before the project changes can begin, the scope
and a business requirements need to be evaluated to determine the estimated cost of the endeavor.
The business long-term and short-term strategies require support of the following employee types
Knowledge workers Knowledge workers are trained technical staff and engineers. This staff
supports network infrastructure, data center equipment, desktops, telephony and storage
hardware. Knowledge worker are highly paid and experienced staff that are generally located at
primary corporate locations and data center facilities. Knowledge workers required recent
laptops for mobile work experience and a company phone.
Business Analysts Business analysts perform financial review and forecasting. These workers
are generally experienced staff that are also located at corporate offices. Business analysts
usually only work from the office but still are issued the same laptop and mobile device models
as knowledge workers and analysts.
Warehouse and logistics Warehouse and logistics receive and ship inventory from Warehouse
facilities. Many of the warehouse worker use mobile inventory scanners or shared workstations.
Call center agents - Call center agents answer telephone calls from customers to support their
equipment or assist customers in ordering new equipment or services. Call center agents are
located in a mix of call center offices and some work at home agents. Call center agents do no
use or require fully featured computer. These workers use virtual workstations or Wyse
terminals accessing Citrix VDI instances.
Managers and Directors The managers and directors coordinate the staff under then to align
with business needs. Leadership staff work from many locations and require mobile laptops and
company mobile phones.

Knowledge the hardware requirements of various staff functions and their locations allow for a scope to
be defined with estimated costs for new resources. The projects scopes will need to be aligned the
available staffing for performing the refresh and design review. As only a finite number of engineers
would be working on the project so only a certain pace and can expected.

The function of the facility and importance of the staff in question will needed to be reviewed as well
the prioritize the function and order of implementation. This ensures that the refresh and added
functionality providing the highest return will be implemented first and the benefits are available as
soon as possible

The overall goals of the project are as follows:

Address immediate performance problems.
Stabilize wireless environment.
Stabilize wired network environment
Develop the new architecture to support voice and video
Create a management platform for the network infrastructure
Implementing the new wireless design
Network and Server Monitoring & Alerting
Quality of Service standards for optimal user experience

Project Requirements are the refresh and modernization of network infrastructure, server platforms,
and resolution of reported issues. There is a requirement that all facilities provide a certain degree of
user experience and allow a defined level of resource access. Each user, is required to be able to
complete their specific job function on par with the industry standard. Completing this ability is end
requirement that drives the roadmap for this project.

The Project Deliverables are the reports or documents generated throughout and at the end of the
project. The documents are used to record the steps, man hours, and expenses. The documents can
also be the following:

Asset Inventory
Network Diagrams per locations
Application workflow diagrams
Workstation standard image

Project Stakeholders are the individuals that have an interest in the venture. The technology refresh
project stakeholders include various technical staff, leadership within the company, vendors, and
business partners. The complete list is stakeholders is as follows:

Salaried knowledge worker performing the work of the refresh itself.

Knowledge workers management and directors that have to schedule resources and prepare
budget requests
C-level executives that define the roadmap and vision that the project must align itself to
End users receiving the new hardware or software capabilities. These users must be engaged to
report issues provide input and validate outputs.
Vendors providing hardware refresh devices, software updates, or potential upgraded internet
circuits.
Business Partners that cooperate and share data or resources with the Sample Company will
potentially need to upgrade their own equipment to remain compatible or change how
information is processed as the new information is potentially a new format or contains new
data.
 Project organization.

Work breakdown structure (WBS)

1.1 Plan for Infrastructure Refresh

1.1.1 Review requirements for system refresh

1.1.2.1 Plan for Infrastructure Refresh

1.1.2.2 Gather information from Vendors

1.1.3 Create plan for hardware refresh

1.1.4 Create plan for software and configuration refresh

1.1.5 Milestone - Planning Phase Complete

1.2 Prepare your environment for upgrade

1.2.1.1 Deploy new cabling

1.2.1.2 Add new network devices and servers

1.2.2 Disable old system

1.2.3 Create backup copies of network

1.2.4 Restore Network

1.2.5 Milestone - Preparation Phase Complete

1.3 Upgrade your network and infrastructure

1.3.1 Check the Network connectivity for errors that can cause upgrade to fail

1.3.2 Upgrade the network infrastructure

1.3.3 Add new network connection if need

1.3.4 Migrate users to new infrastructure

1.3.5 Milestone - Implementation Phase Complete

1.4 Check Error log for issues that can cause upgrade of the site to fail

1.4.1 Test and validate network functions as designed

1.4.2 Milestone - Validation Complete. Project Complete

Scope of Work

Plans
Project network diagram.

Network Diagram Export from MS_Project.pdf

Task project schedule charted with milestones, deliverables/products.

Infrastructure
refresh.mpp

Methods and techniques for effective monitoring, the progress, and controlling
the project.

Any assumptions, constraints and dependencies.

The project has a constraint that the work cannot interferre with day to day operations.
Implementing new hardware and upgrade the software code on devices must not impact end users or
cause of loss of functionality. Different teams had varying schedules but generally the maintenance
window of midnight to 0600 is available to implement or perform any work needed that may impact
users.

Any risk reduction and obsolescence considerations

The primary risk is that implementation of the refresh, either software or hardware, will
impact the business and cause unexpected downtime. This risk is mitigated by only performing
potentially impactful work during the approved maintenance window of midnight to 0600. The second
and lessor risk is that once the users are migrated over to the new systems, there could be issues or
bugs that cause unintended outages. To reduce and mitigate these risks, extensive testing and validation
with a group of sample users will be performed. Once the users have been cutover, the environment
will be monitored in detail for several days.

Financials
The hardware replacement cost is estimated to be 500,000 USD for network devices. This maybe
not all be needed and is what has been approved by the board for the project but actually cost will be
determined at the end of the planning phase.

The actual cost of staffed resources is estimated at 30,000 USD.

Conclusions

The project will address the lifecycle stage for replacement of the network devices. This project reviews
both hardware appliance and in the event the appliance model is current, the software version may
require an update to add new features or patch discovered bugs. This project will review the network
infrastructure at all locations globally. This will require approximately 800 hours and 30,000 USD of labor
and up to 500,000 USB in hardware purchases. The end result of the project should improve stability for
the network and prevent potential downtime or outages later on as well as maintain industry standard
feature sets and functionality.