ICT204 - ICT Project Management Website Development Plan Assignment sample

Project Scope and Planning for ICT Website Solutions

Background

ICT Business Solutions has been contracted by Healthy Food Australia, a company that was formed in 2010, to design a new website as the company was expanding (Nicholas & Steyn, 2020). This project also follows Healthy Food Australia’s Project Management Policy and Procedures, which set out the guidelines on how project management will be conducted to ensure to use of the same project management tools and techniques. The policy defines three project types based on budget: low (less than $10,000), medium ($10,000 to $50,000), and high (more than $50,000). The project will follow the five stages outlined in the policy: the steps involved are initial approval, project charter development, project management plan creation, implementation, and project closure with evaluation.

Objectives

 The primary objectives of this project are to:

• Design a new and improved version of the current Healthy Food Australia basic website.
• Design an ‘order’ and ‘check out’ button for direct orders from the customer.
• Design web pages on recipes that use bush spices, and other pages that provide information on the health benefits of these spices.
• Enhance the company’s electronic systems of communication.
• Familiarise the brand and contribute to the company’s development in its foreign markets.
• Enable an enhanced sales volume with the help of the newly developed online environment.
• Enable customers to easily obtain information on products sold and purchase those products easily.
• Check that all the web pages are easy to update by Healthy Food Australia’s administration staff after development (Ananthapavan et al., 2020).

Scope

The project scope includes:

From scratch, create a new website with more than one page: home page, about us, our products, how to contact us, recipes, and the benefits of products.

• Securing the e-commerce site with a shopping cart
• Designing and incorporating content for recipes and the health aspects of bush spices
• Promoting a better electronic means of communication
• Offering training to the administration staff on how to maintain the website
• Maintaining a responsiveness to mobile and cross-browser compatibility
• Applying SEO guidelines that would enhance the website’s ranking.
• Enabling performance monitoring parameters on the website and the user activity.

The sign of success for this project will be on on-time development of a website that is fully functional and easy to use and addresses all of the assessment and business needs of Healthy Food Australia.

Components

The project consists of the following key components:

Website Design and Development:

• Defining an attractive and consistent layout with the brand’s image
• Website planning for responsiveness
• Having content management will make it easier to update the content.

E-commerce Integration:

• Installing a shopping cart solution that is safe
• Implementing payment gateway integration
• Establishing the product catalogue and inventory

Content Creation and Management:

1. Creating pages with recipes and the benefits of the product information
2. Creating a blog or a news section for the updates (Spiker et al. 2020).

Electronic Communication Upgrade:

1. Disposing of the old email system
2. Creating channels of internal communication

Security Implementation:

1. Data protection or security, and safe transactions
2. Implementing SSL certificates

Search Engine Optimisation:

1. The guidelines for on-page and technical optimisation
2. Creation of XML sitemaps and robots. txt

Training and Documentation:

1. Preparation of guidelines for the management of the websites
2. Organisation of training sessions for administration employees

Testing and Quality Assurance:

• Ensuring that the tests are done on multiple devices and browsers.
• Conducting user acceptance testing

Feasibility

 The project is deemed feasible based on the following factors:

• Technical Feasibility: ICT Business Solutions has the right experience to design and implement all the components needed in the website and the communication system.
• Operational Feasibility: This new website will be relevant to the business strategies and the growth agenda of Healthy Food Australia.
• Economic Feasibility: The possible enhancement of sales and coverage simply the cost of a new website and systems.
• Schedule Feasibility: The work can be done within the timeframe to meet the strategic development objectives of Healthy Food Australia.
• Resource Feasibility: Human resources: For development and maintenance, the resources for both ICT Business Solutions and Healthy Food Australia are available (Ayre et al. 2020).

Information Gathering Plan

To determine project requirements, constraints, and risks, we will gather information from:

• CEO Peter Johnston: The general strategy and objective of the business
• Operations Manager: Current operation flow and limitations
• Marketing Manager: Company branding, customer analysis
• Customer Service Officer: Standard questions and concerns of the customer
• IT staff (if any): Technical resources available for use in the current learning environment and the constraints therein
• Administration staff: How the site is run daily
• Factory staff: Customer details and information about the products to be stocked and the stocking capacities required.
• Existing customers: Surveys as user experience feedback
• Competitors: Determination of the market through web comparison
• Industry experts: Electronic commerce for native food products: what should be done
• Legal advisors: Legal regulation of cyberspace and global markets: compliance standards in cross-border e-commerce

Project Team

The project team will consist of:

