CastleBranch

Project Management HIM2200

Melissa Seitler
Angelique Adames
Bonnie Faust
Debi Sheroke
Table of Contents

Introduction 2

Project Initiation 2

Project Planning 3

Project Execution 4

Project Monitoring and Controlling 5

Project Closing 6

1
Introduction

Tri-C requires certain compliance aspects to be completed by students in the HIMT

program. Castlebranch is the company they utilize to accomplish this task.
Castlebranch facilitates background screening services and compliance verification for
medical requirements.

Castlebranch has been a thorn in the side of students for years. The process is not
clear, Castlebranch’s help services are not helpful, and the entire process to meet
compliance standards is confusing.

Our project goal is to streamline the process, make clear what needs to be done, and
clarify when each step of the process needs to be completed.

Project Initiation

Melissa Seitler is the project manager and her team is comprised of Angelique Adames,
Bonnie Faust, and Debi Sheroke

The team contract details our expectations of each other, when our meetings will be
held, and how we will be held accountable for our individual work and performance.

The project charter was created during our first team meeting and it included: our
project scope, objectives, the purpose of our project, what our deliverables will result in,
milestones, and project timeline. The charter also included our stakeholders for our
project as well as which of our stakeholders approved our project.

Team Contract:
CastleBranch_Team_Contract

Team Charter:
CastleBranch_Charter

Stakeholder Register
Castlebranch_Stakeholder_Register

2
Project Planning
For our project to succeed planning was extremely crucial. Without the planning our
project may have not gone well and together as a team could have caused us
confusion. Our plan for this Castlebranch project was to create a PowerPoint to explain
each step so the incoming students wouldn’t feel as overwhelmed. We also created a
checklist for incoming students so they can stay on track to become compliant with
castlebranch. The checklist listed all the task the students have to finish either before
the beginning of their first semester or by October 1st before their practicums.

To keep everything organized and each of us focused and know exactly what was
expected, we as a team created a WBS, and a dictionary. The WBS was created to
know what all would be included into our project without any detail. However, the
dictionary went more into detail and explained what each of those “nouns” were. It listed
each task and explained what was expected from that one task. The dictionary was
created to not create any confusion- if we didn’t understand what was needed from that
task all we had to do was look at our dictionary to clarify anything.

WBS dictionary:
Castlebranch_Dictionary

WBS:
Castlebranch_WBS

3
Project Execution

The execution of our project was a bit of a challenge in the fact that we had to come up
with a detailed list of what exactly Castlebranch was and what it entailed from us the
students. We made a list of all of the requirements and the end result that is expected
to be in compliance, including required vaccinations and forms that needed to be
signed, dated and uploaded to the Castlebranch site. Since some of these items were
done early in our acceptance to the program, we had to refer back to our completed
Castlebranch page to make sure we had all documents included in our activity list. We
were also able to provide sample copies of the pages that needed to be completed with
a signature and turned in for acceptance.

The Tuberculosis (Tb) skin test was a little more involved in the fact that we had to go
through the steps of the traditional 2-step test or the blood test. This was probably the
most confusing with our class. Therefore we made sure that we provided an accurate
detail of the process to go through. The project really fell into place once we were able
to identify each document, and the steps that is needed for completion or compliance.
We as a team were assigned to break down the different requirements. We were able
to gather all the appropriate information, the steps needed to upload to Castlebranch
and make sure each step was simplified. Our deliverable is a PowerPoint presentation
that describes each item that needs to be completed and what to upload for compliance.
Our second deliverable is a checklist that will help the incoming students to know what
is expected from them and by what time.

PowerPoint Presentation:
How To Survive Castlebranch

Checklist:
Castlebranch checklist

4
Project Monitoring and Controlling

Monitoring and controlling in a project is important to make sure that the project is
staying within the predetermined scope, timeline, and budget. Our project did not have
to worry about the latter. However, we did need to stay on task to meet our deadline,
and we needed to make sure to stay within the scope of the project.

The scope was defined in our charter as including usage of the website and
requirements for compliance within Castlebranch. We did not stray far from our planned
scope and managed to stay on task throughout the project. We did a weekly recap of
our progress and plans at each meeting, and this helped us to stay focused. During our
initial meeting we had considered doing a video to illustrate how to use the
Castlebranch website, but we decided to keep it simple and do a powerpoint
presentation and a checklist. In retrospect, this was an excellent decision, as we had
enough time to prepare these two pieces of documentation and make them to the best
of our ability. Had we tried to do additional types of media, the quality of our work would
have suffered, or we would have fallen behind and not completed the project on time.

When we planned our initial stakeholder register we thought we might include Maryann
Bradford as an additional contact regarding Castlebranch usage, but after we gathered
our own information and obtained data from Mrs. Luber we determined that we did not
need to include Ms. Bradford after all. We had gained all the knowledge we wished to
from the sources we had readily available.

Schedule control is often one of the biggest challenges of a project. We did manage to
meet the overall planned schedule for completing our project, but our personal schedule
for completing pieces of the project along the way were sometimes an issue. It was
sometimes difficult for our whole group to meet at the same time because of personal
scheduling issues and priorities.

We created our activity list and Gantt chart as one document so we could easily see the
planned schedule for when to work on which activities. We used a color coding system
to denote when the activity was in progress, completed, or not yet started.

Activity List & Gantt Chart

Castlebranch_ActivityGantt

5
Project Closing

We are closing our project by the way of extinction (with the hope of integration). The
project was successful and we achieved our goals. The main goal of our project was to
help incoming HIMT students understand and navigate the complex world of
Castlebranch.

One of the initial steps when starting our project was choosing our stakeholders. The
bulk of our stakeholders are the incoming students in the HIMT program at Tri-C. We
hope that the presentation may help them through Castlebranch.

Choosing a project manager can be a daunting step in a project, but we were fortunate
to have a project manager in Melissa who was very good with computer applications
and kept us on track and informed on what to do. Most of our tasks were completed on
time and looked great. We did most of the work during classroom time, but having
access to Google Docs was an added bonus. We also created a checklist of what is
needed by Castlebranch which should be helpful to incoming students.

Lessons Learned: Google Docs is very helpful for our small projects, once you learn
how to use it. For example, how to create folders and most importantly how to share
documents with others within your own group and not in someone else’s folders.
Although we did experience technical difficulties with this, as the provided templates
were compromised despite our efforts to make copies of the templates so as to leave
the original intact.

Our team worked well together, and we got the bulk of our project done when we met in
person. This was maybe not the best strategy, but when assignments were made to do
work individually and have ready by the next meeting, we were often missing pieces.

We also should have communicated more frequently between our team and Mrs. Dalton
throughout the project. This would have ensured that we were not surprised by any of
the assignment requirements along the way.

Transition Plan
Transition Plan

Lessons Learned
Lessons Learned