PROJECT CLOSEOUT

Project Title Upgrade PAYME system

Date Prepared May 25 2020
Project Manager TBD
Project Description
Our existing payroll system, PAYME, is over a decade old and hasn’t been supported by the vendor, ACME Inc., for two years. It is not
currently integrated with our rewards & recognition system hence manual data entry is required for financial rewards. It is also only in
English which doesn’t meet the national language requirements for Canada. The latest version of the system, 10.0, is able to address
both of these gaps and would reduce the risk and potential employee impacts of system downtime.
Performance Summary
Objectives Completion Criteria How Met
Scope 1. Upgrade PAYME 1. Semi-monthly 1. Contracted ACME
with version 10.0 payroll should be Inc. to configure
from ACME Inc. processed without and customize
2. Integrate payroll changes to existing PAYME 10.0 screens
system with our staff procedures and functions to
formal employee 2. Rewarding an match existing
recognition employee with a $50 procedures.
system spot award in the Verified through
3. Support both recognition system User Acceptance
official languages should be Testing.
transferred to the 2. Build a custom data
employee’s payroll interface between
data within 24 hours PAYME 10.0 and
3. System messages REWARDM. Verified
should be available through
in English and Systems/Integration
French and User
Acceptance Testing.
3. Contracted ACME
Inc. to use a
professional

Quality 1. System response
time should not
be impacted as a
result of the
upgrade
2. Migration of
payroll data
should not result
in any data
corruption
Variances
Objectives/Final Outcome
Time 1. Launch new system:
October 2/October 4
2. First payroll processed in
new system: October
15/October 15
Cost External consulting costs:
$250K/$300K
Internal labor costs:
$100K/$90K
translator to
localize screen
messages into
French and to add a
custom “language
selection”
capability. Verified
through User
Acceptance Testing.
1. Semi-monthly 1. Verified through
payroll processing performance
should complete testing and initial
within 2 hours payroll processing
2. Total payroll for during warranty
each historical period.
period and number 2. Verified through
of employees should reconciliation
match between the during data
systems migration testing.
Variances Comments
1. -2 days Sign-off from IT security resulted
2. 0 days in two-day delay to original
launch date. No impact on
processing of first payroll.
1. -$50K -$50K variance in consulting
2. $10K costs is against original approved
financial baseline. Sponsor
approved a change request for
$50K for ACME Inc. to develop
the custom “language selection”
capability.
$10K variance in labor costs is
 due to reduced effort during
user acceptance testing as
compared to the original plan.
Benefits Management
Project was expected to save $10K/month in finance labor costs for manual entry of financial rewards. Over the course of the
warranty period, the volume of employee rewards would have taken 120 hours, hence there has been a savings of $12K in the first
month. The project was also expected to reduce system downtime from an average of five unplanned outages per month to at most
one. During the warranty period, no outages were experienced.
Exceptions
1. Three Severity 3 defects were not resolved by the project team as viable workarounds were available for each. This was
approved by the quality manager and the project sponsor. These defects will be managed by the operations support team.
2. Custom reporting by non-HR staff was a low priority requirement within the original requirements baseline. This is tied to a
tool capability which ACME Inc. will be delivering within the next two quarters. The project sponsor agreed that this capability
will be implemented as a post-project small enhancement once the vendor has made it available.
Business Needs
The project team was successful in meeting the expected business needs.
Lessons (to be) Learned
Lesson Category Comments
Estimation for data migration work needs Technology Original estimates had been based on a few
to be based on a thorough analysis of a data records which did not account for the
statistically representative sample of high degree of variation and cleanliness of
actual data within the existing system data
Schedule meetings with IT Security at the Scheduling IT Security’s primary focus is operations,
start of a project to ensure they will hence a just-in-time approach for engaging
commit their availability when required them will not work in the future
to avoid delays

Adapted from C. S. Dionisio’s book, A Project Manager’s Book of Forms: A Companion to the PMBOK® Guide – Sixth Edition
(3rd ed.), for PMIstandards+™ with contributions from Kiron Bondale, PMP, PMI-RMP, PMI-ACP ©PROJECT MANAGEMENT
INSTITUTE, INC.