• Project Manager: Supervise a project as a whole
• Web Designer: Design the look and feel and the copy of the site.
• Web Developer: Create the layout and structure of the website to allow for e-commerce.
• Content Specialist: Create and structure the website.
• SEO Specialist: Employ Search Engine Optimisation techniques
• IT Systems Specialist: Improve the electronic means of communicating
• Quality Assurance Tester: Maintain the base design and protect the site
• Training Specialist: The preparation of staff training sessions and the presentation of the planned staff training sessions

Project Partitioning

 The project will be organised into the following phases:

• This involves planning for the project, as well as gathering the project requirements, which is meant to take 2 weeks.
• Design and Prototyping, which will take three weeks in total.
• Design and Writing Process (6 weeks)
• The site map and the organisation of the content management system
• E-commerce functionality
• Content page development
• EC Upgrade (2 Weeks, parallel to development)
• Testing and Quality Assurance (2 weeks):
• User Acceptance Testing and enhancements (7 days)
• Staff Training (1 week)
• Preparation for Go Live and Go Live (1 week)
• Promoting and Customising the App after Launch (2 weeks)

 Both phases shall have deliverables and milestones that will enable the identification of the progress made in each phase (Henderson et al. 2020).

Project Budget

The estimated project budget is $45,000, broken down as follows:

• Website Design and Development: over $20 000
• E-commerce Integration: $8,000
• Content Creation and Management: $5,000
• Electronic Communication Upgrade: $4,000
• Security Implementation: $2,000
• Search Engine Optimisation: $2,000
• Training and Documentation: $2,000
• Testing and Quality Assurance: $ 2,000. 

This budget comprises all software licenses, hosting fees for the first year, as well as the ICT Business Solutions and Healthy Food Australia staff costs (Lonnie & Johnstone, 2020). In addition, a 10% contingency of $4,500 is added to the total cost estimate for the need for extra expenses or alterations in the project scope.

Project Timelines

The project is estimated to take 16 weeks (4 months) from start to finish:

• Week 1-2: Planning and Requirement Analysis
• Week 3-5: Design and Prototyping
• Week 6-11: Development of Content
• Week 8-9: Upgradation of Electronic Communication System
• Week 12-13: Testing and Quality Assurance
• Week 14: User Acceptance Testing and Refinement
• Week 15: Staff Training
• Week 16: Launch Preparation and Go Live

Post-launch support and optimisation will continue for 2 weeks after the go-live date.

References

Journals

1. Ananthapavan, J., Sacks, G., Brown, V., Moodie, M., Nguyen, P., Veerman, L., ... & Carter, R. (2020). Priority-setting for obesity prevention—The Assessing Cost-Effectiveness of obesity prevention policies in Australia (ACE-Obesity Policy) study. PloS one, 15(6), e0234804. Retrieved from: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0234804 [Retrieved On: 09/08/2024]
2. Ayre, J., Cvejic, E., Bonner, C., Turner, R. M., Walter, S. D., & McCaffery, K. J. (2020). Effects of health literacy, screening, and participant choice on action plans for reducing unhealthy snacking in Australia: a randomised controlled trial. PLoS medicine, 17(11), e1003409. Retrieved from: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1003409 [Retrieved On: 09/08/2024]
3. Henderson, J., Ward, P. R., Tonkin, E., Meyer, S. B., Pillen, H., McCullum, D., & Wilson, A. (2020). Developing and maintaining public trust during and post-COVID-19: can we apply a model developed for responding to food scares?. Frontiers in public health, 8, 369. Retrieved from: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.00369/full [Retrieved On: 09/08/2024]
4. Lonnie, M., & Johnstone, A. M. (2020). The public health rationale for promoting plant protein as an important part of a sustainable and healthy diet. Nutrition Bulletin, 45(3), 281-293. Retrieved from: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/nbu.12453 [Retrieved On: 09/08/2024]
5. Nicholas, J. M., & Steyn, H. (2020). Project management for engineering, business and technology. Routledge. Retrieved from: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780429297588/project-management-engineering-business-technology-john-nicholas-herman-steyn [Retrieved On: 09/08/2024]
6. Spiker, M. L., Knoblock-Hahn, A., Brown, K., Giddens, J., Hege, A. S., Sauer, K., & Steiber, A. (2020). Cultivating sustainable, resilient, and healthy food and water systems: a nutrition-focused framework for action. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 120(6), 1057-1067. Retrieved from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/am/pii/S2212267220302021 [Retrieved On: 09/08/2024]